Singles, packages or the whole season: what parents pick
How to sell youth sports photos comes down to the offer: a single photo, every photo of their kid from the game, or the whole season. Who picks each, and how to price the package so it wins.
PixDeel Team
If you're working out how to sell youth sports photos to the families at the game, what you offer matters as much as what you charge. Most parents want one thing: every good photo of their kid from that game, for one price they can say yes to on the spot. Some want a single shot. A few want every game of the season. Offer all three and make the middle one the obvious choice.
This guide is for the photographer who shoots youth games and sells to the parents on the sideline. Our guide on how much to sell sports photos for covers the numbers. This one covers what to put in front of parents, and who picks what.
How to sell youth sports photos: three offers, three kinds of parent#
A parent opening your gallery is looking for one kid. A gallery of 600 photos with one price per photo turns that into a pile of small decisions, and most parents stop making them after a few.
Three offers cover almost everyone on a youth sideline:
| Offer | Who picks it | Why |
|---|---|---|
| One photo | the parent who wants that one goal, or whose kid shows up in two or three frames | they know the shot they want, and a few singles cost less than a bundle |
| Every photo of their kid from this game | most parents | one decision, one price, no scrolling |
| The whole season | the families who come to every game | they would rather decide once than every Saturday |
You don't need more than these three. Every extra option, like print sizes, file types or a second bundle, gives a parent one more reason to close the tab.
Singles, for the parent who wants one shot#
The single photo is the easiest thing on the page to buy. It's what the parent from the other team buys for the one shot of their kid, and what a family buys when their kid only made it into a couple of frames.
It also does a second job: it sets the value of everything else. A parent who sees $10 next to one photo understands what "all 8 of your kid's photos for $35" means without doing any math.
Keep the single price visible on every photo. A price parents have to ask for is a conversation, and most of them won't start it.
Every photo of their kid: price it to win at four photos#
This offer matches what most parents wanted in the first place. One photographer put it bluntly in a thread about sharing and selling: parents don't want to pick from 87 images, they want every photo of their kid for one price.
The question is where to set that price. A photographer getting ready to sell photos from a tournament weighed exactly this: $9 a photo with a bigger discount past 5 or 10, or every photo of a player for a set amount like $50. Here's the math with singles at $10 and a package at $35:
| Kid appears in | Singles would cost | With the $35 package |
|---|---|---|
| 3 photos | $30 | singles are cheaper, so they buy singles |
| 5 photos | $50 | saves $15 |
| 8 photos | $80 | saves $45 |
| 12 photos | $120 | saves $85 |
Put the package between three and four singles and it becomes the better deal from the fourth photo on. If you shoot the way we suggest in what to shoot at a youth soccer game, with about five good frames of every kid, nearly every family on the roster lands in the rows where the package wins.
Keep the package under what a family will spend on one game. In what parents actually pay for game photos we put that ceiling at about $40, and $35 stays under it.
Two more things make the package sell:
- It has to be their kid, not the whole game. A folder of everything from Saturday is a worse deal for most parents than five photos of their own kid. Most of what they'd be paying for is other people's children.
- Give it an end date. "Every photo of your kid, $35 until Sunday night" gives parents a reason to decide while the game is still fresh. We wrote about why that timing matters in selling action photos to parents.
Selling the whole season without a season pass#
The families who come to every game are your best customers. A photographer who shoots races put it simply: some families have to have all the professional photos. They're also the ones who tire fastest of deciding every week. There are two honest ways to sell them the season.
Paid up front. The team, the booster club or the parents together pay a flat fee per game or per season, and every family gets everything. You know your income before you shoot. Someone has to agree to pay before the season starts, which we cover in the per-game section of how much to sell sports photos for.
A code for the regulars. After the first game, give every family that bought a code for a discount on every game until the season ends. They still buy game by game, but the price drops for the families who keep coming back, and you never have to promise anything for the games you might miss.
Whichever you pick, only sell the season you can deliver. If you can't make the away games, say so before anyone pays.
Mistakes that make parents buy less#
A package that's cheaper than two singles. Then the single photo looks overpriced and the package looks like a giveaway. Keep it between three and four singles.
A package nobody sees. If the bundle is a line in the FAQ, most parents never find it. It has to sit right next to their kid's photos.
A season promise you can't keep. Families who paid for every game and got half of them will remember it next season.
Six options instead of three. Each extra option seems reasonable, but together they make a parent leave without buying.
Setting up singles, packages and a season code on PixDeel#
On PixDeel you set a price per photo for the event, and you can give any single photo its own price. A quantity discount takes a percentage off when a parent buys more.
The all-media package is the "every photo of their kid" offer. You set one fixed price for the event, and a parent who searches with a photo of their kid or a bib number sees it at the top of their results: all the photos they were found in, for that price, with what they save next to it and one button to buy them all. It only shows up when it's lower than what that parent's photos would cost individually, discounts included, so the family with three photos never sees a worse deal. Before they search, parents who open the event already see that the package exists and what it costs, with an invitation to search to get it. You can give the package an expiration date, and it stops being offered after that day.
There's no season pass on PixDeel today. For the regulars, create a coupon code that works on all your events, set its start and end dates to your season, and choose a percentage off. Parents enter it at checkout.
Whichever offer a parent picks, you keep 90% of it, so a $35 package leaves $31.50 for you. Card processing is never taken out of that, and there are no surprise fees.
Set up your next game with all three offers. Free to start, pay only when you sell.
