One of my plane shots sold within 24 hours of being uploaded. Thankyou buyer.

Okay it's back up.

Last year, a short film of mine was selected for screening at the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival. More recently, I had the idea of selling copies of the film on DVD. So far, I have sold a few copies at a local market which I'm happy about. The film features Australian wildlife and landscapes so I figured it might be of interest to international tourists. It was mainly foreign tourists who bought the DVD at my market stall so perhaps no surprise there.

Anyhow, recently I contacted a store via e-mail that sells mainly tourism related merchandise and asked if they would be interested in selling copies of my DVD. I forwarded a private online link to my film to the manager and she seemed to like what she saw.

Now usually, when local artists supply their craft products (cards etc) to stores and outlets, I notice that generally they hand them over for free and if some copies are sold, the store takes a commission and the artist receives the rest of the amount. And that's what I assumed would happen in my case too with the DVDs.

To my surprise, the manager of the tourism store got back to me recently and asked how much I was planning to sell the DVDs to her at wholesale price. This is certainly not what I expected. Normally, I would jump at the chance of selling them outright like this but I'm a little hesitant in this situation. Let's remember that it is a short film that I'm selling here � running at 8 minutes. Although there is also over half an hour's bonus content contained on the disc, it is essentially an 8 minute film that is the main feature (and it's not even 'feature' length.)

In order for me to make a decent profit from the production of the DVDs, I price them at $12 each and that's what Ive been selling them at the markets for. If I was to sell them to this store at $12 for wholesale price, I assume that the retail price would be at least double that � so at least $24. Now I could be wrong but I can't visualise many people spending $24 or more on an 8 minute film. Also consider that these days, you can buy a blockbuster movie on DVD for considerably less than that. Although selling the DVD at wholesale price would be better for me from a short term perspective, Ive got a feeling that handing them over to the store for free and accepting commissions on a lower retail price would lead to greater sales potential over the long term and may even result in the manager asking for more copies of the DVD in the future if sales are exceptionally good.

The other thing is she seemed a little hesitant about buying the DVDs because it's not the type of product she normally sells there. She said she was going to check her stats on similar products she has stocked before.

So what's everyone's opinion � hand them over for free and accept a commission on sales or sell them outright as wholesale? I admit I'm totally new to this as Ive never been asked to provide a wholesale price for a product before. Obviously, companies who do sell at wholesale prices have their products mass produced in the thousands or millions so they would get a much greater profit margin than me when selling wholesale. Whereas my packaged DVDs are not mass produced � there's only a very small number of them.

Just trying to recall....minimum payout at iStockphoto is $100 or thereabouts? Wonder whether I should dessert them once I reach payout.

Your right its up to you what you want to do and one of the things I like Mstock is no one can tell me what to do!

Amen to that! Completely agree.

Yes, people buy tons of beach images, but there are also over 1 million(!!!) results when searching for "tropical beach" and 3.1 million(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) for just "beach" at Shutterstock.

The top results probably sell 60,000 times rather than 6. 

Well it has sold 7 times in total. And it's likely a temporary number as well. No doubt it will keep continuing to sell and accumulate earnings over time. I would imagine that the top selling beach images have been available for a very long time - possibly years. My beach image has only been online for less than a few months so it will be interesting to see how well it does over say a two or three year period.

Pretty * impressive how many times other peoples' beach photos have sold in this thread.

Ten travel photos sold is not a bad effort when starting out. I only have a small portfolio myself which features a variety of different subject matter and the number of travel photos Ive sold is probably close to yours. I have sold other subjects as well.

The average beach or the average tree won't sell when faced against the competition.

There is one particular beach image of mine that's turned out to be one of my best sellers. It sold six times through SS and once through Dreamstime. I haven't been into stock photography for all that long but I predict that this image will probably continue to make money as time goes on. There's also another beach photo that Ive sold at least twice through different sites. But yea I know what you're saying - I'm sure there would be thousands of high quality beach images out there to compete against.

Where is this cave? Surely it would depend on local regulations?

The Capricorn Caves in Queensland, Australia.

Another thing to remember is:  "Yes you can take pictures." is not the same as "Yes you can sell pictures as stock."

Exactly. It depends on whether you're selling the images as commercial or editorial and whether the photos were taken on private property or not.

You can take all the pictures you want of the Houses of Parliament.  Just don't try to sell them as stock without buying a release.

Yea, if you were intending to sell them as commercial. Though would there be any issues if you were selling those photos of the Houses of Parliament as editorial (assuming you weren't standing on private property at the time)?

As mentioned in my opening post, my photos that I intend to submit were taken outside of the caves. And they would be submitted as editorial / non-commercial. However, despite taking the photos outside, I'm not really sure if I was standing on private property or not. It was native bushland where I was taking the photos but I don't know if that particular area is part of the same property as the caves.

I think I'll just play it safe and submit them as editorial.

Out of curiosity, what was the main subject in the photo? Don't suppose it was marijuana by any chance? Or some kind of plant perhaps?

As is well known amongst stock photographers, images of venues which require an admission fee for entry must be editorial as opposed to commercial. Such venues may include theaters, zoos, sports stadiums etc. I have several exterior photographs of the entrance of a cave which I'm planning on submitting as stock. This particular cave requires an entrance fee from visitors who want to go exploring inside (accompanied by a tour guide.) I'm assuming that despite the fact that this cave is a completely natural, geological formation, submitted photographs of this subject would need to be editorial?

No sales so far this year. Then again, I only have a very small portfolio on DT - under 200 images. Most of my 15 sales were made last year.