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Microstock Photography Forum - General => Selling Stock Direct => Topic started by: leaf on February 27, 2011, 17:15

Title: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: leaf on February 27, 2011, 17:15
There has been a fair bit discussin lately about selling images yourself so I thought I'd try and make a list of all the places to do that.

For those that are already on the 'sell yourself' train.. where are you selling?

Did I miss anywhere?

edit: I am thinking of sites that cater directly to those who want to sell stock photography.  There are probably hundreds of sites that allow you to sell prints or the odd 'digital download' - those are not what I'm after.  I am looking for a list of strictly stock photography selling platforms.

Here is some discussion searches for selling yourself
photoshelter (http://www.microstockgroup.com/index.php?action=search2&search=photoshelter%20&sort=ID_MSG|desc)
ktools (http://www.microstockgroup.com/index.php?action=search2&search=ktools%20&sort=ID_MSG|desc)
clustershot (http://www.microstockgroup.com/index.php?action=search2&search=clustershot%20&sort=ID_MSG|desc)
avidimages (http://www.microstockgroup.com/index.php?action=search2&search=avidimages%20&sort=ID_MSG|desc)
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: Jo Ann Snover on February 27, 2011, 17:57
I'm in the "wish I did" camp. I would have to sell different stuff and could only sell RM. I have a small portfolio on Alamy and have done an RM deal for some photos for a book that was private, but otherwise it's IS only.

The decision to build a separate portfolio for RM was one I put aside in 2008 as it seemed not to be worth the effort given how things were going at IS. I'm now thinking about it again, but will probably spend time putting some editorial only work onto IS first and then see.
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: leaf on February 27, 2011, 18:12
2 people said something else.... What is that something else software?
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: louoates on February 27, 2011, 18:58
You didn't say just stock images so went with
something else:
Art fairs
Galleries
Gift stores
Friends and relatives
Classic car shows
Golf courses
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: nruboc on February 27, 2011, 19:11
2 people said something else.... What is that something else software?

Mine is custom made
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: madelaide on February 27, 2011, 20:20
Never used it, but looks good:
http://ifp3.com/ (http://ifp3.com/)
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: shiyali on February 27, 2011, 21:47
Never used it, but looks good:
[url]http://ifp3.com/[/url] ([url]http://ifp3.com/[/url])


240.-U$ per year is on the expensive side.
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: ErickN on February 27, 2011, 22:10
Leaf, you may add Smugmug and Zenfolio to the list.

I still have my Clustershot Pro account, and wait to see what the new owners will make of it. But as I try to concentrate my efforts towards macro / RM / editorial, the only hosting solution that seems to fit my needs (for now) is Photoshelter which allows RM licenses with a price calculator. I particularly like Photoshelter's ability to be seamlessly integrated to an existing website / blog, and also the virtual agencies that could be used to collaborate with other photographers and drive more traffic to the group. Because whatever software or hosting solution is chosen, the main challenge is still to drive traffic and buyers to our websites.
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: Anyka on February 28, 2011, 01:07
I am at www.clikpic.com (http://www.clikpic.com).  They offer the possibility for selling your photos, but so far, I did not choose that formula, so I cannot say if it works well or not.  I just like them because it is very easy to add images.
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: cthoman on February 28, 2011, 09:46
http://www.xpoze.org/ (http://www.xpoze.org/)
http://www.pixaria.com/ (http://www.pixaria.com/)
http://cmsaccount.com/ (http://cmsaccount.com/)
http://www.stockboxphoto.com/ (http://www.stockboxphoto.com/)
http://www.stockphotoscript.com/ (http://www.stockphotoscript.com/)
http://www.eodessa.com/ (http://www.eodessa.com/)
http://www.photographyshoppingcart.com/ (http://www.photographyshoppingcart.com/)
http://www.photodeck.com/ (http://www.photodeck.com/)

These were in my bookmark folder when I was doing my research. I think a lot of them got eliminated because they didn't do vectors or some other reason, so I didn't do much investigation into them. I went with Ktools, but that doesn't mean another solution isn't better.
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: Phil on February 28, 2011, 15:06
I bought stockphotoscript about 2 years ago, it was very basic including only uploading 1 image at a time, didnt bother with it. looking at the page it doesnt seemed to have changed.

