MicrostockGroup
Microstock Photography Forum - General => General Stock Discussion => Topic started by: encrenciel on September 23, 2017, 03:51
-
So here’s what’s in my mind: selling my stock vectors through my own website. I know it’s gonna be dead hard to compete with the big sharks but I’m fed up working my ass days and nights to be paid cents! So I’m thinking of selling via my site with tremendous amount of self promotions. Again, I know it’s gonna be hard and slow but I think selling 10 files a month from my site might be better than selling 100 files from stock sites for 5 months. Is there some holes in my basket you could fix? Is anyone already sailing through this route I can get some directions from? Thank you
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
-
Are you doing it right?
No one can answer that. Only time will tell.
Just don't underestimate how hard (and expensive) it can be to generate traffic. ;)
-
I used to do it. After the EU bought in their VAT rules I shut down my site as it wasn't worth the hassle of getting VAT registered over (licenses sales take place where the buyer is so there's no income threshold from sales outside the EU normally)
If you are selling enough on the big sites you can probably also drum up some sales on your own site. If you aren't able to compete on the sites you wont be making much on your own either.
I haven't checked your portfolio for a while, did you manage to find a saleable niche in the end?
Correct me if I'm wrong but you are they guy that started out "appropriating" other people's vectors and saying you thought you could resell them if you bought a license from a stock site right?
Once you deleted those after a warning you were just left with some very low selling gradient filled Arabic typography, which I wouldn't have thought had a large enough market to sell direct. I would concentrate on getting my skills and knowledge of the market up to a point where sales were good on the micros first then think about opening your own site. They are good training ground to see if you have what it takes without investing loads of time and money into your own site.
PS. I hope you will only be selling original work if you have control over what goes up on the site.
-
I’m fed up working my ass days and nights to be paid cents!
Understandable, but you're probably going to have to work your ass off considerably more to make even two lots of cents. I.e. you're going to have to put in a lot of work marketing your stuff to get anywhere near the same amount of money that you currently make through agencies. But there's always the chance that you might make more, and once your marketing system is set up and working, then it should become a lot easier as time goes on... so why not go for it.
-
It's the cart before the horse thing. If you are selling only 100 images per 5 months, your market is minuscule, and the last thing you want to do is pay the cost of customer acquisition by yourself. Even if it's only labor hours, you will not have the time to generate new content, which is what you need to find your market.
To summarize, figure out what you can sell successfully, only then risk it to go alone. Else, you won't make any money. At all.
-
So here’s what’s in my mind: selling my stock vectors through my own website. I know it’s gonna be dead hard to compete with the big sharks but I’m fed up working my ass days and nights to be paid cents! So I’m thinking of selling via my site with tremendous amount of self promotions. Again, I know it’s gonna be hard and slow but I think selling 10 files a month from my site might be better than selling 100 files from stock sites for 5 months. Is there some holes in my basket you could fix? Is anyone already sailing through this route I can get some directions from? Thank you
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I had one vector sale while we were on the Symbiostock train ... the one $10 sale was more than I think I got all year on the micros ... It's probably not that difficult to generate more than on the micros but, enough to make it worth it? Probably not.