How to move from digital files to selling products

Selling albums, prints and wall art instead of digital files is something a lot of photographers think about. Very few know where to start.

We asked the same questions to eight professionals: Aurélie Martineau, Lisa Derevycka, Stephan Deneuvelaere, Hannah Cybulska, Tine Borms-Guéneau, David Bascunana, Sophie Gaudin and Sarah Miramon. From weddings in Alsace to boudoir in the Allier, from newborns in Brittany to portraits of women. Some have been selling products for sixteen years. Another ran her first In-Person Sales session this summer.

They do not agree on everything, far from it. But their journeys trace a fairly clear progression, in seven steps. Here it is, in their own words.

Step 0. Understand that you are the obstacle

This is the one point all eight agree on, and it is also the most unexpected. Not one of them mentioned a client who refused the very principle of buying a print. All of them, on the other hand, describe the same internal block.

Sophie Gaudin puts it most bluntly. She started selling printed products six months after launching her business, and she was making almost no margin.

David Bascunana traces it back to culture: "I come from a school of life where marketing and selling are dirty words. That's how I was brought up." Sarah Miramon, who has only just started, describes the same apprehension: "I was a little bit afraid of coming across as the rug salesman who absolutely has to close a sale." Hannah Cybulska flatly rejected the idea at first: "In the beginning I was against it, because I thought it was old-fashioned — in-person sessions, printed products, that's not what clients want any more." And Aurélie Martineau sums it up: "Our main obstacle is always ourselves."

What unlocks it, for all of them, is the same reframing. You are not selling, you are guiding. Sarah: "We're there to guide our client through choosing their images. We're not there to sell them twenty-five images that all look the same, we're there to choose with them and help them find the ones that suit them best, the ones they love most." Aurélie follows the same logic: "You have to be a good advisor, and above all you have to listen properly." And Hannah, after four years of practice: "Honestly, I don't feel like I'm selling during these sessions."

Two practical exercises

They come from David, who learned in-person selling at PhotoCoach.

• Rehearse with no one in the room. "I really think you have to practise on an empty room, without clients. For me that's hugely important."
• Keep an objections notebook. "We had a notebook with questions, answers and objections. You write everything down and keep it within reach, it's really easy."

Step 1. Decide how fast you want to transition

This is the riskiest decision, and Aurélie is the only one who took it head-on. She removed digital file sales from her offer entirely. The cost was immediate: she lost half of her client base.

She does not regret it, but her advice is nuanced, and it depends entirely on your situation.

• If you are starting out, with no established clientele, switch straight away. You have nothing to lose and you will train your clients from day one.
• If you are already established, spread it out. "It's better to do it as a transition. If you do it too fast, I think you lose your clients." It took her two years.

Two gentler ways to get started

Use a change as your reason. Sarah took advantage of moving studio: "That was a bit of my reason, my excuse for doing it." A new space, a new way of working — clients accept it without seeing it as a betrayal.

Buy your first sessions. Sarah again, for her launch offer: "I gave them €100 to spend on buying photos afterwards. That way my session fee was still paid, and then they had a €100 discount on their photo purchase." The result across three sessions: an average order value that went from around €250 to €620.

And for anyone who doubts it is worth the risk, Hannah, who made the switch four or five years ago: "Revenue multiplied by five or six. Easily."

Step 2. Choose what you are going to sell

The classic mistake is to open a supplier catalogue and offer everything in it. All eight say the opposite, and two of them say it very loudly.

Cut down the choice

Lisa Derevycka is the most radical: "For me it's very simple, I use three products. I don't sell more than three products." Her supplier offers around two hundred paper finishes. She offers one. Hannah makes the same point about what an overly wide catalogue actually produces: the client "sits there, looks at it, says it's nice" — and decides nothing.

Only sell what you love

This is the condition all of them set before the question of price even comes up.

Hannah puts it more bluntly: "If a photographer isn't convinced by albums, they shouldn't start selling albums." And Sarah: "You can't sell an album if you think that album makes no sense. You'll always sell it badly."

Stay consistent with your style

Sophie again: "A colleague who shoots boho isn't going to pull out a black acrylic piece. It would make no sense. It would have no value in the client's eyes."

Have an answer ready for the wall objection

This is the most frequent refusal, and it often comes from the partner. Tine Borms-Guéneau: "It's often the dads who tell me: I don't want to make a hole in the wall."

Two products answer that objection directly. Tine's presentation box, with prints mounted in mats and an interchangeable photo. And Lisa's box, which she has turned into her flagship product: "You don't need any equipment to drill holes in the wall, work out whether it's straight, and so on. You just put the box down." Her other argument: "All the photos live inside it, and she can change the photo on display whenever she feels like it."