I have slowly started looking around at them again, noticed comments on pixaria forum mentioning requests that hadnt been brought into v3, including having different sizes, so that has been ruled out for me.
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: madelaide on February 28, 2011, 16:49
Never used it, but looks good:
[url]http://ifp3.com/[/url] ([url]http://ifp3.com/[/url])

240.-U$ per year is on the expensive side.

One reason I never used it. :D
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: corepics on February 28, 2011, 17:03
I used to have a KTools site, but maintaining it and marketing it properly was just too time consuming. It was live for almost 3 years until I finally took it down, earlier this year. The sales I made through the KTools set-up barely made up for hosting costs of a few Gigs of images, and I sold more images in direct sales than through that website. I haven't given up on the idea just yet, though, but, currently, it's a very low priority.
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: RacePhoto on February 28, 2011, 18:49
I used to have a KTools site, but maintaining it and marketing it properly was just too time consuming. It was live for almost 3 years until I finally took it down, earlier this year. The sales I made through the KTools set-up barely made up for hosting costs of a few Gigs of images, and I sold more images in direct sales than through that website. I haven't given up on the idea just yet, though, but, currently, it's a very low priority.

Which should bring up the next question. Is anyone having success selling on their own site? It's fine to have one, but does it make anything?
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: louoates on February 28, 2011, 21:30
Race,
   Like anything else you've got to spend money and time to drive folks to your own site. I sell only occasionally from my site because I devote little resources to promote it. I get maybe one inquiry a month regarding a specific image and one sale every two or three inquiries. It's all Google-search-engine-driven searches, not like they're looking specifically for me. As humbling as that is. I sell a CD on my site of 200+ antique frame images in medium res jpgs for $39. That sells maybe 2-3 per year as a result of a Google search on "antique frames" or some such key word. Other than that it is pretty much the odd image sale here and there with one or two scam buyer attempts thrown in.
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: yuliang11 on February 28, 2011, 22:06
flickr. i've had buyers coming direct from google image searches over my website
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: RacePhoto on February 28, 2011, 23:31
louoates,

That wasn't a negative it was a question.

There are some people with their own sites that appear very well done, which might make sales, I don't know. There are also some plane Jane sites with specific material, that might make money too. I've seen people who tried and dropped their sites and stuck with the agencies doing all the marketing work.

I'm wondering about how much it takes to cover expenses and then make a profit?

I still have my niche market ideas, but don't want to make it full time job dong promotion so I can make $100 a year. Not that I expect to get rich and retire either. Just wondering what people have found who have tried it.
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: CvanDijk on March 01, 2011, 09:31
I'm still figuring out what would be the most interesting option. Stockboxphoto seemed like an interesting option, but very expensive. I looked a little bit further into it, and for me it's not an option anymoreanymore.

You can't use stockboxphoto on a server that has php 5.3 or higher, it just won't work, because Zendoptimizer is not working with php 5.3. I was intrested in the entreprise version, not that I want to have an entreprise, but with that version it's possible to have your images on Amazon and to have the software on your own site. When you want to put a lot of images on your store, you definetely need space. And with my provider every 500mb extra above the 2gb I have, will cost me 24 euro's a year extra. I think 500mb is nothing, so that will cost me a lot. With the entreprise version you're provider also needs to have ImagMagick to have installed.

