How much money did I make printing a photo zine?

[Music] today's video is sponsored by Squarespace so today is a very exciting day because as you can see over here behind me three big boxes just arrived at my doorstep literally about 30 minutes ago containing 150 copies of my first Zen I decided to you know publish a Zen and actually let me back up if you've never been to my channel before uh thanks for being here I recently traveled out to uh Eastern California to do some photography out there uh I mostly do landscape photography but I just became fascinated and captivated by this small town named Keeler that's out there near uh Death Valley I ended up doing a fair amount of Photography there spent some time there all 150 copies sold out in uh less than uh 48 hours which was very shocking and surprising to me and and exhilarating and awesome and thank you for your support and I I greatly appreciate it to those of you who bought one and I'm sorry to those of you who weren't able to I had some people email me asking if they're you know if they still could and I had to you know just say no because I obviously have a limited number but you know things to things to learn from uh for the future so anyway um in this video today what I'm going to do is I'm going to share with you uh some information about you know how I designed this book the work that went into it where I got it uh printed and you know all that good stuff in case um this is something you're interested in doing for yourself and I'm also going to get into the financials how much money did I make or didn't make make um from doing this okay so first of all the classic definition of a Zen often times when people think of a Zen they think of uh just like an 8 and 1/2 by 11 uh sheet of paper folded in half and then you have like a little book like this if I were printing portrait images like you know maybe this would maybe this would be a cool format but what I really wanted was something more like this and without the spine up here at the top but rather on the side over here so it was more of like a landscape or orientation so let's hop over here into in design I'm going to show you the uh document so I designed the Zen using in design and this is the cover and this is the back and then this is the spine here in the middle and as you can see I just ran the cover image over the spine because you know as much as I would love to like put some type on the side here it's not quite tall enough for that like the point size would have been too small and it just would have been you know kind of smudgy looking so I didn't do that I just ran the image over the spine instead and obviously you know this has a full bleed you know the bleed uh you know is what you see with the the red line around the inside and then this Inner Line here that is you know where that's like the trim that's where it's actually going to be cut so you want the images and everything to extend beyond a little bit uh so that it can be cut then this is um the inside of the book so the inside of a book is a separate uh document starting with a blank page and then this and then I did a full bleed image here just kind of kind of like a like an establishing shot and then you know the design of this I decided to do something just very clean very simple by having just images on the right side of uh of the book I think it could have been visually interesting to have like opposing images to have facing you know photos uh one on the left and one on the right but you know when you do that then you start getting into the relationship between the photos then at least I think there's some expectation there that that the two connect in some way that there's some kind of inherent uh relationship there with the subject matter much as I wanted to do that left and right thing I just I just ended up just not doing it and just going with you know a clean simple layout like this and you know obviously I did this with uh facing Pages here um as part of the layout and then oh yeah I did another uh full bleed here in the middle all of the images in here they were all converted to cmk I pretty much edit everything in the Pro Photo RGB uh space uh did some soft proofing in Photoshop to see what they would look like I also applied a little bit of a of like a shadow and a black bump uh with a with an adjustment curve to each one of the images because when you print um you know ink is different from you know viewing an image on screen when you view an image on screen it is backlit it is illuminated so I've just gotten in the habit now of just you know when I feel good about an image and I think it's in the right place I'll just yeah just bump the blacks in the shadows a little bit just to be on the safe side so then once I uh designed everything in in design both the inside of the book and the cover well then it was time to print the book and I looked around at a number of different options and place that I that I came across that worked just really well for me uh with this project was a place called mixim I am so glad that I found uh mixim because they truly made this really easy and really straightforward to do I especially like the fact that from like a design and user experience perspective when you come to their homepage you know the main thing that you see here is is an order form I mean just like Jump Right In I ended up going with a perfect bound book which is this like more like um like solid you tell them how many pages are going to be inside of this thing here's how much it's going to cost and when you can expect to receive it then you have paper type satin gloss uncoated and recycled uncoded then here you have similar options for the cover satin gloss or unced and then options for paper weight now something to Know cover paper weight is different from interior paper weight cover paper is always thicker than the interior paper of the book so even though the cover of this is 100 and the interior pages are 100 they have a different thickness to them then you have lamination options and I went with the soft touch lamination this has