And be willing to ban certain products outright. Sophie on canvas: "Today, canvas is something I could never offer, never, never, never, never." Tine rules out acrylic. Neither of them apologises for it.

Step 3. Find your supplier

Allow time for this. It took Hannah two years: "I tested everything, honestly, even suppliers right next door, everything. It was an obstacle course." Stephan Deneuvelaere changed three times before settling. Lisa went through "loads of brands".

Here is what they use today.

Photographer	Suppliers
Aurélie Martineau	DreamBooksPro, Laminamarc, her own prints
Lisa Derevycka	Graphistudio, nPhoto
Stephan Deneuvelaere	Loxley Colour
Hannah Cybulska	DreamBooksPro
Tine Borms-Guéneau	nPhoto, Laminamarc
David Bascunana	DreamBooks, Laminamarc, Picto
Sophie Gaudin	Zoom, Laminamarc
Sarah Miramon	Floricolor, Matisseo

After-sales service

This was Tine's number one criterion when she switched: "Neither I nor my clients need to wait any longer for a faulty order." Sophie describes it through the physical feeling a bad supplier creates: "That knot in your stomach, because when you open your pallets you think: what's broken? How am I going to handle the after-sales on this?" Her conclusion works as a general rule: "You can't offer your clients something wow when you're stressed about receiving it yourself."

Colour consistency

Tine expects the finished product to come back with the colours she sent, "and for that not to change from one order to the next".

Lead times, and communication when they slip

Aurélie nearly left her supplier after a run of delays: "What are my clients going to remember? That it took forever to get their album."

Unavailable to the general public

This one is less obvious and probably the most strategic. Aurélie insists on the fact that her supplier only sells to professionals, with a company registration number required and prices that are not public. David learned it from a client. Mid-session, he shows two albums of the same size and the same price, from two different suppliers, to a mother who works at a large communications agency.

One piece of advice for what comes next, from Sophie: "Look for the supplier you're going to grow with, the one that will offer you something you'll be proud to show your clients."

A trap to avoid at the start: printing it yourself

David bought all the equipment when he opened his studio, then gave up. "I realised it's a real job and that I wasn't good at it. It was costing me more because I had a huge amount of waste." Aurélie is the only one who prints her own work, and that is because she is a master craftsman and has been doing it for over ten years.

Step 4. Set your prices

This is the subject they disagree on most, and the one where you need to be careful whose advice you take.

The most rigorous demonstration is Tine's

Her floor is a multiplier of six on the pre-tax purchase price, and she gives the full calculation.

She adds that the benchmark margin rate for the sector, known to accountants who work with photographers, sits at around eighty-five per cent. Stephan reaches the same figure by a different route: "On margin, buy-to-resell, I'm at times six on average", with variations from four to eight depending on how flexible the product is.

Below that, three photographers work lower

Hannah is at three and a half to four times on albums. Lisa ranges from four to seven depending on the product. Aurélie says at least times three on albums, with her rule of thirds: "One third of the price is overheads. One third of the price is the product. That leaves one third of the price for you."

What matters more than the multiplier itself

• Count your time. That was Sophie's mistake early on: she was pricing in the time spent on layout and order processing — admin, in other words — rather than the product. Hannah builds it into her margin: "I count the time I spend placing my orders. And time is money. We're photographers, but we're business owners too."
• Don't apply a multiplier blindly. David was trained on times eight and does not apply it as is: "I don't calculate a times eight, actually, I calculate my costs against a supply I've bought."
• The multiple has to stay justifiable. Aurélie draws a common-sense line: to buy at €100 and resell at €1,000, "there has to be a solid justification behind it".
• Check that your whole price ladder is coherent. A €150 package for fifteen photos makes a €450 album alongside it untenable. The gap shows, and it is the client who sees it.

And one line from Sophie to keep in mind throughout this step: "Get trained on pricing. Seriously, it's hugely important. We can't undervalue ourselves."

Step 5. Prepare the client before the shoot

The sale does not start at the IPS session. It starts at the booking, and this is probably the most neglected step.

• The booking questionnaire. Aurélie asks "key questions that already tell me whether they want prints, an enlargement, an album". Hannah does the same. The benefit is twofold: you know where you are going, and the client knows there will be a choice to make.
• The catalogue sent in advance. On Aurélie's website, only the session fee is displayed. The client downloads a product catalogue with prices. Nobody discovers the prices on the day of the session.
• Both decision-makers present. The scenario that fails is always the same for Aurélie: the dad who wasn't prepared and discovers the prices on the spot.

Step 6. Run the IPS session

The location: they disagree, and that's good news

Stephan makes it an absolute condition, set from the very first contact: "It's the non-negotiable condition." Tine says exactly the opposite: "You can do a session at people's homes, you can do a session in a coffee shop, you can do the session at your own studio." And Sarah doubled her average order value without ever having run a single face-to-face session: her first three were held over video call.