For now I'm happy with my provider, so no Stockboxphoto for me

Also looking into options like Oscommerce. You can change a lot on an OScommerce site, but you have to know how to do it. . I did that before, so maybe I'm going to try that one. See if it will work. But I still don't know If the download section can be made safe enough (of course it can work if you spent a lot of money hiring a pro, but I want to keep my budgets low for now)
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: cascoly on March 01, 2011, 16:58
i use smugmug pro

there's also the open source GALLERY2 which is relatively easy to install and maintain, but does require some php knowledge;  it has excellent support onlineif you do encounter problems.

i ran a GALLERY2 site for about a year, but my hosting company was somehow incompatible with a GALLERY2 upgrade and i decicded not to invest the time debugging, so switched to smugmug

s
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: tanedesign on March 04, 2011, 13:08
Can you sell vectors in these places? I guess this isnt an option if you are an exclusive artist to a microstock bank, right?
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: lgreen on March 04, 2011, 13:29
I've been selling through various stock sites plus my own custom built stock site for the past 3 years, it's all automated so I don't have to lift a finger once uploaded :) Working on an extended marketplace project at the moment hopefully should be ready to unleash in a couple of months.

Len
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: borg on March 12, 2011, 17:40
I am also on Sumgmug!
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: Ktools_Jeff on May 17, 2011, 08:21
I wanted to throw in my 2 cents about selling photos online and all the stuff I have learned over the past 7 years.

My Story:
Before selling online all the prints my wife sold were done through order forms given to bride/groom in post wedding meetings. Sales that way were not the greatest, no one hardly ever sent in order forms for any additional prints. I was already making websites back then but I wanted a solution already built so I wouldn't have to pull time from my original job to work on it, that is when I ended up purchasing photostore. I purchased photostore version 2.8.3 about 6 years ago. We started using photostore and immediately print sales started to take off. The cost of the store back then was $299 just for the store alone. I paid around $360 for the store and no-branding add-on. The store paid for itself in one wedding event being posted online. I liked the store so much, that I started making add-ons for it, and Jon eventually hired me full time, and I have been working there ever since. I am not here to advertise one or the other or which one you should purchase. I just want to talk about my experience in selling.

What people sell (break this into three categories):
Events - If you are selling event photos, you will most likely make money having your own store online.
Agency - These do fairly well if you have a lot of printing agencies needing your work. Agency is kind of a broad term covering everything from new papers to businesses.
Stock - This is a very tough, and it will require a lot of dedication from you to promote and generate traffic to your site to get sales.

Event sales do the best, I have seen people selling over $40k - $50k in print sales a year with their event photography. Kids sports seems to be a real money maker, behind that I would say racing (bikes, cars, marathons, etc..). Those even out sell most wedding, gatherings type of events. So if you are doing event type photography and you are looking to open your own store and sell online you should! Remember to advertise at the event so everyone there knows where to go to order prints. Example of this would be like my wife handing out business cards with website address on it to all guest at the weddings she photographed.

Stock sales is a tough market, there is a lot of competition for stock photo sales. However don't let this discourage you, I have seen people just happy to have their own site to display their work and then link it to all the other places they may sell (shutterstock, istockphoto, and other similar to that). Overall to sell stock it will require a lot of dedication from you to promote your work. I see a lot of stock guys team up with other photographers to kind of create their own co-op stock or microstock sites where they all upload photos and sell them. I seen others create blogs, forums, and tie them all together with their stores.

Agency sales are not bad if you have a good group of businesses that depend on your work. I don't see this as often as the stock or event guys, but there are people that use online stores to grant access to agencies they sell to. An example would be like selling photos to multiple news paper agencies  (which seems to be the most common). Most of the people I see doing agency type of sales usually allow the agencies to download as much as they want and then bill them for it at a later date (like a subscription).