like a little more of like a matte kind of feeling to it this is satin paper with that soft touch lamination on it and fingerprints don't really show on it you know as they would with like something that was glossy yeah so I think soft touch uh lamination was um was a good good choice for this so this is what it looks like inside the app inside of mixim when you uh create a book and obviously this is the outer cover here and then the body pages are here and all I really had to do was just upload uh those PDFs exported from InDesign and uh the app just figured it all out for me and it just laid out everything and then when you upload everything you can preview it or you can generate a PDF proof so the next step in this process for me was you know making a video about the Zen announcing it its availability and um then putting it up for sale online and that ended up being pretty simple and straightforward for me to do because my photography website is hosted by Squarespace that's where I uh publish my uh my images and because Squarespace has e-commerce functionality built into it I was able to set up a storefront create a product upload some images write some copy and then connect it to PayPal connect it to stripe the thing that I found to be really interesting the majority of people who purchased the book were redirected from my YouTube video that I created about it but a very close second was direct those direct links are people who found out about the Zen through my email newsletter the number of people who subscribed to my YouTube channel which at the time of this video is we're like it what like 95,000 something like that much much larger than the number of people who subscribe to my email newsletter and yet the email newsletter like performed incredibly well there's no direct way to get in touch with people at least not yet on um YouTube and so it's really important to own your audience and to own that data so that you know who knows what's going to happen who knows what's going to happen to YouTube or anything else in the future and if you lose that audience you know that could be uh that could be detrimental i' never sold anything through Squarespace before and it was my first time and it was super easy it went off without a hitch I was very pleasantly surprised it was awesome so if you have an old outdated website that could use a design refresh or maybe you're you know getting something new off the ground whatever it is head over to squarespace.com slomin and sign up for a free 30-day trial to check it out for yourself and when you go live with your new website or register a new domain use my last name Domin as the coupon code to save 10% okay so now let's talk about everyone's favorite topic money dollar dollar bills y'all so I printed 175 copies through mixim I got 25 additional uh copies just in case there's any misprints or problems you know which is a thing and I just wanted a few extra copies for myself uh and family and stuff like that and I put 50 up for sale uh through Squarespace um again with free shipping you know $25 each and plus $10 flat fee for international uh shipping on top of that so gross revenue just from that um $3,775 just from sales of the Zen itself 150 copies plus an additional $390 for international shipping which brings us to gross revenue of $4,160 which is pretty cool right well obviously there were some costs involved so let's get into that okay first uh processing fees so this is like credit card transaction fees um you know squares spaces cut of of uh selling products through their platform that came out to $239 66 then there was the uh the cost of printing just printing the books through uh mixim that came to $866 and66 that includes by the way tax and shipping and I think shipping was like 50 $55 something like that and now sourcing uh mailing supplies was a little tricky because I intended to use uh Uline I've used Uline a bunch of times in the past they were going to charge me I think it was like $75 for shipping though I ended up buying all of my mailing supplies through Amazon even though the supplies were more expensive through Amazon the net you know result was less than ordering through Uline then there is postage now I don't have a final final price on postage because I haven't shipped every single Zen but um but you know if I have an update on that I'll you know put a comment down below but right now it looks like it's going to be about [Music] $777 which finally brings us to a net profit of $2,854 which is awesome right I mean I'm I'm pretty I'm pretty happy with that but there is one more thing to take into account like if we were to just to you know stand back and take a look at this from a let's say like a a business accounting perspective like if you were working with an accountant on this they would probably say what were all of your expenses you know out of all of your expenses that were um you know incurred as part of this project well if we did that my Airbnb while I was out there cost me $1,261 and i' bu no means uh stayed in a super nice place I stayed in like a tiny home like you know behind someone's house my airfare was $547 180 and my rental car while I was there uh was $344 and 56 and I'm not including meals and things like that because you know I would be eating anyway like you know like whether I was there or not so if we add up those three three things well that brings us to a final net profit of well actually there is no profit I ended up losing $683 so when you think about it that way way I actually lost money and it doesn't take a business degree to know that if your expenses uh exceed your Revenue well you're not going to be in business very long right I mean it's impossible to stay in business and any business manager or accountant or whatever would you know look at something like that and they would say yeah whatever that thing is that you did don't do that again because that is a money losing um you know thing to do but you know creative projects like these are are kind of a funny thing because unless there is a company behind the scenes that is paying