selling photos

[c0ntr0lz]

i know several of yall sale your photos on the net. I was wondering where and how much you make off your sales?

[Moppie]

yall

:lol:

I just have to say I always get a friendly chuckle out of that :lol: :D "yall"

[Curos]

its us texas folk :) i use yall all the time, and never give it a thought.

[kb244]

I have three places i'm *trying*

1) istockphoto.com - this is one of those 'micropayment' site as most folks call it. Its quite simple, you upload your images, following strict guidlines and following the not-needed list ( in otherwords, things like florals, pet shots, sunsets, etc, are almost always rejected in the approval system ). You dont set the price, when you upload needs to be at least 1600x1200. Buyers buy credits ( the credit went up double as of january ), 1$ per credit. Small downloads = 1 credit, Medium = 2, and large 3. Each time a download is done, the photographer gets 20% of that (40% if you agree to exclusivity). So .20 for every small, .40 for every med, and .60 for every large or something like that. The good thing is I've probally had over 100 downloads, the bad thing is that only ammounted to 13$. One downside is when you upload your images, they have to wait for pending approval, this can vary, it can take upto 3 weeks sometimes before an image gets approved, often times theres about 3,000 images awaiting approval at any given time ( They show you on the site how many are awaiting approval ). iStockphoto keeps the approval system in place as to filter out substandard stuff, or to keep already crowded categories from becomming monsterously big.

2) Shutterpoint.com, shutterpoints a little different, most people post more or less artistic or photogenic stuff here, stuff thats not normally just stock, basically stuff you wouldnt mind having as a wall hanging. You can upload your images instantly, you have two liscences to choose from commercial, and editorial. You can set your own price, the min being 20$, shutterpoint takes about 20% of any sale. Rating system isnt as straightforward as istockphoto.com , but when yer there to sell shouldnt worry about rating too much. System is pretty straight forward, jpeg and tiff accepted, cash out point is 50$ , though with a 30 day wait period. Most folks price there work around 100$ there. The downside is, I have not sold a dime yet. The other downside is that unlike istockphoto.com it does cost money to you, shutterpoint requires you pay for hosting space in my case, paid 15$ for 1 year of 50MB of storage for the images. Course if I ever get a sale, it'll break even.

3) My own website. Utilizing paypal shopping cart ( real easy just a form, I just designed my PHP/XML/XSL to dynamically generate them, based on the sales.xml and such ). I offer electronic download, similar price to what i have on shutterpoint, and just recently I added the pull down to allow folks to order prints for much cheaper than what an electronic download. The main benefit of this is that only fees you incure are the cost of printing ( if print is ordered ), and the paypal fee, the downside is getting exposure and traffic to the site. Its one of the reasons why on my shutterpoint account, I put a link "Order Prints Here" in the description of any image I have a print advertized of. Least that way utilizing the exposure of shutterpoint I *might* get exposure at my own site.

No bites yet. Other ones you can look into are like

ShutterStock, ok I know we've already got spamed with this site, considering that people who attach their reference ID to them get .03 USD off any prints you sell if you sign up with their referal. Shutterstock is very similar to istockphoto, not as well designed tho, but far as uploading the images you have a number of options, the payout is a flat rate of .20 per download. The downside to this site other than the payout is in the form that buyers obtain your images, rather than paying per-credit, buyers pay a lump sum, for example 130$ or so, to have unlimited access to the entire stock library for a period of one month. Course for the buyer to make their money's worth ( at the .20 price ), and become more of a loss to shutterstock than a profit, they'd have to download over 650 images. Course also depends on how they use your image.

Photogateway.com I've only recently signed up for this one, I havent been accepted just yet, I have to actually FAX in an agreement form. They're like a blend of shutterpoint and istockphoto. From shutterpoint, they allow you to set your own price from 5$ and up. From istock, they implement the strict approval system. Shutterstock takes a larger commission per sale, about 45% or so for any images you coded yourself (entered keywords, and all that good stuff you'd normally do at any sale site) , and 50% for any images they coded for you. They dont allow nude submissions, and will actually delete any images that are not viewed for extended period of time, the initial signing up and figuring out what was what was a little confusing at first.

There was an old one long time ago, but sucked to high hell, so wont bother trying to conjure up any memories of that.

[c0ntr0lz]

what's even funnier sounding is you all, sounds like u-haul! hehe

thanks again for all the info Karl, you've been a great help.

[cmM]

I've tried, sold a couple (literally LOL) off my website, but gave up on pursueing it closely. I think that when it comes to photography, services sell better than products.

[IndyJeff]

(i) advertising and promotional projects, including printed materials, packaging, presentations, film and video presentations, commercials, books and book covers, greeting cards and postcards;



So you would sell a large file for use in an ad, a book cover, postcard, greeting card etc for what, 60 cents?
If you think you have stuff that is useable for such items, why not list them with a legitimate stock agency and make a couple of hundred dollars instead of 60 cents.

Places like istock are just cheaping the industry beyond belief, and the bad thing is they have plenty of people who think selling their work for 20-60 cents is great.

Imagine if you see a national ad campaign with your photo being used. Think about the fact that instead of thousands of $$$, you got 60 cents!!!!
I would hope that most people on this site are smart enough not to let themselves be taken advantage of like that.

[Scottes]

Watch out for these places. Read the agreement carefully! There was one of those "micropayment" sites where the agreement read that you got almost nothing if the buyer purchased for a large usage. So your max payment was $10 say, but the site got a very small amount per copy of the print used. So if your picture got bought and printed in a magazine run of 120,000 then you got your $10 max and the site made $1200 because they bargained for $.01 per use.

Just read the agreements carefully.

I can't fathom selling any rights to one of my prints for 60 cents. If someone wanted a single 4x6 I'd charge more.

[IndyJeff]

I had a guy call me this afternoon. His son is wrestling, as a senior in hs, in the regionals Saturday. I will be covering the regionals for a news service, just not the same one his son is at. I told him the news service is only interested in the finals really so I could still get over and get his son in an earlier match. He said that would be great and he would like an 8x10 and 4- 5x7's and said he would be willing to pay me...get this $30!!!! LOL I told him for $30 I wouldn't even drive over there for that much.
He asked what I would charge and my price I told him was firm, $125. He said for that much money he would do it himself and I said that's ok, do it then. He then proceeds to tell me how he has taken pictures of his son before but they aren't all that great. I said I understand and that is what he would be paying for, someones ability to get a great shot.

He said a guy did pictures for his son playing baseball and only charged him $25 for the same amount of prints. So now he just thinks that is a good going rate. See how guys can undercut and drive the prices down to where you can't make any money at photography.

If I could find the guy who did the baseball pictures for $25, I'd sit him down and explain the facts of life to him and I don't mean birds and bees!!!

[Mthorpe_Davies]

So you would sell a large file for use in an ad, a book cover, postcard, greeting card etc for what, 60 cents?
If you think you have stuff that is useable for such items, why not list them with a legitimate stock agency and make a couple of hundred dollars instead of 60 cents.

Places like istock are just cheaping the industry beyond belief, and the bad thing is they have plenty of people who think selling their work for 20-60 cents is great.

Imagine if you see a national ad campaign with your photo being used. Think about the fact that instead of thousands of $$$, you got 60 cents!!!!
I would hope that most people on this site are smart enough not to let themselves be taken advantage of like that.

Who are the agencies that meet with your approval? You go on and on about them but never mention them, how about giving some useful advise and name them. Which ones do you use?

[Big_B]

If I could find the guy who did the baseball pictures for $25, I'd sit him down and explain the facts of life to him and I don't mean birds and bees!!!

:lol: :lol:

[BillMarks]

If I could find the guy who did the baseball pictures for $25, I'd sit him down and explain the facts of life to him and I don't mean birds and bees!!!

It sounds like the $25 dude taught you a lesson, but you didn't listen! :lol:

[waldograce]

It sounds like the $25 dude taught you a lesson, but you didn't listen! :lol:

So Bill what type of equipment do you have?
How much have you invested so you can consistently get that killer shot?

[staereo]

I don't market myself professionally. I am an amateur. I don't sell my work. For the last couple of months I have been shooting high school sports, and even if by sheer quantity, I get a few really nice shots every game. Sport shooting isn't my forte. But I like to try different things to get experience in as many types of photography as I can.

To students/parents/schools, my pictures a free. To a reasonable extent, I even pay for printing and cover those costs. I think sports are important, and I am not making my living off of photography at this point, and I don't market myself as such. The way I see it, these individuals are helping me become a better photographer, and in return, sharing my work with them is only fair.

If someone asks me to attend an event specifically for a reason, and I lose my own choice on what I'm taking pictures of, then I charge cost of printing. That is, my cost of printing. Just so I am not spending money on shots that may or may not be something I'm interested in.

I know that in the past I have stepped on toes, because I have happened to get better shots than people who are there to make money, but I don't feel guilty. If I happen to get a better shot, even if by luck, then thats the way it goes.

I don't consider myself at a level to which I can charge, and if I'm shooting better than someone who is charging, then maybe they should reconsider their level of ability. I went and tried a wedding out for a friend, and they threw the pro's pictures out and took mine. That was a case where the pro didn't live up to his price.

There seems to be a lot of pro photographers out there that shoot below the level of amateurs or aspiring photographers. Not something I have noticed here, online, but more or less with local/regional photographers.

If an amateur takes business away from a pro, and their pictures are of equal quality, then the amateur is definately not in the wrong. Its the pro that needs work. Now, if the consumer chooses to use an amateur instead of a pro, when the pro is a better photographer, then its the consumers responsibility to know that he is going to recieve an image relative to the price he is paying.

Some people expect ferrari results at a hyundai price. Then again, theres a lot of people that shoot like a pro and dont make a living at it.

Bruce

[thesupe87]

Personally, I've been into micropayment stock photos sites for about 6 months now, and I'm now making in the $300-$400 a month range, selling them on 8 different sites. I love this...I spend about 4 hours a week screwing around, and at the end of the month, my credit card bill gets paid off by this stuff. I'm hoping that as I increase my portfolio, I will get to a point where I'm making $1000+ per month. That would be awesome...right now my portfolio on many of these sites is in the 200-400 (accepted) photos range. Overall, I have a little over 500 edited and keyworded hi-res stock pics.