There is kind of a fourth category but it is for free photos. I seen people use the store just to give away photos. Example a person buying a store and running the site to share photos with their family/friends. I also seen this at a city/town level where the city or town will share photos.
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: cthoman on May 17, 2011, 09:36
Interesting story, Jeff. Thanks for sharing it. It makes me wish I was an event photographer. Actually, I take that back. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't enjoy that.  ;D
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: lisafx on May 17, 2011, 11:49
Interesting story, Jeff. Thanks for sharing it. It makes me wish I was an event photographer. Actually, I take that back. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't enjoy that.  ;D

Agreed on both counts :)

Very interesting to hear your background, Jeff.  Thanks for sharing the different ways Ktools can be used.

I am very happy with the way my site is set up, and its look.  Haven't had a lot of sales yet, but the ones I have had went very smoothly. 

I agree wholeheartedly about the need to market.  I have about 2/3 my portfolio on the Ktools site now and haven't started a marketing initiative yet.  Even without marketing, site traffic is pretty steady, but sales are not.  I am hoping that once I have time to get serious about marketing things will pick up :)
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: Ktools_Jeff on May 17, 2011, 12:44
Interesting story, Jeff. Thanks for sharing it. It makes me wish I was an event photographer. Actually, I take that back. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't enjoy that.  ;D

 :D, that is why my wife and I no longer do wedding photography. Couple years ago we did over 30 weddings all during the "wedding season" and after that we no longer wanted to do it. Nothing ever went bad or anything like that, but just the overall experience turned us away from doing it any more. That is a whole different topic  ;D
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: helix7 on May 17, 2011, 16:01
I use e-junkie to handle sales logistics, and a custom-built website houses the whole thing. http://www.emberstock.com (http://www.emberstock.com)

I just recently moved everything to that new domain, which more appropriately matches my design business name and web domain.

It works for the small number of items I have there, although I hope to grow the store to around 20 items in the next few months, and for selling individual photos it wouldn't work. But for what I'm doing, I like this solution best. It's a work in progress, also. A little sparse on content and SEO, but it should be more complete in a few weeks.
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: lisafx on May 17, 2011, 17:07
Site looks great so far, Mike!  The landing page displays your graphics nicely, and pricing is clear and unambiguous. 

First time I have seen the pricing displayed that way on any site - you can sort of pick your price right away and begin exploring.  Good way to avoid surprising or confusing your buyers.  You vector guys have a lot more flexibility in the ways you can present your product, I think, than we photo people. 

BTW, your new avatar really threw me off.  Looks good, but will take some getting used to.  You've been that helix shape for quite a few years!
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: helix7 on May 17, 2011, 20:39
Thanks, Lisa. It does seem like with vectors there are a few more options with how you can sell them. I think packaging photos together like I'm doing with my vectors could work, though. Sort of like what Getty and some other companies do with image CDs. Put together 50 or so images in a group based on a theme and sell them that way. Not sure it would work, but it could be interesting.

What really drew me to packaging images like this was just that I didn't want to offer exactly the same thing I offer on agency websites. At least with these packs I am sort of rebranding the product and it looks different. It's also a better value for the buyer as opposed to buying single images at the agencies, and my intended price point will put more money in my pocket for each sale. I'm not at my intended pricing yet, and I'm launching with lower prices to try and generate some traffic.

Yeah, the new avatar feels a bit strange. I need to get used to it also. :) But it seemed like it was time. Launching the new website, getting back into stock after 6 months off, etc.
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: VB inc on May 17, 2011, 22:11
I use e-junkie to handle sales logistics, and a custom-built website houses the whole thing. [url]http://www.emberstock.com[/url] ([url]http://www.emberstock.com[/url])


Im digging the site! good luck with your venture and keep us updated on your success! I plan to do that in a year or two with my vectors.
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: RacePhoto on May 18, 2011, 02:37
I use e-junkie to handle sales logistics, and a custom-built website houses the whole thing. [url]http://www.emberstock.com[/url] ([url]http://www.emberstock.com[/url])


Im digging the site! good luck with your venture and keep us updated on your success! I plan to do that in a year or two with my vectors.


