Author Topic: Photoshelter (Read 2696 times)

wordplanet · « **on:** May 14, 2011, 14:16 »

I have my site set up with Photoshelter mostly for my commercial and editorial clients, but I also keyworded some photos and made them available as stock under full-priced RM licenses. I haven't tried marketing my site, but have used Photoshelter's SEO guidelines and I just licensed a photo to a major magazine publisher who found a photo she needed on my site.
This sale out of the blue has made me start considering how I can really market my site once I have a larger collection of stock images. Any suggestions other than SEO?
Here's my site: www.campyphotos.com
Many of my images also come up very high in a google search, so I think SEO is an important factor but I can't imagine that alone will generate enough traffic. I'd love to be able to license a lot from my site but for now I license most of my images through the various online agencies. I hope that as my stock library grows, I'll be able to generate more direct sales rather than paying 40-85% to an agency, but I'm not in a position to get my photos seen by thousands of viewers a month- yet.
Cooperatives seem like a good idea but I imagine it would be tough to vet everyone and make sure that they were all equally committed to the business.
Does anyone have work on a virtual agency at Photoshelter? I'd be curious to see how well that works out. I'd also be curious to see how well others are doing selling direct from Photoshelter.
I haven't tried seeling microstock via Photoshelter. Has that worked well for anyone? My thought would be that you can't get the kind of volume you need on your own to make that worthwhile.
Glad to see this thread started. Direct sales have been touted as the way to go and it will be interesting to see where this all leads.

ann · « **Reply #1 on:** May 14, 2011, 22:00 »

Wordplanet, I'm thrilled I saw your post, not only because, as of 5/12, PhotoSelter hosts my new domain (for photojournalism and fine art) but also because of your Chappaqua editorial photos.

When I read Hillary Clinton's quote on mag cover about how she wished all children could go to school like those on Chappaqua, I had the biggest smile.

Chappaqua's Bell Middle School is where I did my student teaching in Secondary English, and what an amazing school and community! A fellow student teacher and I were lucky enough to be guests at a home along a stream, and we could walk to and from school. Very fond memories.

The only editorials I've had of HC were ones I took when my daughters and I went to her NYC events during Presidential race. One of my dreams is to photograph her with my Nikon D700, rather than the P&S security allowed back then.

Your photos are fabulous. Smiles - Ann

wordplanet · « **Reply #2 on:** May 14, 2011, 22:17 »

Hi Ann:
What a small world!
Wish I had shot those with my D700 rather than my old D70 too!
Thanks for taking a look at my site. Couldn't find a link to yours. Send me a PM with the link if you'd like. I'd love to take a look at your work.

ann · « **Reply #3 on:** May 16, 2011, 15:29 »

wordplanet - so you have a D700, too! (Reviews of D3x indicate that D700 is better for photojournalism, so I'm waiting to see what D4 will be and cost

)

Thanks for asking for URL of my photoshelter home - will do that as soon as I'm sure that site is doing what I think it is. I've been focusing on one gallery of a few dozen photos and a few galleries of 1 to a handful of photos, so I can learn, try out how things work, so I don't have too much to undo when I mess up.

I'm still getting a few basic things straight (like difference between deleting photo from archives and from a specific gallery, and how changing photo descrip one place (archive, gallery) doesn't change it in another. It's both a help and hindrance that I've had my smugmug site for years.

For ex, in smugmug there's more of a flow between places to do administrative things and things any visitor can do, esp on public galleries of your site.

Whereas, on PhotoShelter - which gives account holder a greater range of options and features for RF and RM licensing... - there seem to basically be 2 different sites - my site - where I can't do anything more on it than any visitor can (on the public galleries), and the Photoshelter Account site, where I upload, make folders, galleries, prices, descriptions.
***If I'm wrong about this, I hope someone tells me.***

wordplanet · « **Reply #4 on:** May 16, 2011, 16:26 »

Hi Ann:
There's a bit of a learning curve and I still find I forget which view allows which options, but it does allow a lot of things that smugmug didn't seem to when I initially compared the two.
The people at Photoshelter are very nice and very helpful too. They get back to you pretty quickly and will point you in the right direction if you get lost. And their SEO
I try to make changes to the original photo in my archive if I'm changing keywords, etc. so I don't end up with competing versions of the same photo. Good luck. Look forward to seeing your site when you're ready!

Anyone else out there with a site on Photoshelter? Sure Ann and I would both like to hear your thoughts.

ann · « **Reply #5 on:** May 16, 2011, 19:34 »

wordplanet,
The whole caption/title/heading/description thing - yikes! - Each time I think I totally figured it out, I find out I'm totally wrong.
I don't see where info I put in description shows up ever/anywhere, except when I'm look at the ITPC box I've entered it in.

