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General Stock Discussion / Getting Started - which MS Agencies for MY style of photography ?
« on: October 14, 2017, 01:37 »
Hi All and thanks for taking the time to check out this post .. and hopefully reply 
Background
I'm newly retired (58) and am currently building my own website (using Divi) to display my fine art photography. However as I've lived in China for the past 23 yrs, and travel (and hike/climb) frequently (S.E. Asia, China, Japan, Nepal, Borneo, Iceland, Norway, UK & other European countries) with plans to add S.America too, I therefore have a substantial library of landscape, travel, long-exposure & bird & animal photography, however naturally only those I consider the best will appear on my personal website for fine art sales & travel blog (max. ca. 100). That leaves me with hundreds of thousands of decent to very good shots sitting untouched on my many hard disks !
I used to use all pro-level Nikon gear, now however mainly Sony with Zeiss & Voigtlander lenses and I'm getting into Drone photography too.
OK that's the background.
I've done a fair bit of research and have found the plethora of microstock sites (there's a difference with macrostock etc ?) slightly overwhelming, and am actually very surprised at the low commission rates for artists & suppliers, and also at the very low quality of many (but certainly not most) of the photos offered. I can accept 60-70% which seems fair if they are offering a range of services to the buyer (framing etc.) but don't want to limit myself to one site and then have to accept 30% for multi-agency !
I was initially going to register (in fact I have at their lowest level, $22) on Fine Art America but I haven't uploaded anything yet and I also registered on 500px but once I read about some of the drawbacks and losing control of my better work (and the 30% for shots not given sole distribution through the site, I still haven't uploaded anything there either). Am I in cloudland regarding commissions ?! Note I am not looking to make a living, enough to support my photography and contribute to travel expenses would be great
Any thoughts on Photoshelter ?
Any advice on which sites to start off using and how to retain control of my images (all contain my logo, copies without logos are supplied to buyers) would be very welcome.
Many thanks !
Kevin
Background
I'm newly retired (58) and am currently building my own website (using Divi) to display my fine art photography. However as I've lived in China for the past 23 yrs, and travel (and hike/climb) frequently (S.E. Asia, China, Japan, Nepal, Borneo, Iceland, Norway, UK & other European countries) with plans to add S.America too, I therefore have a substantial library of landscape, travel, long-exposure & bird & animal photography, however naturally only those I consider the best will appear on my personal website for fine art sales & travel blog (max. ca. 100). That leaves me with hundreds of thousands of decent to very good shots sitting untouched on my many hard disks !
I used to use all pro-level Nikon gear, now however mainly Sony with Zeiss & Voigtlander lenses and I'm getting into Drone photography too.
OK that's the background.
I've done a fair bit of research and have found the plethora of microstock sites (there's a difference with macrostock etc ?) slightly overwhelming, and am actually very surprised at the low commission rates for artists & suppliers, and also at the very low quality of many (but certainly not most) of the photos offered. I can accept 60-70% which seems fair if they are offering a range of services to the buyer (framing etc.) but don't want to limit myself to one site and then have to accept 30% for multi-agency !
I was initially going to register (in fact I have at their lowest level, $22) on Fine Art America but I haven't uploaded anything yet and I also registered on 500px but once I read about some of the drawbacks and losing control of my better work (and the 30% for shots not given sole distribution through the site, I still haven't uploaded anything there either). Am I in cloudland regarding commissions ?! Note I am not looking to make a living, enough to support my photography and contribute to travel expenses would be great
Any thoughts on Photoshelter ?
Any advice on which sites to start off using and how to retain control of my images (all contain my logo, copies without logos are supplied to buyers) would be very welcome.
Many thanks !
Kevin