Me Too, nice looking site and just what it should be, fast and up front, says everything about itself on the front page. Good grab.
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: cthoman on May 18, 2011, 09:50
Thanks, Lisa. It does seem like with vectors there are a few more options with how you can sell them. I think packaging photos together like I'm doing with my vectors could work, though. Sort of like what Getty and some other companies do with image CDs. Put together 50 or so images in a group based on a theme and sell them that way. Not sure it would work, but it could be interesting.

What really drew me to packaging images like this was just that I didn't want to offer exactly the same thing I offer on agency websites. At least with these packs I am sort of rebranding the product and it looks different. It's also a better value for the buyer as opposed to buying single images at the agencies, and my intended price point will put more money in my pocket for each sale. I'm not at my intended pricing yet, and I'm launching with lower prices to try and generate some traffic.

Yeah, the new avatar feels a bit strange. I need to get used to it also. :) But it seemed like it was time. Launching the new website, getting back into stock after 6 months off, etc.

The site looks good. Yeah, I agree. Offering things that the other agencies don't is a good idea.
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: Anita Potter on May 18, 2011, 11:57
I agree and it looks really nice.  I'd like to do that with mine one of these days but licensing options throw me off a bit.  How did you come up with your license agreement?
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: helix7 on May 18, 2011, 13:43
I agree and it looks really nice.  I'd like to do that with mine one of these days but licensing options throw me off a bit.  How did you come up with your license agreement?

It's just a standard RF license. Basically I read through some licenses at various microstock agencies and sort of pieced mine together from that. At least in terms of the language used. The actual terms of sale are my own, and while they generally coincide with the usual RF terms I tried to write mine to be a little more understandable. I used some specific examples (you can't use my images on anything for sale at CafePress or Zazzle), and tried to make it more easily understood. I think mine is also a lot shorter than most. I doubt very many people actually read these things anyway, so I figured I wouldn't make the document look too intimidating, if at all possible. It's still a long read, but not as bad as most microstock RF license agreements.   
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: Anita Potter on May 18, 2011, 14:03
Thanks for clarifying that for me.  I wasn't sure if it was something standard on the ejunkie site that you could change.  I just need to figure out how I'm going to do it all on my own site.  Prolly have to sit down with a notebook and plan it all out.

Thanks again :)
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: Microbius on August 03, 2011, 03:39
another one: stockmediaengine.com
Sounds like they bill on bandwidth usage?
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: TheSmilingAssassin on August 03, 2011, 07:51
another one: stockmediaengine.com
Sounds like they bill on bandwidth usage?


Not just bandwidth...


[/quote]Pricing depends on your needs. With StockMediaEngine, you only pay for the resources you use. As your business grows, you can easily scale up your resources. You can set a limit for the resources your system will use. And you can set a monthly fee limit.

These are the factors that will determine the fee:
•Edition
•Hits per month
•Active users per month
•Uploads per month
•Amount of content
•Bandwidth per month

We send you a bill each month with full details on the resources you have used, and you prepay for the following month based on this usage. At the end of the month we then calculate the difference and bill or refund you accordingly. Payment is expected within 2 months of the date of billing.

So that you have a guide, we can estimate your monthly fee based on your needs. If you would like this estimate, please fill out the following details and we will contact you with the details.[/quote]

http://stockmediaengine.com/pricing/ (http://stockmediaengine.com/pricing/)

There's no real indication at all unless someone asks for a quote.
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: cthoman on August 03, 2011, 22:13
another one: stockmediaengine.com
Sounds like they bill on bandwidth usage?

Maybe it's me, but I was having trouble finding any concrete details on the site. I'm curious though, so I'll have to fire off a contact form.
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: ppdd on August 03, 2011, 22:33
I think I contacted them a while ago and I got back a version of "we're redoing our script so we have nothing to offer right now."

