Selling photos

Darkwing Duck

Morinng all,

Wondering if anyone has had personal experience of selling photos to an online store? One of them beasties where you get a percentage per download or whatever.
Been thinking of doing it for a while, me and the girlfriend, so just wanted to know if anyone had anything good/bad to say about any particular places...?

melekalikimaka

I wouldn't reccommend it at all, alot of the boardies here set up a small stall at the peoples photography this year, I'd say selling one photo there is more profitable then 20 online. what sites are you considering?

Darkwing Duck

At the moment anything and everything, till I find reasons to knock them down one by one. Have you had bad experiences with them in the past? Or just found it to be not particularly worthwhile...

melekalikimaka

A few people have asked bout them in the past here, and iI only ever seen bad comments, I haven't tried it personally, I suppose if its just for the craic and a bit of extra cash I can't see much wrong with it

rymus

presumably you're referring more to stock agencies that'll give you a percentage of revenue they make from each image download. They are very exacting in their standards in accepting images.

tbh, as mele says, you're going to make much more money in the long run selling at art fairs and the likes. I've made far more from selling prints at peoples photography and similar weekly fairs than I ever have (or probably ever will) on stock photography.

mervifwdc

The other way is "event" photography, where you might photograph sports, fairs, fete's or whatever, and have the people who attended / participated buy them. Not easy either.

Merv.

PaulieC

I have about 15 pix up on www.shutterstock.com. I get $.25 for each 'normal' download and $20 for each Extended Licence download. I probably sell about 20-25 (about $4 ) a month and have sold 1 extended licence.
It's not going to make me rich, but I'm not depending on it...

Funnily enough, my most popular download is this, which was a snapshot from my holidays during the summer, hardly photographic fine art...

As Rymus said above, it can be quite difficult to get pix accepted which can be as much about who is reviewing them as about the pix themselves...

Anyway, the more you upload (and have accepted), the more you sell

rymus

Yeah, I think the general thinking behind stock photography is that the more you've got in your portfolio, the more youre going to earn (obviously). I know a couple of people that make quite decent money from stock photography and indeed shoot primarily stock photographs. But if you're good and can make up on $20 per photo, more power to ya

Hugh_C

rymus wrote:

selling prints at peoples photography and similar weekly fairs

rymus, do you have any advice on printing and where to get nice looking mounts and all that...



I've printed loads o' stuff from reasonably well shot hi-res digital stills, but am always a bit disappointed in the printing results and I've no idea about mounting etc..

Hugh

rymus

I get prints from photobox and do the mounts myself. Most of the stuff I get is 12x8, then I bring that up to 14x11 in a mount. Then (through some nifty ebay purchasing earlier this year) I slip the whole lot into a protective plastic sleeve. Wind and rain no longer poses a problem

The thing with photobox, or indeed any other printer, is to have your monitor calibrated to their printers. My first order with them was shocking... Thankfully it was only those 10 free prints you get when you sign up. One calibration print and a bit of squinting at my monitor later and it's been hunky dory since.

If you don't want to go down the route of making your own mounts, you can always buy pre-cut ones (for about 3 times the price).

Hugh_C

Thanks Rymus.

With due dilligence, deference, sufferance and a quick nod to the Corkman you truly are , does anyone here know of anywhere in Dublin that sells a few mounts to play round with - the online sellers that I've found only sell in bulk.

Thanks,

hugh

PaulieC

New Woodies in Carrickmines sell them in a few different sizes...couple of quid each

mtracey

Personally I use istockphoto.com , not making huge money. You'd be suprised with what people will purchase from stock libraries

Liam Byrne

We (onSight.ie) have implemented an event photo gallery and ordering system for Vincent MacNamara photography, and feedback from both Vincent and site visitors is good, with lots of the images being viewed and purchased.

You can view the system on www.macphoto.net/eventgallery

rymus

online galleries with ordering and payment systems aren't rocket science Darkwing. Get yourself an installation of Gallery 2 and stick on the paypal cart module. Bit of configuration later and it's all done.

PaulieC

mtracey wrote:

Personally I use istockphoto.com , not making huge money. You'd be suprised with what people will purchase from stock libraries

absolutely, I submitted this pic to shutterstock last week and since getting accepted on Friday, it's sold 4 copies. Who buys a pictire of a painted block?