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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.

selling_your_photographs_image-1I'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.

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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