Digital BW, The Print

Yeah, well every website is a work in progress.   The core of the website is over 10 years old. It was written in ASP using Visual InterDev with an MS SQL Server database. At the very least I need to move it into the latest MS toolset.

The website is hosted by web.com for $20 per month, plus $1 per month for a fixed IP address for the secure server certificate (for the shopping cart). Unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth with MS SQL Server & MySQL, ASP.NET , PHP etc.

The categories reflect the original organization of the family collection. They were grouped somewhat by subject and moved into archival boxes. We know virtually nothing about these 4500 images. Unless the subject is obvious or we can date them by cars or shoes.

In addition to the website there is a backend database written in MS Access (which can be "trivially" upsized to MS SQL Server). This backend database is how we "work" the collection. 

Later we scanned 8500 photographs from the Sunpapers archive. This gave us publication dates and maybe a cut line and sometimes a sentence or two on the back. All entered into our database.  All visible to us but invisible on the website. There is some duplication of images between the two collections.

Then we added Themes which cut across categories - the website provides the most effective way to show images to resellers, interior designers, and customers for a specific decorating or design purpose.

Obviously, a search function would be useful. My plan is to do a couple hundred word voice dictation description of each image. Then the more typical keywords can be extracted automatically for searching. I need an intern - or an extra 20 hours per day.

So far most of our sales are accidental - browse by sales. We get 100 to 200 unique visitors per day - average 125.  However, 85% are less than 5 minute duration, so obviously they are a mistake.
 
Typical sale is a $20 8x10 reprint or a $30 reprint.   But we also get $300 to $1000 office decorating jobs.  A local insurance company ordered 100 24x30.

We are not marketing the website per se - it is just a sales tool right now. I tried both Google search advertising and Yahoo article advertising for several months. It was totally worthless without a much larger time effort than I am willing or able to commit.

The internet is all about building relationships. We have hundreds of topics that will be of interest to many other websites. Working the possibilities for increased exposure will be its own full time job. This is the direction I will be going. I don't need to give eyeballs to Google or Yahoo or Facebook.

I've got a lot to say - this may not be the best way.

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Tony Sleep <TonySleep@...> wrote:
> 
> Looking at the site itself, the only stand-out unusual aspect of the way it works is that it is structured toward selling prints rather than efficiently browsing a lot of images. Categorisation (via themes and galleries) into many small galleries makes the viewer choose a small subset to view that matches their interest in a subject. I have seen similar elsewhere many times, but the categories are often purely geographic and confusing (because not many people have maps in their heads), or broad genres. You take a very granular approach, but one that avoids the ambiguity of keywords.
> 
> It seems safe to assume that the quality of the photographs is the main driver of sales, but I'd like to know how you are marketing the site and getting potential buyers there in the first place. Are you using this granular categorisation of images to reach specific interest based communities?
>