Author Topic: Would it be worth upgrading to selling stock? (Read 6055 times)

texture-city · « **on:** April 17, 2012, 18:33 »

I have a stock website where I give away my texture photos. I tried all of the big micro stock agencies and got tired of submitting, rejection, and $.25 cent sales that added up to a couple of bucks per month. I started newbielink:http://texture-city.com [nonactive] as a place where I could upload whatever i want, and offer it for free in hopes that adsense would bring in some money. Would it be worth trying to sell the images as stock rather that offering them all for free? Do people purchase from solo stock sites often?
Looking for suggestions on the site, or any general advice. Thanks

click_click · « **Reply #1 on:** April 17, 2012, 18:50 »

A couple of things. You can do whatever you want that floats your boat.

I do 3D renders (for stock) and checked out a few of your textures and I wouldn't use them, even when they are free. Some are blurry, very noisy and as far as I could see not seamless (not tileable). That's useless stuff for me.

However, I'm sure a bunch of folks can use your textures. Just my concerns raised above, probably led to your textures being rejected in certain cases.

The next thing: Adsense. All nice and dandy but I, like 14+ million other Firefox users, use AdBlock Plus so I don't even see the ads on your site and therefore won't even get tempted to click on them.

Depending on how much traffic your site gets and the conversion rate you can achieve will tell if it's worth to set-up Adsense.

It's a matter of experience. Try it out and see.

cthoman · « **Reply #2 on:** April 17, 2012, 19:56 »

It depends on what you are looking for. Running your own site is a lot more work than just submitting to agencies. It can be rewarding, but you have to wear more hats (content creator, copywriter, businessman, accountant, designer, programmer, help desk, marketer, etc.).

I really enjoy running my own site. I find it rewarding (both professionally and financially), but I think cutting my teeth at the agencies helped. It took the knowledge of submitting and having successes and failures at different agencies to really understand what I wanted to do with my own site. I wouldn't have been ready to do it several years ago.

That said, it never hurts to try and see what happens.

BCritchley · « **Reply #3 on:** April 26, 2012, 08:22 »

Good luck with generating the traffic to your site

Les · « **Reply #4 on:** June 26, 2012, 04:33 »

Quote from: texture-city on April 17, 2012, 18:33

Would it be worth trying to sell the images as stock rather that offering them all for free?

Most definitely, your income would be higher even at 25 cents per download.

leaf · « **Reply #5 on:** June 26, 2012, 05:43 »

I think giving your stuff away for free in exchange for advertising can work on your own site. That said, you'll need a reasonably nice site, quite a bit of content and a while to figure out what ads / affiliate programs actually generate some income. I would also suggest trying out selling a few of the more popular textures or setting up a membership program where members can download everything for free. There are good wordpress plugins to do this easily.

cidepix · « **Reply #6 on:** June 26, 2012, 05:53 »

Quote from: leaf on June 26, 2012, 05:43

I think giving your stuff away for free in exchange for advertising can work on your own site. That said, you'll need a reasonably nice site, quite a bit of content and a while to figure out what ads / affiliate programs actually generate some income. I would also suggest trying out selling a few of the more popular textures or setting up a membership program where members can download everything for free. There are good wordpress plugins to do this easily.

leaf, there are a few WP plugins to do that.. BUT is there a WP plugin that supports multiple uploads so that we can actually upload our complete portfolio all at once, just like we can do it with K-tools and CMS account?

I don't know one that can do that..

leaf · « **Reply #7 on:** June 26, 2012, 07:17 »

Quote from: cidepix on June 26, 2012, 05:53

Quote from: leaf on June 26, 2012, 05:43
I think giving your stuff away for free in exchange for advertising can work on your own site. That said, you'll need a reasonably nice site, quite a bit of content and a while to figure out what ads / affiliate programs actually generate some income. I would also suggest trying out selling a few of the more popular textures or setting up a membership program where members can download everything for free. There are good wordpress plugins to do this easily.

leaf, there are a few WP plugins to do that.. BUT is there a WP plugin that supports multiple uploads so that we can actually upload our complete portfolio all at once, just like we can do it with K-tools and CMS account?

I don't know one that can do that..

No, not that I know of. I was thinking mostly of his background site which had just a few backgrounds. On a site that only has 50-200 files a manual upload / process would work.