How to sell race photos online: a practical guide

Selling race photos online comes down to three things: runners have to find themselves quickly, the photos have to be online while they still care, and buying has to take a minute, not ten. Get those right and the rest is detail. This article walks through each step, from deciding who pays to the first sale.

Decide who pays before the race

There are two common ways to get paid for race photos, and many photographers use both across a season.

• Runners buy their own photos. You cover the event at your own risk and sell photos one at a time or as a bundle. Your income depends on how many runners find themselves and how easy it is to buy.
• The organiser or a sponsor pays. You agree a fee before the event, and every runner downloads their photos free. Your income is fixed, and the gallery becomes a perk of entering.

Settle this with the organiser before race day. It decides how you set up the gallery, what you charge and how you talk about the photos in the pre-race email. If the organiser pays, read our article on free-download galleries for sponsors and organisers.

Shoot for what sells

People don't buy coverage; they buy a moment where they look like they did something. In practice the photos that sell are:

• The finish, with arms up and the clock or arch in the frame.
• Strong action, a good stride, both feet off the ground, a determined face.
• People together, friends finishing side by side or a parent with a child. Everyone in the photo is a possible buyer.
• Variety, three different moments of the same runner rather than ten near-identical frames.

Set your clock to the right time before the start, so photos can be matched to times on the course. It helps runners browse by time when search misses them, and it helps you answer questions afterwards.

Price singles and a bundle

Most selling galleries offer a price for one photo and a bundle of every photo a runner appears in. The bundle matters more than the single price: it should feel like the obvious choice once someone has found three or four good shots of themselves. There's no single right price; it depends on your market and the event. Start somewhere sensible, look at what sold after a few events and adjust.

When you compare platforms, add up every fee: any monthly price, the commission on each sale, card fees and storage. Our article on commission versus subscription explains how to compare them, and Photohawk's plans are on the pricing page.

Get the gallery live the same day

Interest in race photos is highest in the hours and days after the race, while runners are still sharing their results. In our experience, the sooner a gallery is live, the better it sells. So plan your day around getting photos up:

1. Cull lightly. Remove blinks, blur and empty frames. Keep anything where a runner is recognisable.
2. Organise into folders by location: start, course points, finish. Upload the finish first; it's what most people look for.
3. Upload from the venue if you can. The Photohawk web uploader sends many photos at once, adapts to your connection and resumes by itself if the connection drops.
4. Go live on previews. With previews first, on every plan, light previews go up first so the gallery can go live while the originals follow. A 10,000-photo gallery can be live in about 8 minutes on a 20 Mbps upload.

We cover the timing in more detail in how fast can event photos go online.

Let runners find themselves

A runner won't scroll through 20,000 thumbnails. They will type a bib number or take a selfie. On Photohawk, bib numbers and faces are found automatically when photos are uploaded, so you don't tag anything:

• Bib search returns every photo in which a runner's number was read. It's quick and precise, but the number has to be visible. See how bib number search works.
• Selfie search compares a runner's selfie with the faces in the gallery. It finds the photos where the bib was hidden under a jacket or behind another runner. See how selfie search works.

Offer both. They miss in different situations, so together they find more people than either alone. Public galleries can also be listed on Find your photos, where runners search events by name, date and country.

Make the link impossible to miss

A gallery nobody knows about doesn't sell. Ask the organiser to put the gallery link in:

• the results email, which every finisher opens;
• the event's social posts and website;
• the finish-area screens or signs, if there are any.

Post it yourself too, and reply to comments with the link. The Photohawk uploader shows how many people are viewing your gallery right now, so you can see when the link has gone out.

Protect the previews

Buyers browse watermarked previews, and the original is what they pay for. If screenshots are a worry, preview protection adds screenshot protection with tap-to-reveal, so previews sell rather than get copied.

Deliver fast and answer questions

Buyers expect their photos straight away. On Photohawk they download the originals after checkout. With previews first, if someone buys a photo before its original has finished uploading, that original jumps the queue and the order goes out as soon as it lands.

Expect a few questions after each event: "I can't find myself", "my friend is in my photo". A quick, friendly reply often turns into a sale. If you'd like to try it on your next event, create a free Studio account and add your first gallery.

A short checklist

• Agreed with the organiser who pays and how the link will be shared.
• Clock set before the start.
• Folders planned, finish first.
• Single and bundle prices set.
• Gallery set to selling, with previews first chosen in the uploader.
• Link in the results email.