In other words, the ideal location exists, but not having it is no reason not to start.

Dedicated time, booked in the diary

This is the central point for Tine, who explains with a scene why the online gallery fails. She gets the link at the office, she waits for him, then there's dinner, the shower, bedtime.

Her opening line to the client: "I'm going to take you by the hand, we're going to sit down together and we're going to make the decisions together."

See the images big

David makes it a law: "The bigger our clients see the photos, the bigger the format they buy. Whereas looking at their photos on a smartphone, they see them tiny." He adds an observation nobody else makes: "We're used to seeing ourselves mirrored. Suddenly they see themselves the right way round and large. And that completely changes how they see themselves and their family."

Let them touch

This is the most frequently cited lever. David: "When I put a Laminamarc in their hands — oh yes, that's a different story. Once they're holding it, the sale is already half made." Tine travels with a suitcase of samples. Sophie has clients choose materials from sample catalogues, "a bit like choosing wallpaper", which turns the sale into co-creation: "We personalise together, we co-create our memories with the photographer."

So: have demo products

This is the most concrete piece of advice in the whole set, and it comes from a counter-example. Sarah sells no wall art at all, and the reason is neither price nor demand: "I want to order demo products so I'm more comfortable talking about them with my clients." The framing options she has selected are ones "I don't offer directly, because I haven't ordered any and they're not physically there in the studio". On her walls today: IKEA frames.

The gap between the shoot and the session

Aurélie and Hannah bring their clients back about two weeks later, with retouched photos. Stephan, in weddings, holds a session on the Wednesday evening for a Saturday wedding, with five thousand photos culled and post-processed in four days. And for Christmas mini-sessions, Hannah goes straight through: "For Christmas, no, I want it done immediately afterwards."

Step 7. Don't stop at the sale

• Hand the order over in person. Aurélie ships nothing: "When I receive my client, I spend at least another half hour handing over the product, we look at it together, we talk it through again." It is the last memory the client will keep of the experience.
• Add-on products. Stephan works in steps: "Once we've sold the three big ones, or bigger still, we can always add something for the uncle, the aunt or the grandparents."
• Debrief after every sale. Aurélie sets herself a monthly average order value and analyses the gaps: "If I haven't hit the financial ceiling I wanted: why? Did I say something at some point?"
• Think about the second purchase. Lisa has built a loyalty argument around her flagship product: a client who comes back with their family doesn't have to buy the box again. "They don't feel like they have to buy an album every time. They do still buy the box, but as a sales argument it works rather well."

Still up for debate

Three subjects our eight photographers settle differently, and on which you will have to decide for yourself.

• Where the session takes place. Studio compulsory for Stephan, irrelevant for Tine, and video calls work for Sarah.
• The multiplier. From three to ten depending on the profile, with two photographers who didn't share theirs.
• Dropping digital files entirely. Aurélie did it and stands by it, while refusing to turn it into dogma: "Digital files are fine, it's not a dirty word. There's no right or wrong method, there are clients for everything." Lisa sells a €333 session with no images included. Sarah keeps digital files as the right product for her professional clients.

The eight photographers at a glance

Photographer	Speciality	IPS since	Multiplier	Suppliers
Stephan Deneuvelaere Alsace	Weddings, family, pets	2011	×6 on average (×4 to ×8)	Loxley Colour
David Bascunana Gard	Family, portrait, corporate	16 years	×7 to ×8, calculated from costs	DreamBooks, Laminamarc, Picto
Tine Borms-Guéneau Allier Parfaitement Imparfait Boudoir	Boudoir, family, weddings	2012	×6 floor, up to ×10	nPhoto, Laminamarc
Aurélie Martineau Charente-Maritime	Children, family	11 years	×3 albums, ×10 in-house prints	DreamBooksPro, Laminamarc
Lisa Derevycka	Women's portraits, boudoir	14 years	×4 to ×7 depending on product	Graphistudio, nPhoto
Sophie Gaudin Brittany	Maternity, newborn	2019	Not disclosed	Zoom, Laminamarc
Hannah Cybulska Isère	Portrait, family, newborn	4 to 5 years	×3.5 to ×4	DreamBooksPro
Sarah Miramon	Creative portrait, weddings	3 months	Not disclosed	Floricolor, Matisseo

Thank you to Aurélie Martineau, David Bascunana, Hannah Cybulska, Lisa Derevycka, Sarah Miramon, Sophie Gaudin, Stephan Deneuvelaere and Tine Borms-Guéneau for their time and their candour. Hannah Cybulska is a DreamBooksPro ambassador, Sophie Gaudin a Zoom ambassador and Stephan Deneuvelaere a Loxley Colour ambassador.