Start selling your photos

Things to consider

If you have a camera have already used it for a number of years you must have hundreds of photos that are sitting there. With a bit of work you can make a considerable amount of money by selling these photos. There are thousands of people involved on this business, some fulltime some part time, it all depends on your business sense and amount of time you want to spend on this.

Promoting yourself – Portfolio

There are several places where you can upload your photos and create your own portfolio that can be shown to clients or agencies you’ll work with. To mention some: Flick, PBASE, etc.

Working with Stock Photography Agencies

There is a huge industry in Stock photography which consists of photo libraries that can be licensed for specific uses. Publishers, advertising agencies, graphic artists, and others use stock photography to fulfill the needs of their creative assignments.

Stock images can be presented in searchable online databases, purchased online, and delivered via download or email.

1. Fotolia is a Microstock photography agency that is based in New York, New York. It was started somewhere in November 2005 and provides means for worldwide distribution of photographs, through PayPal (in the countries that use it), and Moneybookers (another internet payment system offered in more countries than Paypal). Some photographs are offered for free; those that are sold are priced from $1 to as high as $2,000.

2. Dreamstime is one of the largest stock photography/royalty free agencies in the microstock photography market. Founded in 2004, the company is based in Brentwood, Tennessee and as of October 2006, had a 680 000 image database. As of September 2006, Dreamstime is a member of the Picture Archive Council of America (PACA).

3. Bigstockphoto
Microstock photography, also known as micropayment photography, is an offshoot of traditional stock photography. What defines a company as a microstock photography company is that they (1) source their images almost exclusively via the Internet, (2) do so from a wider range of photographers than the traditional stock agencies (including a willingness to accept images from "amateurs" and hobbyists), and (3) sell their images at a very low rate (anywhere from $.20 - $10) for a royalty-free image.

4. IStockphoto
IStockphoto is an online, royalty free, international microstock photography provider operating with the micropayment business model. Images cost between 1 and 20 credits, depending on size (with credits ranging from $.95 to $1.50 USD each). General consensus attributes the pioneering of the microstock photography industry to iStockphoto, which claims to be "internet’s original member-generated image and design community."

There are a lot more agencies to list, I will not give you the full list as this is a matter of place you leave, portfolio, target audience, etc.

Pricing your photos

You want to sell more photos at a lower price or less photos at a higher price? Are you photos in demand for stock agencies? Which agencies? Would it be better to go on your own and sell photos online and promote yourself?

Setting up a bunch of images with several stock agencies is easy but price per image is low and you have to sell a lot to make a profit. Each stock agency has a target audience which may work or not for your portfolio.

Selling photos by yourself it may bring you more profit but you’ll have to promote your work and feel the market pulse.

Conclusion

Whichever way you choose to go for, photography business is still on demand and as i said many people are making a good living out of it. Having a business sense will probably help taking the best decision to transform one of the nicest hobbies into a profitable business. Good luck to you all.