As a photographer and as many other photographers I did spend a lot of time on the web to find out a decent ways to sell my work, I know how much it’s frustrating to search and to find out your way to the on-line photos Market, Stock image web sites are one of the most popular tool to achieve this, still very hard through this huge market to figure out which is the most reliable, trustful and after all worth the hours spent to apply and upload your tons of photographs hopping that it will sell after all.
That’s why I came up with the idea to start this blog, hopping it will help other photographers, specially beginners to save their time and find as much possible information through a previous experience and recommendation in one place.
(keep reading if you like to know more about Stock image market ,or simply click here if you prefer to go directly to the resources and links page)
So what is stock images or photos market mean? (in case you are new to it)
Stock photos market is an expanding market for selling photos online for example Shutterstock , Kozzi, 123rf.com, Fotolia, Dreamstime and others, most of those online markets are websites offering a platform dealing with two types of clients, the first is the contributor “Photographer” which is the seller also the “images, videos or art work” provider and the seconds is the end buyers such as web designers, advertising companies, agencies, Newspapers..etc.
Most of stock images market/agencies provide their services to both clients in form of Licensing system, from Right managed (Licensed image) and royalty free Licenses, typically the contributor getting a percent ‘Commission” from the License selling price/fee, the stock image web site make its profit from the original selling price or through a percent “Commission”, depends on the Stock image provider business model which will be described later in details.
So it’s simply a data base of Thousands or hundred of thousands of images and artwork, owned by the contributors/ artists which allow buyers to search it and buy those images
What you will need first is to know how the licensing system work and their types also which one will serve your need. Licensing is selling the right of using the images from contributor to the end buyer, each license type allow certain level of using the images and each License has its price and will define the percent of what the contributor will finally get.
Types of licensing and which one is better for you?
Right managed License.
Is an individual licensing agreement which negotiated for each use of the image for a certain duration of time.
Usual clients are advertising campaigners/Agencies, corporate and Newspapers.
License agreement are mostly exclusively which means their will be restriction on selling the same image for the agreed period of time, territory, industry..etc
Royalty Free License
This license type is a free of Royalty license which means customer must pay every use of image. Purchased License is for usage for a certain project, amount and times based on the License agreement.
Also photographer can sell the image as many times as he or she wants.
So now the question is it worth it?
Definitely yes, and yes there are challenges, most current stock images data bases stuffed with hundreds of thousands of images, so the chances for yours to stand out the crowd and find a buyer is certainly a challenge, still its much better than keeping your photos only stuffed in your Computer hard desk also the more stock images web sites you apply to and the more images you contribute the more chance you manage a sustained income from selling your images on-line.
Click here to check the stock images resources list
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Lotofphotography
Stock Image Market - where to sell your photos? 