Can You Make Money Selling Photos? 

Yes you can... but you have to be smart about it and stay focused.

Whether you are a professional photographer or a weekend shooter, there is money to be made from photographs. This lens will help you with a lot of research and we will certainly recommend some tools and explain why. In order to be upfront and in the spirit of full disclosure, I am a founding partner of the PHOTOtool, an online sales tool for photographers. Will I recommend it? You bet. But being an owner and photographer also gives me a pretty strong insight into what is working and how to get you going as well, don't you think? Everything we discuss on this lens can be done with the online sales tool you have chosen to work with. The information is for photographers, not a big 'ol commercial.

We are going to look at styles, tools, items to sell and more. I will also talk about web design for photographers as that is an area that really does need some intervention. While there are some great web sites for photogs, there are also some dismal ones. We will discuss what works and what you should be looking for when you design your site.

Stock or Prints? 

The Difference Between Stock Photography and Print Sales

Selling photos online generally falls under one of these two genres: Prints or Stock. What makes these different is very important for your strategy. Knowing the right venue for an image can help you make the sale.

Stock:
Stock Photography means you sell a third party the right to use your image in an ad, brochure, web site, presentation, magazine or book. Stock photographers try to find a diverse selection of images of the same thing in order to have a variety of that image for their clients.

For instance, an art director is looking for an image for an article on desert Hot Air Ballooning. It is the middle of summer so finding a hot air balloon flying in the desert is probably not gonna happen. It has to be cool so the balloons will rise.

This is a perfect example of finding a stock photo. She needs a few images in different sizes and configurations to tell the story so he starts to look for existing images.

As a photographer you may have shot some hot air balloons in the desert a year or two earlier. Since you knew that the uses for the images could be for all kinds of media, you covered the balloon shoot by making sure you had verticals, horizontals, close-ups, wide angle and specialty shots.

Careful indexing of the images makes it easier for the art director to find the image she is looking for. Date your images and put very descriptive titles and keywords to help people find your images. We will cover places that sell stock in another article.

Prints:
Some photographers shoot photos for people to use. For personal use, decor, and memories. Portrait, weddings and pet photography are a few of the genres in this category.

If you are a portrait photographer, you want a way for your clients to view the proofs online, share them with friends and family and hopefully make significant purchases of your work.

Wedding photographers really love the ability to put a wedding up online and sell prints to the wedding guests as well as the bride and groom. When you don't have to depend on the bride to be your sales rep, you can make more sales.

Print sales also include fine art and wall decor for collectors and designers. These people may be looking for specific images to print large for a living room or office.

Having your work so it is easily found can help you sell images. Find a lab that can fulfill your orders for you, and also ship to your clients. Mighty Imaging in AZ is a lab to consider.

Business Ideas for Beginners and Professionals 

Need a jumpstart, or just wanting to add something different?

This is an article I wrote to help new photographers get a jumpstart in business. Look, we all don't start out shooting SI Swimsuit editions... we have to start somewhere and build our capital. See this list of 15 ideas.

More coming soon.

All Kinds of Stuff I Think You Should Know About 

From Web Design to Photoshop Stuff to Business Tips

Photoshop Support Group: Flickr

Want to hang out with some really sharp Photoshop folks. Here is one place... and their friendly too.

Snowdrip - Photoshop and Web Design Tutorials

Snowdrip: everything related to the Internet, but mainly webdesign, photoshop, and programming. Tutorials and how-to guides that are very popular.

jen bekman

jen bekman is a new gallery in New York City that exhibits the work of emerging artists in a warm, inviting atmosphere. With an emphasis on contemporary photography, works on paper, paintings and mixed media are also shown. Live with art, it's good for you.

Photoinduced.com

Photoinduced is an online resource for photography related information, and reviews. A well done site to peruse daily.

A List of Free or Nearly Free Gallery Tools

Every photographer needs a portfolio online. Here is a list of free to nearly free tools for delivering your images up beautifully. From simple to "code-warrior" level, there's something here for every photographer.

Need Help with Your First Portfolio

This is a well written and concise look at creating your first print portfolio. Take a look and make notes.

Selling Images OnLine: What Is Your Status? 

Web Design Tips for Photographers 

Lots of options for photographers. Make sure you choose wisely.

Building a website today can mean making choices based on several factors. Most importantly is what you as a photographer want the site to do for you.

If you are looking for a brochure site that will depend on traditional marketing to drive traffic, then an all Flash site is fine. Search engines cannot see all Flash sites as they are looking for text and Flash sites are embedded movies. While I do not recommend all Flash sites, if you are are aware of the limitations, then you choose with knowledge of the limitations.

