A Quick Guide on Where To Sell Photographs Online

[georgiagirl147]

Fotomoto - Sell your photos on your own website: Commerce Without Conformity! is the new link off of photoblog and it says that all you have to do is upload and they'll do the rest...

[Murtasma]

The more and more I read up on these photo selling sites the more I keep getting the impression that these sites are all rip offs. What I'm noticing here is

1. They charge you for an account (while at the same time making money off pictures you sell. Some sites don't even give you more then a few GB of storage. Come on I bought a domain name for $3.00 a month with unlimited storage and bandwidth.)
2. They take a very large percentage of your sale. (On some sites you can increase your percentage but all this does is effectively increase the cost of the print to the customer)
3. They only often pay you if you reach certain amount of sales


After having several images on Redbubble for over a year with many of them having several thousand views and 0 sales this is beginning to look like a waste of time. If I spend the time to solicit my photography and generate an interest in it Redbubble will always make more money then I do on a sale. If I want to make $80.00 off a 11x14 image I effectively have to charge a customer $200.00. At those rates it will be less expensive for my customers if I was able to print and mail my own images from home. I could also probably sell more images because they would be priced much lower then if I was to use one of these online services.

The business model for these sites appears to be the following.

1. Create a website for people to upload photos along with a merchant account to process credit cards.
2. Take other peoples artwork and sell it for them while often times taking 70% of the profit.
3. Print the image and mail it (charged to the customer and photographer so you don't loose any money)
3. Do nothing and wait for more orders to be processed.

I think I'm in the wrong business.

I think a Business model that would be much more fair toward photographers and customers would be a set amount of money the company takes based on the size they want printed. After that the photographer can select how much they wish to make on an image.

Why is it that I have to increase the cost of a print if I want to make more money when it costs Red Bubble the same amount of money to print and mail the image? I have to increase my margin almost 100% on Red Bubble to take anything home that would be of interest thus making my prints very expensive to purchase.

Note: The past year my images have been for sale with a %30 markup the default. A 11x14 at these rates sells for about $50.00 and I barely make over $10.00. At these rates that's just a plain rip off. I can get my work into a local gallery here for free, probably sell more images and make more money working personally with galleries.

I can sign up for a merchant account or use pay pay to process orders. Purchase a nice printer that can print 11x14s and work with customers personally through my website to ensure them a good fair price on a image. It's not like we are sitting her selling 1,000's of images a day. I can easily handle a few sales as they come in and pocket much more money then going through some 3rd party that uses my photography to turn a dime. I can purchase a nice dry mount press for a few hundred bucks if that on craiglist if I'm patient enough. Perform my own matting and framing. This will also ensure the print quality I receive is spot on (having a calibrated monitor and printer) the only thing I don't think would be viable is metallic prints. I haven't done any research into this so I don't know what is required to make prints like this.

I could actually make more money as well if I just took the customers order and had an online printing company print the work for me usually for about 5 - 10 dollars at 11x14. Receive the print at my house and do the mounting here then deliver the image to the customer. This process may even be the more viable road to go down.

EDIT: None of this pertains to stock photography sites which sell images for a few cents but it's much easier to generate a sale when a sale only costs the customer a few cents. This is a totally differnet business model and for a differnet set of customers. What I'm talking about here is stictly sales to a private collector.
What are your thoughts on this people?

[frg]

great thread!... I joined redbubble about a month ago , and have loaded a few pictures, getting a great response, comments, etc from the community and actually sold 5 copies of a card size picture. I think that what we're forgetting is that the community looking at your photos in redbubble and other similar sites are all photographers similar too ourselves trying to sell their photos and not really interested in buying. I think the reason I sold something was because I sent out an e-mail to friends, family, associates that I had started selling my pics and that resulted in a sale , I've also put a link in my blog.

Its gotten me to thinking that the only way to actually sell anytning on a regular basis on these sites is to actively market it yourself (which is the next thing I'm trying to figure out other ways to do without ending up a spammer!)

Hey Mr Darren Rowse, any tips on how to market this kind of thing on the internet

Cheers

[MarthaT]

I just got my account setup with smugmug, they are great to work with

[gricucub]

I accept: This is not meant as an endorsement for a certain website or even to say that somewhere is worth using. It is also not a list of stock photo agencies. Those lists exist everywhere.

