Here’s How to Make Postcards from Photos to Sell

If you’ve ever taken a photo and thought it was high-quality, you might have wondered how you could make money doing it.

After all, “photographer” is an actual profession, right?

Plus, postcards are sold in almost every store, and they are simply pictures on large index cards.

Well, you’d be right to think that people are making money by selling their photographs as postcards.

The reason you don’t hear about more people doing it is because, like most things, it requires a little bit of faith and insider knowledge. However, overcoming those barriers is what will set you apart from other aspiring photographers.

Along with that bit of insight, it’s important to point out now that selling your photos on postcards is an entrepreneurial endeavor—in other words, there’s risk involved! You have to manage yourself correctly if you want to end up in the black instead of the red.

Making Postcards from Pictures to Sell: Planning & Preparation

Before we go any further, let’s clarify what we’re talking about here: it’s pretty unlikely that you’ll simply sell your photographs to a company and make a killing that way.

There are other ways to make money by selling your photos as-is, such as the methods discussed here.

Instead, we’re talking about printing your photos onto postcards and selling them.

As you can imagine, the quality of your photos will be key to whether or not your postcards are successful. You’ll want to take as many high-quality shots as you can, because part of the process later on will involve “market sampling.”

So, don’t just snap a killer shot of the beach and go home! You’d be surprised by the types of photographs people are willing to buy.

It’s also a good idea to take pictures of your town itself, in case there’s a market for postcards there (such as in a tourist area).

But now you’re probably wondering what the ins and outs of this whole postcard thing are. It seems complicated—finding distributors, setting prices, etc. If you’re thinking this, don’t worry. The process is simpler than you might think, as long as you keep a few key things in mind.

1. Profit Margins

You’re selling a product, so you need to have an idea of your manufacturing cost and retail price.

The distributor, the store that sells your cards, will be taking a significant chunk, usually about 50%.

This means you’ll need to be especially mindful of the printing cost (because you’ll be printing these personally; there’s no middleman between you and the stores that sell them, the distributors). Printing in bulk is a good way to reduce manufacturing costs, but before that, you’ll want to do a little product research.

2. Product Research

That sounds pretty fancy, but the process I’m talking about is really quite simple.

You should print a handful of your best pictures onto postcards—maybe only 50 or so for now, 10 of each type or whatever you prefer.

Take these to one of your potential stores and ask if they’d be interested in demoing the product for you. If you’re a “hard sell” type, you could even offer them the full proceeds for the demo run before establishing any merchandising agreements.

Give it a week or so and go back to see how your products are doing. Take note of which ones are still there and which ones are gone.

It’s as simple as can be: you’ll want to focus on distributing the ones that sold out. If the demo store is ready to take on more product, great—but even then, it’s valuable knowledge.

Once you know which ones are your “big sellers,” you can go back and print a larger batch.

Printers offer better rates to people who need a lot of something printed. If you’re printing 100 cards, you probably won’t see much profit. The real profit comes in the difference between the awesome rate you get for printing a lot of cards at once (think thousands) and the price at which they’re sold.

3. Market Research

Again, this is a fancy term for a really simple idea.

You should go around to the possible stores you’ll be selling to and ask them when they sell a lot of postcards.

If you live near a ski resort, for example, they probably sell a lot of cards in the winter. If you live near the beach, it’s in the summer.

You have to find out where people buy postcards so you can target those areas.

This is “market research” at its most basic level—if they sell a lot of cards in the summer, you’ll probably be best off selling to them in the summer and using “summery” pictures!

How to Get Your Postcards Printed

OK, you’ve lined up your best photographs and a couple of potential vendors. You printed off your 50 demo copies from the local print shop, but you’re not satisfied with their bulk rates. So let’s elaborate a little on the “mass printing” part.

Like a true businessperson, now you’re facing the classic “quality over price” discussion.

This can be a really difficult part of the process, and it’s important no matter how you look at it. So don’t just print at the first place you can find; do a little research first.

To get you started, here are a few companies I recommend:

1. VistaPrint

I used VistaPrint to get 500 free business cards for my flooring business years ago. They offer all kinds of customized products.

This is a good company to start with because VistaPrint is perhaps the best option for the “layman’s photographer.”

They offer some of the best bulk rates of the three on this list, but the tradeoff is that the image quality isn’t quite as high.

In many situations, you can get away with lower image quality, so if you’re selling mid-quality photos, you may as well go with this option.

2. Moo

The counterpoint to VistaPrint is Moo.

At a glance, Moo has the highest prices of them all, but also the highest image quality.

You can mitigate the cost quite a bit by printing in bulk, but it never becomes cheaper to use than VistaPrint. However, if you’re taking your pictures with a professional-grade camera or something similar, this might actually be your best option.

Print your high-resolution photographs with this service, and you can sell them for a higher price once they’re in stores.

3. PhotoBox

Last but certainly not least is PhotoBox, which could be called the “in-between” of these options.

It offers good quality and good prices, as well as pretty good bulk rates.

All in all, PhotoBox is a very solid service. If you want to go with the most balanced option, PhotoBox is your choice.

Selling Postcards

The most exciting part!

You’re so close!

You’ve got your data, you’ve got your cards, and you’re ready to seal the deal with some stores to get your cards sold.

That’s awesome, but who do you ask?

The simple answer is “everybody.”

Seriously, postcards are a very basic type of product, and they wouldn’t look out of place anywhere, really. Not only that, but local is the name of the game when it comes to distributing your postcards. So, you should approach as many stores in your area as you can to distribute them.

Are there any limitations on where you can distribute?

Not really, but you’ll do better in places where people are more likely to purchase products.

The plan is to hook your customer with a pretty picture and get them to pick it up as an impulse buy. So, selling at a drug store, a gift shop, a coffee shop, or a post office—these are the types of places you want. It’s a bonus if it’s a place where people often stand in line, as this will increase the chances of them purchasing on impulse.

The last thing you need to do before you get your fledgling postcard business going is to sign some paperwork with your distributor. It doesn’t have to be serious documents, signatures, or contracts, but there does need to be some basic writing about your agreement. Specifically, how many they have/sold, what they’re making per card, and what you’re making per card.

These are just simple points of information you’ll want to keep track of.

If you’ve got all that together, good news!

Now, the only thing left to do is see how the market reacts and whether or not this becomes a long-term source of profit for you. If it does, you might even consider expanding your efforts. You could take a new batch of photos and sell them in the next town over, or you could take your business online.

The creative options are limitless once you get off the ground, so the important thing is getting started!

Grab a camera and give it a shot; it’s a small investment of time and money to see if this can profit you.