It is imperative that the site be useful and easy to navigate both for your visitors and for the search engines that will eventually crawl them. The best way to make sure that search engine spiders cannot find you is to make your site with frames on the home page or make it totally in Flash. Embedded flash in an otherwise html site is fine, as long as the content is readable to SE spiders. We call flash and html a hybrid and that can serve to be the best of both.

Now, decide what you want your visitors to see and discern from your home page. Are you a quiet guy, or a flamboyant gal? Do you do more than take pictures (workshops, teach, design etc.? Or is photography your only, totally focused passion? Do you want to keep your visitors coming back to the site for more images, or do you simply plan to use it as an online adjunct to your current hard-copy marketing? These questions should be discussed with your designer as soon as possible. While there are many design possibilities, there are a couple of new styles appearing all over the internet.

Blog style pages are getting very popular. These two or three column sites look more like a blog than a traditional web site, and that is part of their appeal. Fast and sleek, they are becoming the rage among the cutting edge designers.

These sites are really utilizing the best of web design and technology. Easy to navigate and SE friendly, they utilize CSS, Javascript and AJAX for an enriched visitor experience.

Another new style of site is the portfolio up front type. Why make them click when they came to see the pics. This type of site usually has a few paragraphs of copy for the search engines and a large image or slide show on the home page. Simple navigation would take you to the 'about' and 'contact' page.

Whatever style you want, make sure that you are developing the site with some kind of easy content management to keep it fresh.

Resources for Photographers 

A terribly incomplete list. If I have missed something, let me know.

Lighting Essentials for Photographers

Lighting, diagrams, gear, photoshop movies and more.

Sell Your Photos Online

Whether you need public galleries or private, password galleries, this site offers a simple, easy to use tool. No percentages and no added fees.

Fully self maintained sites for small business and photographers

If you are a photographer that has the need for a larger site, this would really fill the bill.

Simple, small web sites for small business

Affordable and easy to manage sites for small business.

My personal site... I play there a lot.

My site is my playground. Come on over and bring a soda.

Lighting Seminars

Lighting seminars for photographers.

Prodigitalimage Photoshop Training

Photoshop training for beginners and advanced users from Steve Burger... the 'man'.

Visualville makes killer photoshop machines.

Need a machine that works nearly as fast as you do? You will love the 'Digital Darkrooms' from Visualville.

Strobist teaches small strobe excellence

Learn how to create some awesome light with that little strobe you already have their in your bag.

My Blog

I talk a lot about marketing and such for photographers and designers on my blog. I also have a sunday concert most weekends.

Rastarican Studios

Photoshop actions and such for photographers. Check out his cool "Urban Acid" action.

Mama Shan's Photoshop Site

Wonderful photoshop teacher and action builder. Her "Powder" actions are incredible.

Dubtastic... cool.

Wonderful site, great design and some very cool freebies. Take a look at this site.

Mighty Imaging: a custom lab

These guys are great. Not only does Mighty Imaging provide incredible prints at an equally incredible price, they also host photographers galleries to help sell their prints.

Photoshop Tutorials Online

This is a solid page of video tutorials for photographers and designers.

Flickr: Photos from Wizwow

This is my little corner on Flickr. Take a look around and let me know what you think of the images.

9 Digital Camera Settings for Every Photographer to Discover

Well written and presented. Most of you know these already, but it is a good refresher list.

The PHOTOtool (Our Only Commercial) 

We think it is the best. Here's why.

New Feature: Free WebFolio Website for all PHOTOtool users. A semi-custom site with content management, SEO tools, and Flash portfolios is now offered free with every PHOTOtool. See the site for more information and to see currently offered templates.

The PHOTOtool is the online application designed by photographers for photographers. Daniel and I are both photographers, commercial and weddings. We know what we need, and what works to bring customers back to our online image sales areas.

Features Include:
Private, "Password" Galleries
Public Galleries for showing images
Easy portfolio management
Sell Fine Art online
State Sales Tax tool
Simple Shipping Rates tool
Quick View Administration Area
Custom Colors for matching your site
PayPal ready for your account
Multiple ways for your clients to pay
Global and Custom Pricing per gallery
No additional fees or percentages
Free Lab Module
Bill clients for anything with billing tool
Package and Print Descriptions
You control all text on site
Movies for training
Plenty of storage
Order Management and Archives
Client friendly order process
Custom login page for clients
News tool for keeping clients aware

Additionally, we take no percentages and there are no hidden costs. Fees are grandfathered so there will never be a rate hike and all updates are free.