[nannybear]

I have tried looking for a canadian based one but no real luck so far. I belong to Imagekind, and have yet to upload a lot yet.
Featherstone Photography and Art : Home

So far I have only sold to myself! LOL Cheers Jan

[Ariana Murphy]

Hello,
I have been a member of Imagekind for over a year, and although I haven't bought any of my own stuff, I have heard very good things as to quality from those who have. They take care of manufacturing, shipping, customer service etc. All the artist has to do is upload images. They have free memberships, and paid memberships that offer unlimited amounts of space and a "storefront". I haven't sold anything except a couple of greeting cards, but as a gallery site, which people CAN order from if ever anybody wants one of my images (it could happen some day! at least in theory!), it is pretty good. It's also got a lively community and forums.
Here's the link to my profile page: Ariana Murphy - ArianasArt Profile on Imagekind
and here's the link to my storefront: Ariana's Art : Home
I would really like to hear your opinion on Imagekind. Whether you include it or not in your list is, of course, entirely at your discretion.

[Ariana Murphy]

I have hundreds of products in my Zazzle store and haven't sold a single thing. Been there a few months, so I know patience is important, but I was hoping for something better.
Ariana's Art: Home: Zazzle.com Store

[CanonRebelz]

Originally Posted by Murtasma

The more and more I read up on these photo selling sites the more I keep getting the impression that these sites are all rip offs. What I'm noticing here is

1. They charge you for an account (while at the same time making money off pictures you sell. Some sites don't even give you more then a few GB of storage. Come on I bought a domain name for $3.00 a month with unlimited storage and bandwidth.)
2. They take a very large percentage of your sale. (On some sites you can increase your percentage but all this does is effectively increase the cost of the print to the customer)
3. They only often pay you if you reach certain amount of sales


After having several images on Redbubble for over a year with many of them having several thousand views and 0 sales this is beginning to look like a waste of time. If I spend the time to solicit my photography and generate an interest in it Redbubble will always make more money then I do on a sale. If I want to make $80.00 off a 11x14 image I effectively have to charge a customer $200.00. At those rates it will be less expensive for my customers if I was able to print and mail my own images from home. I could also probably sell more images because they would be priced much lower then if I was to use one of these online services.

The business model for these sites appears to be the following.

1. Create a website for people to upload photos along with a merchant account to process credit cards.
2. Take other peoples artwork and sell it for them while often times taking 70% of the profit.
3. Print the image and mail it (charged to the customer and photographer so you don't loose any money)
3. Do nothing and wait for more orders to be processed.

I think I'm in the wrong business.

I think a Business model that would be much more fair toward photographers and customers would be a set amount of money the company takes based on the size they want printed. After that the photographer can select how much they wish to make on an image.

Why is it that I have to increase the cost of a print if I want to make more money when it costs Red Bubble the same amount of money to print and mail the image? I have to increase my margin almost 100% on Red Bubble to take anything home that would be of interest thus making my prints very expensive to purchase.

Note: The past year my images have been for sale with a %30 markup the default. A 11x14 at these rates sells for about $50.00 and I barely make over $10.00. At these rates that's just a plain rip off. I can get my work into a local gallery here for free, probably sell more images and make more money working personally with galleries.

I can sign up for a merchant account or use pay pay to process orders. Purchase a nice printer that can print 11x14s and work with customers personally through my website to ensure them a good fair price on a image. It's not like we are sitting her selling 1,000's of images a day. I can easily handle a few sales as they come in and pocket much more money then going through some 3rd party that uses my photography to turn a dime. I can purchase a nice dry mount press for a few hundred bucks if that on craiglist if I'm patient enough. Perform my own matting and framing. This will also ensure the print quality I receive is spot on (having a calibrated monitor and printer) the only thing I don't think would be viable is metallic prints. I haven't done any research into this so I don't know what is required to make prints like this.

I could actually make more money as well if I just took the customers order and had an online printing company print the work for me usually for about 5 - 10 dollars at 11x14. Receive the print at my house and do the mounting here then deliver the image to the customer. This process may even be the more viable road to go down.

EDIT: None of this pertains to stock photography sites which sell images for a few cents but it's much easier to generate a sale when a sale only costs the customer a few cents. This is a totally differnet business model and for a differnet set of customers. What I'm talking about here is stictly sales to a private collector.
What are your thoughts on this people?

I agree. I have been trying to find places to sell my photos, and after reading stuff here and on other sites and just looking at those sites, I realize it's a total waste of time. I'd rather try to learn to set up my own site (buying a domain, getting it hosted, etc) and making my OWN sales and ship myself, no middle man. But I don't want to spend big bucks on a dry press or printer or anything like that, unless it got too hard ordering prints, mailing them, etc. I'm sure it would pay it self off in the long run, but I would want to know that my business was going to keep growing if I were to do that.

I'll get around to that website making one day.. and if anyone knows of any good places to buy a domain and or get it hosted PM me.
EDIT: Also, is QOOP any good?

[fstop57]

If you're on flickr you can now try and get your photos into Getty Images.

Photographers Direct is another option with a slightly different approach to most stock agencies.

Also Clustershot are worth a look, with a very high % going to the photographer, but they're relatively new so sales volume isn't great yet from my understanding.

Alex