Start Selling Your Photos Today - 10 minutes read
Success in Selling Your Photos Online - Proven Techniques
I have written this article to share my experience and knowledge with you, showing you what I am doing myself, because my friends and mates often ask me, how I keep earning extra money, selling my photos online and receiving money transfers for few hundred dollars each month. And I am confident that this information will give you not only something to think about, but also essential knowledge, how to make extra income, selling your photos online, and maybe for someone will become turning point in choosing a professional career.
There is camera in each and every family - film or digital. Someone has it in his or her cupboard to get dusted, someone carries it everywhere and shoot everything. And who doesn't have the camera - make photos, using mobile phone. You have made photos of your wife, children, your mother - in - low, your dog, cat, house and your car. But, what next? Don't you think that with the help of your photos, where you put your heart and soul, you can not only express yourself, share your experience and impressions, show yourself to the rest of the world, but also you can earn money! Before getting started in selling your photos online you need to take under consideration few very important questions, like
1) identify your specialisation in photography - what you shoot most of the times: landscapes or architecture, portraits or nature, or something else;
2) search internet, using keywords, to look for the market for your niche and know who is your targeted audience: to make any profit you have to know whether someone buys photos you want to propose;
3) to be accepted in any niche you need to have appropriate knowledge of the subject - do you have this knowledge and skills, if you don't - it is time to make self - upgrade!
4) also, for certain specialisations (portraits or studio photography), you have to consider buying special equipment, like tripods, spotlights, lenses...
5) you need to know your competitors and what you could propose to the market differently;
6) decide, whether you will work mainly in stock photo market, or go for assignments...
Stock photography is used by different companies for design, advertising and marketing and there is a great demand in quality photos. Stock photography can be anything from picture of the pen on your office desk to some sporting events.
Getting started in this business is fast and easy process, like you upload your photos to Facebook or Photobucket photo-album online, but you must follow certain guidelines in order to your photos be accepted and most important - bought! You also must have permissions to sell photos if there are recognizable people or houses with known names on your photos. Some photo-sites require small investment from your side - host needs to store and manage your photos and some of the sites give you even special software to organize and manage your business.
In this business you don't need to create website to store your photos. All is done for you and waiting!
There are many themes you may cover doing photography, for instance:
- sporting events;
- architecture;
- transport;
- office life;
- portraits;
- flora and fauna;
- insects....
you name it!
You can sell almost any type of photo you have made and earn money! Range of pricing for one photo is very wide - from $1 to $400 - it really depends on category of projects you work for, and uniqueness of your photos.
And how would you like to make a nice screen-saver using your photos! It's possible to earn money creating screen-savers too!
If you choose to work in assignment role - it means that you will be hired by someone to produce photo report of certain event, either sporting event, public speech or wedding, or something else. There are even services, that require photos from field investigations, like Police, City councils, and medical establishments.
And you must give your customers exactly what they want!
You don't need to buy expensive and fancy equipment, but to make photos of high quality you need to invest some money to have good return!
In later articles we will go technical and discuss some issues about cameras and accessories for them. You always have to think quality! If quality of your photos is not up to certain marks - you hardly ever will make income you want!
Selling photos online can be a very profitable business and it takes not long time and it is easy to get started, but you must be dedicated and persistent in your desire of making it come true! I invite you to start earning money, selling your photos today, and have fun!
Author - Sergey M, photographer, specializing in landscapes, nature and military photography, close-up shots, 3D modelling. If you want to learn more not only about techniques of selling your photos on-line, but also photography techniques, which will make you practically an expert, visit My Photo Universe, where you will find more resources and useful links.
Sell Your Photos Online - Start Making Money Today
Isn't photography a wonderful hobby? It would be so nice to make some money off of it. Maybe you can sell your photos online, that sounds like a great idea! Let us find out how to go about that together. We will need to look at the quality of the photos that you are trying to sell, who is going to buy them, where we can go to post the photos, and how to post them.
If you are going to try to sell photos on the internet they had better be good quality shots. You will be selling them as "stock photography" which is photography or imagery that can be licensed for specific uses. The photos that you submit need to be totally free of digital noise which is caused by high ISO, under-exposure, long exposures and over-processing. They will need to be well lit, crisp, clear, and well composed. It is also better if they are in a high resolution format.