for it or or you're able to like sell it you know to a publication something like that it is a self-funded practice it is something that you put up the money for yourself and I don't know how many of you have thought about this before but anytime you look at a photographer's portfolio and if they have images in there from like far-flung destinations like Greenland and um uh or at least farflung for me uh Greenland Iceland Pharaoh Islands South Africa you know wherever it is in the world that they went to to take these images they most likely incurred quite a bit quite a bit of expense getting there staying there getting around while they're there I mean there's all these sunk costs not to mention the cost of camera gear and all the associated things that that go along with it photography can be such an expensive thing especially shooting Landscapes right I mean because unless you happen to live in an area where you have just you know loads of things to photograph within a 50- m radius of your house well you have to travel you have to get out there you have to go places and you know spend money in order to be creating those images but obviously there are ways in which that cost can be um offset One Way being of course doing this you know producing a YouTube channel earning money from AdSense advertising affiliate marketing sponsorships someone could make prints they could do workshops they could do like an online course downloads digital downloads that kind of stuff you know that's something that that I also do so it's kind of like all these multiple individual small revenue streams that eventually kind of you know add up to something and honestly for me like if I'm just able to cover the cost of going out you know and creating images and doing what it is that I love to do and go you know going out and creating new work that's the goal like you know this is not like you know the kind of thing that I think anyone in their right mind would get into for the purposes of making like a lot of money for like you know banking you know big checks or anything like that like that's not just going to happen unless you're like I don't know like uh like who would be a good like Peter lick like somebody like Peter lick no disrespect to Peter lick but Peter lick is very successful at this right I mean uh if you don't know who I'm talking about definitely go over and check out his website uh it's it's um yeah he's very successful he's very successful hats off to him right I mean he's um he's definitely found uh a way to um to do this uh successfully but you know for me that's never really been you know the lens that I've looked at this through for me it's more of a long-term thing it's like a long-term investment an investment in my photography an investment in myself an investment in let's be honest like an investment in my mental health and well-being as well I mean it in a lot of ways it keeps me it keeps me uh keeps me sane so so yeah I mean you can't really put a monetary dollar amount on that at least I don't think you can so at the end of the day really I mean more than anything to me you know the thing that I get the greatest satisfaction out of is just knowing that knowing that people care right I mean it's just knowing that you know people took an interest in something that that I was interested in and that I you know was able to share something that uh that people enjoyed and were inspired by and uh and were willing to support and we're were willing to purchase and that for me means more than anything else you know honestly at the end of the day and this also you know for me I mean it kind of you know points the way towards uh towards doing more doing more things like this and finding more ways to you know help support you know the work that it is uh that I'm doing whether that's producing another Zen or you know perhaps something else but it you know it definitely kind of opens that door to something else so for me it's it's been great uh if you are someone who's in a similar situation to me if you are a photographer and you've thought about um you know maybe doing something like this I mean just printing something um in and of itself and you know not just looking at your images all the time on screen is such a big thing even if you print just one for yourself it's not going to cost you that much and I think it uh I don't know for me it's just a very satisfying to thing to do even if you don't have any interest in selling and shipping and all that kind of stuff like don't worry about all of that just you know make a book for yourself I mean just make one for you and maybe a few copies for your um you know for your family and whatnot and just enjoy it more than anything because this has been a really enjoyable and just creatively satisfying thing for me to do and and I I very much want to do it again thank you so much to Squarespace for sponsoring this video and for uh sponsoring videos on my channel I greatly appreciate it again uh you know this is you know part of the topic of this video um having sponsors like them uh is a is a pretty big deal because it helps support uh you know creative work like this and I and I greatly appreciate uh their involvement and their uh their support of what it is that I do and uh thank you to you as well because every time you watch a video on my channel it obviously is another way of helping me you know cover expenses and continue to uh to do what it is that I'm doing so um so that's it thanks so much everyone if you have a comment anything you want to share please remember to uh leave a comment down below and if you want to subscribe and uh hang out with me again in the future by all means please feel free to do so down below hope this video was helpful everyone and I will see you next time

Channel: Todd Dominey

Views: 13,183

Keywords: landscape photography, photography, todd dominey, photography zine, zine printing, zine design, photo prints, squarespace, mixam, mixam printing, mixam review

Id: AS8kZqZmK6I

Length: 17min 45sec (1065 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 24 2024