Damia opened this issue on Jun 12, 2009 · 18 posts
Meowgli posted Mon, 22 June 2009 at 11:16 PM
as Christo mentioned above, one of your options is selling via stock sites. funnily enough, now might actually be a good time to get into it, at least microstock.... haven't personally seen any sales on macrostock sites (such as Alamy) recently, but designers and publishers are increasingly turning to microstock during the recession as a way of cutting back on their costs, unable to support assignments and staff photographers as they once were. I think I remember reading somewhere recently that there has been something like a 40% increase in sales via microstock sites since the recession hit, due to the relative low cost of per-image sales and the fact that more subscription buyers are actually likely to make use of their allocated number of downloads (example, Shutterstock's 25-a-day package)...
it's not for everyone, and what you may consider your best shots may not indeed be suitable for stock.... it also requires a large portion of time pixel-peeping with a critical eye, and keywording the images uploaded... after which they still might not make it through quality control.... but if you think it might be of interest to you, the best sites to check out are probably iStockPhoto, Shutterstock, Dreamstime and Fotolia. probably your best chance of a regular paycheck selling online..
having only started a couple of months back it's early days, but have already made a couple hundred sales, so it can be done ;) ... also a couple of sales on DeviantArt but I wouldn't recommend that as the artist royalties are pathetic.. somewhere around 10% when you get down to it! you could also try RedBubble, though I have no personal experience of this site myself, a friend sold a single print for over $200 recently...
hope this is of some use..
Adam