Making money from your Photographs
Stock Photography
The internet has opened up amazing new opportunities for photographers
to make money from their best efforts and earn modest (and sometimes
not so modest) sums of money.
Before the coming of the internet a photographer would need to
have a very large catalogue of high quality images, thousands
of photos, before being accepted by a stock agency. Images would
be sold for quite high prices but not very often, and usually
on an 'exclusive' basis. Once the rights to an image were sold
the photographer could not sell that image to anyone else until
the end of the contract, which could be years. Also, because prices
were high, customers would be very careful which images they purchased
and, for the majority of small publishers, purchasing stock photography
was beyond their budget.
Now, every webmaster is a small publisher and is looking for
good photos at a reasonable price. To keep the price down the
buyers have to sacrifice that 'exclusive' clause but they are
not too worried about that as, with so many websites and small
print publications, the chances of seeing the same image twice
are quite slim. If you are doing an international advertising
campaign then exclusive use of the image is very important but,
if you are doing a website about the best way to look after tropical
fish, budget is going to be the overriding factor.
 I've
had a look at a few 'stock photography' websites and there
are a couple links to my favourite ones at the bottom of
the page. The first good news is that the good ones are
all free to join. There is some sort of quality control
on the first batch of photos that you upload, but after
that you can bang up as many as you like. Typically images
sell for $1 for the lowest resolution (web size) up to $5
or $10 for print quality. This doesn't sound very exciting
until you remember that you can sell the same image many
times over, good images can sell hundreds of times. Multiply
this by the amount of images you have in your portfolio
then by the number of websites you submit to, they do not
have exclusive use either, you can submit the same pictures
to several websites, and it can add up to some pocket money,
enough for that 'must have' new lens maybe. There are going
to be some people who don't sell anything, or very little,
but, so what, it didn't cost you anything to try. More important
than the money (did I say that?) is the satisfaction
and pride you get from knowing that your photos are useful
to someone.
What kind of photos sell?
The best selling photographic images seem to be office
scenarios, two or three people round a desk or at a computer.
Something that an office worker can drop into a Powerpoint
presentation. The other big thing seems to be images that
can be used as backgrounds for websites or presentations.
Sports photos are also good but you need to get anyone who
is recognizable in the picture to sign a model release.
For us mere mortals, who may not have access to models and
a studio, I would say landscapes, street scenes, famous
landmarks, market scenes, think of the type of shots you
see in magazines, not the adverts, the photos that illustrate
the editorial stuff. Some of it is commissioned, but a surprising
amount is stock photography. Go through all your shots,
pick only the ones that are well exposed, well composed
and in focus, and think about whether they could be of interest
to a complete stranger. My best selling shots so far have
been pictures of glasses of wine and slices of cheese, it's
not often you get paid for drinking wine.
Keywords
Once you have selected your best shots and uploaded them to the
website, you need to make sure that they are seen by as
many people as possible. This means entering the right keywords
for each photo. Make sure you list all possible keywords
that are applicable. Don't put irrelevant keywords, it won't
help you sell any more pictures and it will just make the
searchers' job more difficult, but make sure your photo
appears in every relevant search.
Semi Pros (Event Photography)
The 'stock photography' model is a very useful one but
basically it's just sitting around waiting for someone to
buy your pictures and there's not much you can do if they
don't.
Although there are a great many fantastic
photographers in the world, how many of them live in your street
or even in your town? As you get better at photography
you will find people start asking you to photograph all kinds
of local events, sports events, festivals, shows, plays, exhibitions,
parties or even weddings and sell copies to the participants.
People ask me to photograph all sorts of events but in the past
I have usually said no. The reason I declined is because, although
I enjoy the photography, I hate all the paperwork and business
hassle of ordering prints and getting the money in (I won't tell
you the number of times I've ended up with a batch of prints nobody
wants to pay for), then collecting and delivering the finished
work only to find the lab have printed the wrong size.
I have now rethought my stance on this as I have discovered a
new website called PhotoStockPlus.com.
These guys, as well as selling your snaps as stock photography,
give you your own e-commerce enabled website.
All you need to do is upload your pictures to your folder, give
the potential customers the address (which you can set up
in advance so you can hand out cards at the event), then
sit back and wait for the money to roll in. They have a vast range
of print sizes that people can order, they can buy downloads,
posters, mugs, t-shirts and just about anything you can print
a photo on. You decide what markup you want, either globally or
on each item, and they do the rest.
Of course they don't do all this out of the kindness of their
hearts, they want to make some money too, there is a subscription
to be paid but the good news is there is a 30
day free trial period so you can see if it is going to be
worth your while and you can do enough business to justify the
fee. I reckon if I do one event every month or six weeks I'll
be laughing all the way to the bank and the 'stock photo' side
of the business is just an extra bonus.
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Although I'm not a great fan of the subscription
model on the internet, I think that, in this instance, it
helps to keep the quality of the site to a 'usable' level,
buyers will soon get fed up if they have to wade through
lots of poor quality pictures. Also it means that you get
to keep a bigger percentage of your sales than would otherwise
be possible.
If you want to make some cash out of photography this could
be a great way to do it. People will always pay for a good
picture of themselves or their children at some special
event. |
As promised here are a couple of links to stock photo websites:-
They're free to join and only take a commission on sales.
There are loads of others but these are the best I've found.
I've been with them for a while now and, whilst I can't
give up my day job yet, I've sold quite a few pictures,
enough for a new piece of kit or two.
Make sure you read the details very carefully and
don't sign up for anything you're not happy with.
Be prepared to jump through a few hoops before they
let you join, it may be free to join but that's free
as in beer not free as in equal rights, they want
to see the quality of your pictures. Although it can
be a pain and I advise you to allow plenty of time
to do the initial submissions, you can see their point,
if the database is cluttered up with rubbish, buyers
will soon get fed up and move on to another site.
Have a go at selling some of your pictures, what
have you got to lose?
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