Check us out at The PHOTOtoo or check this
new offer video.

10 Ways to Fail at Selling Images Online 

Here's a tidy little list of DO NOTS... for ya...

10 Reasons Photographers Fail to Sell Photos Online

There are lots of people trying to sell images online these days. Most fail to make even one sale, while others are making a nice side income and gaining a following. I have been working with photographers who want to sell images for nearly 10 years, and I will share the challenges I see confronting them. For the purposes of this article, I will be referring to the sales of prints and fine art, and not stock or micro-stock.

1. Subject Matter

This can be a touchy matter, but let's face it; not everything you love to photograph is a marketable subject for a print to be hung on someone's wall. For instance, I generally shoot women, and while the images are purchased by the subjects, the photos are not something that others would want to put on their walls. The subject matter is too personal to be marketable. So if I want to create an image that would be right for framing and being seen in an office or home, I have to change the way I shoot and make something that is suitable.

Some subjects naturally lend themselves perfectly to being sold as prints. Some of the subjects I have seen do well are:

Flowers
Still Life
Rural Environments
Travel
Conceptual
Black and White
Sepia
Children
Animals
Fine Art Nude
Close up (macro)

There are certainly some photographers doing things that are not on this list and doing quite well. Some of that can be due to their status and credibility. When you are starting out, you have no track record, so the images must be able to be seen on their own merit.

Subjects that don't sell well:

Fashion & Beauty
Swimwear
Erotic
Personal
Sports
Musicians
Snapshots

Pick your subject well when preparing to sell online. You can shoot nearly anything you want, but you have to think of what the person who would buy the image would do with it.

For the rest of the list, visit lighting-essentials.com.

Articles to Inspire and Educate 

Others have been here before.

Here are some ideas for using big prints. Think about how you can use these ideas to help your clients with ideas. Click Here.

Are you ready to act boldly to market your talent and your photography. Check this article out.

If you are contemplating a web site, take a look at this article I wrote for Mighty Imaging Click Here Special thanks to Mighty Imaging for hosting my articles.

Ways to Use OnLine Sales to Increase Your Bottom Line 

Whatever Tool You Use... Use it Wisely

This PDF will give you some ideas about online sales and how to use an online sales tool to increase profits. While some of it is directly related to the PHOTOtool application, most of it is very good information that can be applied to nearly any tool you choose. Click to download the PDF.

Increase OnLine Sales with an OffLine Tool 

Try LuLu for making a cool little proof book.

Here's a tip that I have used for increasing the online sales of images using an offline tool... a proofbook. Yep, a proofbook. And it is really easy.

Here's How:

First, I have created my set of images for what I call the "Director's Cut" - these are the images that I have chosen to show online for sales for a wedding. I sometimes shoot thousands of images, but I certainly am not going to put them all online... Sheesh... that'd be crazy.

I have about a dozen actions that I use to show the "Directors Cut" and I sort the images in to folders named for the actions. This is seemingly random, but each image is looked at and I then decide the appropriate action to make it look like I want it to.

Run the action as a Batch on each of the folders.

Move items into a new folder named Proofbook and run the Photoshop Batch Action: File/Automate/ContactSheet

At this point I simply take each document and make a page in my InDesign. You can just as easily do a Word Doc, or whatever page program you are familiar with. Each page has a set of 6 or 8 images with the image number with it. That corresponds to the online ordering image number. There are complete instructions for ordering there.

Export as a PDF and send it off to LuLu. Lulu (www.lulu.com) then makes it into a wonderful full-color book with glossy cover. I generally pay about $12 each and order 3. One for the bride, one for the mother of the bride, and one for the mother of the groom.

I have seen a notable increase in sales... 10 times the $45 bucks it takes to make it. And the other work I do anyway, so there is only really a couple of additional steps to make the book. I am now seeing the residual marketing as these books are passed around to prospective brides.

Hey, Let Me Know How I'm Doing Here 

Sometimes the silence is deafening

I really want this lens to help folks, so your input is very important to me.

AndyPo Excellent information (5*) Posted October 07, 2008

Chris Gold

Thanx, you just inspired a wanna be to give it a go.

what?

all of it!

Posted June 29, 2008

coopd Great information! Posted June 26, 2008

Lesley

Do you know of any good resources for a photography site (that can be customized) that includes a blog?

Posted May 22, 2008

jacobm Thanks for the info, you have lots of it here. Thanks again! Posted February 11, 2008

 

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