How to market your photos and videos

Marketing is what turns a catalogue into a revenue stream. The work below is not complicated, but it is cumulative: creators who do these six things consistently outsell creators with better content who do not.

Treat this as a self-assessment. Read each heading as a question about your own page and answer it honestly.

1. Have you actually shared your links?

The single most common reason a good Box does not sell is that nobody outside BentBox has seen it. You have three links worth sharing, and they do different jobs:

• Your personal page is the one to put in bios and profiles. It shows everything you have.
• A single Box or Video link is the one to use when promoting a specific release.
• A Collection link groups a theme or a series into one page, which is far easier to sell than a list of individual items.

2. Are your Boxes worth opening?

A buyer cannot see inside a Box. All they have is the cover image, the title and your description, which means the description is doing almost all the selling.

• Write what happens, not an inventory of what is inside. "42 images" is a spec sheet; a description that sets a scene is a reason to buy.
• Leave room for imagination. Being too complete removes the reason to open it.
• Use every relevant hashtag. Hashtags become the keywords for your Box's page, so they are a direct input to how findable you are.
• Choose a cover image that reads at thumbnail size. Most people decide there.

3. Are you building an audience or just publishing?

Repeat buyers are the whole game. Somebody who has bought once is dramatically more likely to buy again than a stranger is to buy at all, and they cost you nothing to reach.

• Followers can subscribe to your page and be notified by email when you publish something new. Ask people to do it. Most will not think of it on their own.
• Publish on a rhythm. Weekly beats sporadic, even if weekly means smaller sets.
• Message your buyers directly from your messages page when a new set lands, and give the message a reason to exist, such as a promo code or an early look.

4. Are you on the right channels?

Reach is not the metric that matters; permission is. Several large mainstream platforms restrict adult content outright, and posting there will cost you the account rather than earn you buyers. Concentrate on channels that allow your work and where the audience is already looking for it.

• Communities and forums built around the kind of work you make, where you participate rather than only advertise.
• Platforms that permit adult content under their own rules, with your link in the profile as well as in posts, because posts get buried and profiles do not.
• A mailing list you own. It is the only audience no platform can take from you.
• Your own site, if you have one. See BentBox for subscription sites.

Whatever you choose, check that platform's current rules yourself before you post. They change often, and the cost of getting it wrong falls on your account.

5. Are you making yourself findable?

Your public BentBox pages are indexed by search engines, and the words you write are what they index. That makes your titles, descriptions and hashtags the difference between a Box that only your existing followers find and one that picks up new buyers from search.

• Write titles a person would actually type into a search box.
• Make each description genuinely different. Copying the same paragraph across ten Boxes wastes ten chances to be found.
• Name the specifics: the setting, the style, the format, the length. Specifics are what people search for.

6. Are you using the help available?

BentBox keeps building tools for this: promo codes, Collections, Time Boxes, revenue sharing, direct messaging and analytics that show which of your content buyers return for. All of them are free, and they are listed in the tutorials.

If you want a second pair of eyes on your page, your pricing or a specific campaign, email info@bentbox.co and ask. That offer is real.

Questions about anything on this page? Email info@bentbox.co and a person will answer you.