But I could be misremembering that.
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: Microbius on August 04, 2011, 02:29
It is very odd that you don't even get a ballpark figure on the site.
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: ppdd on August 04, 2011, 10:58
Looking back in my email, I did request a demo from them recently, and here's what I got back:

Hi,

I must apologize. We cannot provide you with Stock Media Engine demo for now.
The reason is that we have started major rewrite of our software and there is still no demonstrable version of it.

Nevertheless we can dive into discussion about what you need and what we'll be able to help you with.

Regards,

Ivan.

So nothing to see.
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: cthoman on August 04, 2011, 11:24
Looking back in my email, I did request a demo from them recently, and here's what I got back:

Hi,

I must apologize. We cannot provide you with Stock Media Engine demo for now.
The reason is that we have started major rewrite of our software and there is still no demonstrable version of it.

Nevertheless we can dive into discussion about what you need and what we'll be able to help you with.

Regards,

Ivan.

So nothing to see.

You'd think with the testimonials, they'd at least have a site or two to see their stuff in action.
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: Microbius on August 04, 2011, 15:05
Starting to look very odd. You'd think at least they could point you to a site that utilizes their software.
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: serg269 on October 05, 2011, 00:07
Hi everybody,

Now it's my turn to share something, not just silently read  :)

I tried to setup my site on Photoshelter (PS) with sales possibilities as a first priority. It was rather expensive - 29$/month - but I decided to try it for a while. So, site is working for two month. It contains my selected galleries of RF images, you may check it at http://www.SergeyOrlovPhoto.com (http://www.SergeyOrlovPhoto.com). So, here are some positives and negatives I have so far.

Negatives:
- (Very important). The structure of PS allows for you to use your own domain, but only at the home page and some other high-level pages. Every photo, every internal page has it's own, Photoshelter-related address, like SergeyOrlovPhoto.photoshelter.com. So, all the efforts I spent for SEO, it seems that I promote PS domain, but not my own! There is an explanation for that from the PS Team, but it gives me nothing when I compare it with another photo-hosting sites like Zenfolio with own domain direct links to everything except for shopping cart.

- (Roadblock for me, but it doesn't directly related to PS). I live in Russia, and PayPal doesn't allow us to receive money in any kind. Period. Another payment option - merchant account - requires some monthly paiment, which is not really an option. PS doesn't allow and have no plans to implement another payment providers like MoneyBookers, for example. (By the way, MB rebranded to Skrill, do you know?).

- Well, cost. The most expensive in the category.

Positives:
- Simple, straightforward process of setting up everything. I finished the site during less than one week.

- Really nice looking initial templates.

- Great responsible support.

Well, maybe my opinion about PS is little biased because of mentioned negatives, but the overall conclusion I have so far that PS is the most advertised and expensive photohosting... which hardly help me to sell images direct. I will look forward for another solutions. Hope this post will help to someone else.
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: leaf on October 05, 2011, 06:07
I just got my little stock photo site up
http://stock.simplefoto.com (http://stock.simplefoto.com)

I decided to go with photodeck.  I like their back end quite a bit and they make it quite easy to edit how your site looks.  They even have a wordpress template exporter if you want to try and make your blog and sales sites look similar.  They also apparently don't have the URL problems that serg269 mentioned PhotoShelter has.

Pricing is pretty on par with PhotoShelter, except one advantage (one of the deciding factors for me) was they take 0% commission on sales, you just pay your monthly fees.  Still, $30/month is plenty for the medium priced package.... I guess I'll see if I can manage to drum up any sales there.
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: leaf on October 05, 2011, 06:32
... hey, I just had a little sale.  Is someone toying with me??? :)
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: michealo on October 05, 2011, 07:25
Do these services have a standard license for RF images or are you creating your own?
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: leaf on October 05, 2011, 07:31
Do these services have a standard license for RF images or are you creating your own?