The content of your photos is also important. Nobody wants to buy your vacation pics, but, good photos they can use. Your content will want to include images of people, animals, objects, landscapes, buildings, and events that a wide variety of media will want to buy.
Now we need someone to buy the photos that you want to sell online. Your customers are going to be graphic artists, art directors, advertising agencies, and book publishers.
Also marketing professionals, people who make magazine ads, websites, and marketing brochures. They all want photos that will fit their need for whatever commission they are working on. Keep this in mind when you are choosing your stock photos. You can also sell the same image many times, because buyers don't get exclusive rights.
As far as where to post your photos, you have two basic options to sell your photos online. If you are so inclined you can build your own website to get your photos out there for sale. You will need to have a bit of e-commerce/business knowledge, perhaps CD's that you can burn and send to your customers. This is all very labour intensive, and luckily there is an easier way.
There are sites on the internet already set up for buying and selling stock photos. Sites like Shutterstock, Istockphoto, Fotolia, Shutterpoint, and Dreamstime, will let you post your stock photos. You will want to go to these sites and do a little browsing through them to see if they are right for you, then pick the best one, or ones. All you need to do is go to the site and follow the instructions to register and start looking at the photos. Then you can start uploading your photo files.
There are three ways to upload photos on these websites. The first is using the web upload form which is available on all stock photo agencies. You just browse your files and upload them from there. The second is the ActiveX/Java uploading system which is available only on some of the agencies. The third upload technique is the FTP File Transfer Protocol) software which I think is the easiest way of uploading your photos as all you need to do is to drag and drop your files from your computer to their server. The main FTP is Filezilla. Just Google filezilla.com, find free FTP, and download Filezilla client.
OK, so, you have chosen your photos, you know who you are selling them to, where, and how to post them. Now it is time to sit back and sell your photos online! Or go on out there and take more photographs, because this is still a fun hobby!! Keep on clicking that shutter and submitting those photos and, as always...ENJOY YOURSELF.
An Easy Way to Sell Your Photos and Making Money Online
Digital photography has introduced a whole new breed of photographers in the sector. The digital era has changed the way we look at photography. One of the immediate effects was that digital photography has made it more easy to shoot, view and download your work in minutes. This has resulted in more and more photos being stored in our hard drives. In reality many of these photos we do never utilise them. So why not turning these resources into money? I am sure that many of you have never considered this option.
That is what I would like to share with you, how to make money by selling your photos online. There are many straight forward ways, by which you can turn those dormant photos in your hard drive into cash. An easy way is by selling them through the various microstock photographic library sites. Some might think it is complicated, when in fact it is quite simple.
Before grabbing your camera bag and heading to your quest, I would suggest you go through your stored photos, on your computer and pick those photos that in you opinion have got potential. I advice you start by selling these, in order to get the feel of the whole system. Eventually you would want to shoot more specific photos related to the sector you are passionate and feel confident working in.
A crucial aspect of this business is editing. Your photos should be up to market standards. Photos should be sharp, saturated with vibrant colours and they have the best possible composition. Needless to say exposure should be flawless. Nowadays there are many editing software to choose from on the market, any imperfections can be corrected easily.
In today's competitive market putting in those special effects in your photos would put you in the forefront, ahead of the crowd. By adding that little extra to your photos, you can create more creative and imaginative work. Original work always sells better. Microstock sites are always on the look out for original work. Do not just point and shoot, but plan your way for that perfect photo.
What is so exciting about selling photos online is that this is a lucrative system. Once you have uploaded a photo in your library, it is there to be sold over and over again, generating automated income in your account. You can be sipping coffee at a café or sunbathing next to a pool and you are still selling photos 24hrs round the clock! Remember the internet never sleeps.
If you are committed, you can easily turn photography from just a hobby into a part time or even full time job. For other seasoned photographers it is another way to generate extra income. What makes this system so attractive is that you can set your own working hours depending on your life style. I invite you to grasp this opportunity as you have nothing to loose but everything to gain.
I recommend that you take action and start making real money online, doing what you have been always doing i.e. shooting great photos.