I have been wondering if anyone, apart from selling prints which have a fairly high markup, ALSO sell digital downloads.
Let's face it, there isn't much we can do to prevent people from right-clicking and saving as, or buying one photo and then scanning it and making more of their own, and passing that along to friends and family. However, I have been thinking that I would make digital downloads (available in packs of 5 photos) available for purchase. I would send them to the recipient as a zip file with a note requesting that it not be distributed for general printing purchases because I have priced them reasonably.
Is anyone doing this? What have been your results? What sort of pricing do you ask for? Packages?
You should know in advance that if you decide to do this, you are pretty much giving up any standard of quality you may have for your work, because clients don't know what an aspect ratio is, or for that matter, why you shouldn't print a 640x480 level 5/10 jpeg at 8x10.
That said, I have been known to offer downloads for sale, so I definitely speak from experience .
I have seen my work printed out on copy paper, inkjet photo paper where the ink was low in one of the cartidges so the prints all had a color cast.. Nothing really surprises me now.
The way I look at it though, by offering download as an option, you are at least making some money where otherwise they would have just right-clicked and save as. Think of it as giving would-be-honest people an opportunity to be honest.
On the other hand, how much is your reputation worth? Offering downloads is a huge gamble, because on one hand you are likely to get increased exposure, but the risk is that the client has mangled your images in the process, so it becomes negative exposure.
How much should you charge for the download? A good rule of thumb for pricing is you charge for the intended use. What is likely going to happen if you give someone a file with one of your photos? They are either going to print it off, or send it to their buddies, or both. Their buddies are going to do the same thing. As far as I know, there is no real statistics on file-sharing behavior, but I think it's safe to assume for every download, it is going to end up in at least 3-6 different people's possession, regardless of what you say or do (other than not offering downloads to begin with), so that should be a rather large factor in determining the price.
If you agree with my model, then it would make sense to take whatever figure you would normally charge someone if you knew for sure it was only going to be used once, and multiply it by a factor of 3-6 at a minimum.
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