You can set the licensing details to whatever you want (RF, RM or something you make up yourself :)), they also have a default license that you can just click and apply.
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: ErickN on October 05, 2011, 07:39
I just got my little stock photo site up
[url]http://stock.simplefoto.com[/url] ([url]http://stock.simplefoto.com[/url])


Leaf, I can see a display bug on your site using Chrome (13.0.782) : the roll-over previews of all your images appear as a vertical slice (crop) of the intended preview. I tried with IE and Firefox, the previews are displayed correctly. Just wanted to let you know so that you can try it by yourself and eventually contact Photodeck. If you can't reproduce the problem and need a screenshot, let me know.
Erick
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: sharpshot on October 05, 2011, 08:13
The site looks good.  I just don't like the thought that if I was selling $25 a month, I would be losing $5 a month and all the time spent doing the site.  If these sites could make $100 a month, it would be more worthwhile but I don't see people achieving that on a regular basis.
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: leaf on October 05, 2011, 09:17
The site looks good.  I just don't like the thought that if I was selling $25 a month, I would be losing $5 a month and all the time spent doing the site.  If these sites could make $100 a month, it would be more worthwhile but I don't see people achieving that on a regular basis.

$5.00 for what?
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: leaf on October 05, 2011, 09:17
I just got my little stock photo site up
[url]http://stock.simplefoto.com[/url] ([url]http://stock.simplefoto.com[/url])


Leaf, I can see a display bug on your site using Chrome (13.0.782) : the roll-over previews of all your images appear as a vertical slice (crop) of the intended preview. I tried with IE and Firefox, the previews are displayed correctly. Just wanted to let you know so that you can try it by yourself and eventually contact Photodeck. If you can't reproduce the problem and need a screenshot, let me know.
Erick


Yeah, can you post a screenshot.  In chrome 14.X I can't see the problem.
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: cthoman on October 05, 2011, 09:51
$5.00 for what?

I didn't quite understand the comment either, but maybe I need some coffee this morning. Anyway...

Congrats on the site. I hope it goes well. I wish some of these sites like Photodeck supported vectors.
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: sharpshot on October 05, 2011, 10:26
If I was paying $30 a month for the site and I sold $25 of image licenses, then it would effectively cost me $5.  That's what puts me off, I would have to sell a lot more than $30 a month to make it worthwhile, or go with a cheaper option.
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: ErickN on October 05, 2011, 10:50
Yeah, can you post a screenshot.  In chrome 14.X I can't see the problem.


Here is the screenshot (my mouse was pointing on the 3rd picture) :

(http://ggw.free.fr/msg/SimpleFoto.jpg)
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: cthoman on October 05, 2011, 11:09
If I was paying $30 a month for the site and I sold $25 of image licenses, then it would effectively cost me $5.  That's what puts me off, I would have to sell a lot more than $30 a month to make it worthwhile, or go with a cheaper option.

Thanks for the explanation. I understand now, and it's true. There is no guarantee that you'll make money or even break even each month. I guess the reverse is true too though. There's no guarantee that it will lose you money or be a failure.

I guess I'm an optimist.  ;D
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: michaeldb on October 05, 2011, 13:52
Do these services have a standard license for RF images or are you creating your own?

You can set the licensing details to whatever you want (RF, RM or something you make up yourself :)), they also have a default license that you can just click and apply.
Maybe I too need more coffee, but I am not understanding this. I can't find where you click to see the default license.

Also, it looks like this image did not upload properly: African American Woman Photo ID: 2009-10-20_180044

All in all the site looks and works great. Makes me think that I would consider using Photodeck.
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: LSD72 on October 05, 2011, 14:18
With those of you selling on your own sites, are you doing any backlinking for your sites? Link Wheels, Buffer Sites, Scrapebox blasting and such?
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: leaf on October 05, 2011, 14:39
Do these services have a standard license for RF images or are you creating your own?

You can set the licensing details to whatever you want (RF, RM or something you make up yourself :)), they also have a default license that you can just click and apply.
Maybe I too need more coffee, but I am not understanding this. I can't find where you click to see the default license.

