how to sell your photos online, or
how to sell your illustrations online, or
*** How to sell your pictures online ***
-= how to make money from your camera =-
-= how to make money from your brush and canvas =-
-= how to make money from your graphic tablet =-
part 1
This article is about earning money via internet. I want to make it very clear upfront that it is not about getting rich quickly; neither
it is about "earn $300 a day working from home" neither it is about online casinos, online marketing or any other such thing.
The aim of this article is to provide some guidance for photographers (and other digital artists) about possibilities to get income from
their photographs (or other digital works) using internet. More specifically - I will explain the ways of selling digital artwork via Internet.
Table of contents:
Part 1 (this page) - Introduction, fine-art prints, self-published books
Part 2 - Stock photography business
Part 3 - How to start selling stock photos
Part 4 - How to grow your photo business
I am photographer myself so for my own convenince I will use the words "photography" and "photographs" most of the time. However everything
said below about photography is equally applicable to drawings, paintings, vector illustrations and 3D renders.
If you are a photography enthusiast you might wonder what to do with your photographs. Suppose you are at the proficiency level when
your relatives and your friends appreciate your work. Probably you have framed a few pictures and placed on the walls, perhaps participated
in your photoclub exhibitions... However sooner or later you will ask yourself a question 'what's next?'
There is a possibility to make income from your hobby without becoming a full-time professional by selling pictures via internet.
Many amateurs are happy when they are able to offset the cost of their equipment (and their significant others become happier too).
Once you started selling your arftwork via internet, there is possiblity to take it a level further and to become a photo professional.
If you are already photo professional doing for example wedding or event photography you could also benefit from
selling some of your work online.
This is not a recipe of becoming rich quickly; as with any other business the result will depend on your efforts. If you think about
earning a living from that you need to treat this as your full-time job.
There are several significantly different possibilities for selling artwork via internet. Each has it's own Pro's and Con's. Stock photography
is the biggest market; and these days it is one of the easiest ways to start making money from your pictures. Thus it's logical that the biggest
part of this article is devoted to photo stock. However stock is not the only possibility, there are some other options (perhaps more creative).
So let's briefly talk about them before going to stock photography in details.
Selling Fine Art Pictures
Good quality print of an artistic picture, framed professionally, makes serious aesthetic impression. You can see many examples around - in cafes
and restaurants, in offices, in hotel lobbies, in airports, in people homes, etc.
There are online services that can take care of all the logistics - i.e. charging the customer, printing picture from digital file,
matting (framing), and sending it to the client. Authors will get a percent from each sale.
You only need to register with that service, and upload your pictures. So what's the trick?
- Marketing. These services advertise themsels, but there are thousands artists with hundreds thousands pictures for sale. Your chance of
getting noticed aren't very high. Keep in mind that there is no quality control of submitted pictures, so a great portion of the content
of such sites is crap. Indeed not an ideal situation for potential buyers unless they know exactly what are they looking for.
With that information, it should not come to you as a surprise that free inscription to such sites provides very limited possibilities; and that
your will get much more if you pay for extra service. That makes me wonder whether these sites get more money from ambitious artists rather
than from real art sales (I am not saying that there are no sales - I am just saying that there seem to be not that many sales).
So the trick with getting sales is to know the client needs and to advertise yourself via all possible channels.
Knowing your client needs means first of all that are able to produce good quality pictures. Besides the good quality it's crucial to
understand what style and what content would sell and what wouldn't. Just as an example, reportage war pictures are very unlikely to
sell well as fine-art prints. Advertising yourself means be an active member of the online community, be active blogger, involve all your friends and relatives, etc., etc.
DeviantArt.com is the most wellknown site of that sort. I think it is treated by many participants mainly as a popular artistic online community
first and only the second as a marketplace.
Another site that focuses more on selling the art work is Imagekind.com. It has an online community too but
much smaller than Deviant. Buyers can select from various printing options (size, paper type or canvas) and from various framing and glazing options.
Artists can make a kind of their own portals. You can see an example of my imagekind "portal" at
http://miklav.imagekind.com
I've seen very positive feedback about the quality of prints both about DeviantArt and about imagekind - but didn't check myself either of the two.
Different approach is taken by cafepress.com. Their focus is souvenirs - i.e. pictures on mugs, t-shirts and other objects.
Not really "fine art" objects; and the quality is reported to be so-so.
Self-publishing books
There are services that allow authors to prepare their own books that will be then printed on demand. Lulu.com is probably the most known
of such service. Whether you are writer or journalist or photographer or a mixture you can upload your content to lulu.com (text and/or pictures),
prepare the layout - and then anybody interested can buy a printed copy. Lulu will take care of collecting money, printing and sending the book
to the client. Authors will get a percent from each sale.
Authors don't need to pay anything. Money only get involved when a printed copy is ordered.
Again, there are thousands of ambitious authors and it's hard to get noticed without active self-promotion. At the moment of writing this article
there are more than 11,000 books offered on lulu.com in category Arts & Photography. So in order to succeed you
need to promote yourself but you need to understand your customers first, before starting active self-promotion.
You need to know the market. Selling photo albums is very hard. Selling illustrated stories might work better;
travel books can possibly sell better - you need to know what sells better and what you are capable to produce.
Another approach is to use self-publishing as a marketing tool (instead of a source of income). You can print a catalog of your pictures that
you will order yourself for showing to your offline clients. Some of the clients might even want to order their own copy of your catalog.
Whether you make book for sale or as marketing material, the content needs to be of a high quality. If you never done photography professionally
I would recommend you to start elsewhere (read further) before trying any photo book publishing.
The next part of the article will explain the business of stock photography and different kinds of photo stock.
If you are eager to read the practical advice about selling stock you can jump directly to part 3,
however reading part 2 is essential for understanding how
this busuness work and how to find your own way there.
Mikhail Lavrenov
Last update: February, 2008
continue to part 2
Feel free to contact me if you have further questions about stock photography. There are several ways to reach me:
You can leave a comment in my blog.
You can send an e-mail to info@miklav.com
Otherwise you can fill the form below to send your note directly to my inbox: