Selling Your Photographs Online
Published on 3 Sep 2007 at 6:24 pm.
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Filed under Internet, Photography.
For the last 9 months or so I have been selling my photographs online. It has taken what has always been an enjoyable hobby to the point where I am making enough money to buy better equipment.
For the amateur or non-professional photographer, there are many sites to sell from, and they differ with respect to their quality standards, the amount you are paid, the size of their customer base, payout schedule, ease of uploading, web interface design, download reporting, tools and resources and so on. I will not compare and contrast these companies in detail (for fear that I will break some obscure fine print legal agreement I made when I signed up). I will tell you which I personally have found more profitable, but keep in mind, that this can vary from person to person based on the subject matter, composition, and quality of your own photographs.
First, I will discuss how this works.
- I take photographs
- From the best ones, I select those that I am willing to sell
- I clean the digital noise using NeatImage (or Photoshop)
- I polish the photo (adjust levels, etc) in Photoshop
- I upload the photo to the stock photo website
- I enter a description, keywords, and choose one or more categories
- The photos are reviewed (about 1/3 of mine are rejected for various reasons: some reparable, some not)
- The photos appear on the stock photo website
- Someone buys a photo
- And a portion of that money comes back to me
There are a few considerations.
First, I do not post my most favorite photos that I could not bear to see plastered all over a brochure in a different context. (You may not want a picture of your loved one to appear in an ad for genital herpes).
Second, these are to be used as stock photos, which means that they must be composed such that they can easily be used for ads or other purposes. Cool lighting effects don’t always fly here; nor do especially innovative and unique compositions (although sometimes they do). This isn’t photography for art exactly. So if your favorite photograph gets rejected, don’t take it personally.
Third, you typically are not handing over a copyright. You still own it. However, if you decide to stop selling a photograph, and to remove it from the site, it may take 90 days (or another length of time) based on the particular agreement.
Fourth, some sites demand exclusivity so that you can only sell a particular image on their site and no other. The sites I belong to (discussed below) are not exclusive, but they do reward exclusivity. This is something to consider.
Next I will mention the different companies. Note that in many of the links below, I have put a referral. If you click on this and sign up and start selling and/or buying photos from this company, I will get a small kickback (you wont lose anything). I want to be honest about this, so if you liked this article and want to throw me a bone by signing up with the links below… THANKS! Otherwise, just Google the name of the company and you will get there without the referral. Either way will work equally well for you.
I have had the greatest success with Shutterstock. However, I found it very difficult to get my photos accepted. Presumably, this impacts their quality, since in the amount of time it took me to get in, I learned much on how to take better photos. They pay less than the other companies, but I get much more business. However, keep in mind that this may be because of the subject matter of my photos, and you may find the situation to be different.
The next site that I would like to mention is Bigstockphoto. This was the first site that my photos were accepted, and my sales here are second best. They pay quite a bit more, but I find my traffic to be less. Again, you may find that your photos get much more traffic.
I have also tried iStockphoto and Fotolia, and they have worked well too. Although, I don’t seem to get much traffic there.
I would recommend trying to get into Bigstockphoto first since it will give you some idea of which photos are commercially acceptable and which are not. Once you have an idea of which of your photos best meet the criteria for selection, try Shutterstock. Keep in mind that acceptance into Shutterstock may take some time, since if rejected, you have to wait one month before trying again. During that month, your time is best spent reading the forums, choosing your photos more carefully, learning how to identify and clean noise, and adjusting levels, etc. Use the time to improve your abilities. As you do this, you can try joining the other sites, such as iStockphoto and Fotolia.
Here are referrals to the sites I mention above. These are non-exclusive sites, and I have found them all pretty easy to work with:
Shutterstock
Bigstockphoto
iStockphoto
Fotolia
Enjoy and Good Luck!
Kevin Knuth
Albany NY