Also, it looks like this image did not upload properly: African American Woman Photo ID: 2009-10-20_180044

All in all the site looks and works great. Makes me think that I would consider using Photodeck.

Yeah, you're right, the licensing terms are displayed anywhere on the site.  I'll have to input them myself.  I was just referring to that you can set your site to say that the buyer is buying a 'whatever' license.. and you can call it whatever you want and charge whatever you want.

thanks for the image note, I deleted that one

and hey... I thought and was excited that I had another customer and my ads were paying off, only to find out it was you :)  welcome to my site though
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: cthoman on October 05, 2011, 15:47
With those of you selling on your own sites, are you doing any backlinking for your sites? Link Wheels, Buffer Sites, Scrapebox blasting and such?

OK. I have to admit that I had to look most of these terms up. I guess my jargon isn't up to date. I have links to my site from various sources and sites. I'm not sure if that counts.
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: LSD72 on October 05, 2011, 17:45
With those of you selling on your own sites, are you doing any backlinking for your sites? Link Wheels, Buffer Sites, Scrapebox blasting and such?

OK. I have to admit that I had to look most of these terms up. I guess my jargon isn't up to date. I have links to my site from various sources and sites. I'm not sure if that counts.

Links from other sites that point back to your site are back links. The last set I mention work to help move your site up in the search rankings.

Buffer sites are like squidoo pages that you make and point them to your site, then you backlink the crap out of them (I use scrapebox for that). They are a buffer to your main site because if you build links too quickly, google will drop your ranking or even deindex it from their search engine. But any power they build gets sort of passed on to your main site. Link Wheels are many buffer sites that point to your main site... or even other buffer sites.

The ranking game is a weird and constantly changing one with google. If your move up like page 1 or 2 for whatever keywords your shooting for (I.E. Stock Photography, Stock Photos), it helps in getting eyes on your site.

Edit: See that signature of mine? I also have that listed in my profile here too. Do that. It does show as a back link from a Google Page Rank (PR) 4 site (MSG).
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: Anita Potter on October 05, 2011, 18:37
Is anyone selling images on their site using Paypal?  Right now that's my only option (and free aside from PP's cut).

I'm working on a site redesign that's going to include a shop which isn't going to be my microstock images but other stuff.  If anyone does I'd love to see how you have it set up.  I have my own ideas about how I'm going to do the layout just curious if anyone else is doing it that way.

Thanks in advance :)
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: serg269 on October 06, 2011, 02:12
Quote from: leaf
I decided to go with photodeck.  I like their back end quite a bit and they make it quite easy to edit how your site looks.  They even have a wordpress template exporter if you want to try and make your blog and sales sites look similar.  They also apparently don't have the URL problems that serg269 mentioned PhotoShelter has.

Leaf, it seems that PhotoDeck don't have both URL and PayPal problem! Thanks for sharing - I didn't know about this photohosting before  :)
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: leaf on October 06, 2011, 03:50
Quote from: leaf
I decided to go with photodeck.  I like their back end quite a bit and they make it quite easy to edit how your site looks.  They even have a wordpress template exporter if you want to try and make your blog and sales sites look similar.  They also apparently don't have the URL problems that serg269 mentioned PhotoShelter has.

Leaf, it seems that PhotoDeck don't have both URL and PayPal problem! Thanks for sharing - I didn't know about this photohosting before  :)

They do take payment from a number of sites.. I am using Paypal payment though.
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: Pixart on November 06, 2011, 22:51
Leaf are you still running photodeck?  I am looking through my choices and I cannot click through your site tonight.  I'm wondering if you didn't like Photodeck in the end or if it is just down for unknown reason at this point? 
Title: Re: Places and ways to sell your images direct
Post by: mtkang on November 09, 2011, 23:05
i am using photodeck too, but just the basic plan that 3 months for $9.99, there is a promote code that you can get 50% off of first month.

I am selling only RM images that i also serve it as portfolio..

the promote code:

YG@UNMKGW