Then I realize if I go (in admin) to Gallery and enter info in Caption, it will show up next to image online as expected/hoped. That's good step forward.
So then I put most of the info in the captions, but the Slideshow captions become a mess because there's too much info to fit in across the top line & text overlapped.

From the main online gallery (the one that had dozens of photos) I ended up removing all but 4, and I'll continue to work on getting info the way I want & expect to see it more consistently.
I hope at least some of this is making sense. smiles - Ann

P.S. I just tweaked the site, and changed URL to my name with hyphen between the words:
firstname-lastname.com

mtkang · « **Reply #6 on:** August 12, 2011, 20:08 »

i saw photoshelter is paid monthly, how is it different to something like ktools that you paid one time fee? i think ktools is a software that you install on your host?

how about photoshelter? if one day i decide to leave photoshelter..will i be able to 'transfer' the site to my own host?

ann · « **Reply #7 on:** August 12, 2011, 21:04 »

Quote from: mtkang on August 12, 2011, 20:08

i saw photoshelter is paid monthly, how is it different to something like ktools that you paid one time fee? i think ktools is a software that you install on your host?

how about photoshelter? if one day i decide to leave photoshelter..will i be able to 'transfer' the site to my own host?

I'm not familiar with ktools, but it sounds Very different from photoshelter. Photoshelter Pro is generally similar to Smugmug Pro, for example.

I paid for a year, for bigger discount; plus, I figured it was unlikely I'd put time in to set up my site, learn the ins and outs, and then leave in a few months to start somewhere else from scratch.

The fee covers a certain amount of storage (maybe 30 GB; can't check now), and over that you pay an extra charge each month. I like that you can upload jpgs, tiff, Raw.

You can use a website address created through photoshelter, or use your own domain name.

There are preset (customizable to a point) themes or you can set up site from scratch. I use one of their themes, and one of these days I should make use of the two blank pages they include to do whatever with. I like how the wordpress integration for blog lets you include your photoshelter photos without actually having to upload/resize them for blog.

Don't think you'd be able to take your site with you, if/when you leave, especially if you use one of their themes.

You can try it for one month for one dollar. (PM me, if you wish, to see my site, which wasn't too hard to set up.) Ann

mtkang · « **Reply #8 on:** August 13, 2011, 01:49 »

have you guys check out photodeck?

I will try photoshelter maybe once my images are ready..

I am looking forward to set up a page just to sell some RM images, since there are some images are just not for microstock rf..

there are many users using ktools..it is like one time payments $250, i am not sure how easy to set it up..and i am not sure if it supports RM license well.

I want to have an options to get other contributors if i want to bigger library..i saw photoshelter had an option for multi user which is $250 per month..

and it seems photodeck also support multi user, but i am not sure how much.

borg · « **Reply #9 on:** August 13, 2011, 04:00 »

I never sold any stock photo through my own site... $:-\$

wordplanet · « **Reply #10 on:** August 23, 2011, 10:11 »

I've been happy with Photoshelter. It has helped get me assignment clients. I've also got a photo that's slated to run in Coastal Living Magazine's September issue licensed by an editor who found contacted me through my site, though I haven't done any marketing on my own yet. I did a google search for that popular tourist location and a couple of my photos from that shoot were in the first couple of rows out of about 450,000 photos - linking back to PS - so their SEO seems to be working well.

I just returned from Iceland Sunday night after a 9-day trip to shoot stock in Russia, Estonia, Sweden & Iceland, and it was helpful to be able to upload photos as an extra backup directly to my site while I was traveling - although my hotel in Stockholm was the only one with a fast Internet connection. I picked my very favorites - maybe 100 out of the 5,000+ I shot so I knew that if disaster struck the trip wouldn't be a total loss. Especially after I uploaded an 8 GB card and my Macbook warned it was down to ) GB on my hard drive (I deleted about 300 RAW files fast - a good way to make you pare down your work!)

Most of those shots (the heroes, that is) are going to trad agencies or up on my site, but I'm going to put a few on the micros too as I haven't uploaded anything in ages and my sales are starting to sag. Hoping PS will be a good venue for some sales. I need to do something with those two pages too - I've got plenty of tearsheets so I need to figure out how to get them up there. I don't know much HTML (learned a tiny bit from PS) and I love that my site looks well-designed despite that - and that I can change it up whenever I want to so it can keep looking fresh.

Good luck with your site, whatever you decide to do.

microstockphoto.co.uk · « **Reply #11 on:** August 23, 2011, 15:15 »

I eventually decided to start selling direct and found Photoshelter very fast and easy to setup. I still can't say anything about sales as I only started one week ago.