Tag Archives: sell your photos online

Top Selling Microstock Photography | Dreamstime

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make money with microstock photography 300x280 Top Selling Microstock Photography | Dreamstime picturesMicrostock photography has experienced tremendous growth in just a few short years. Digital cameras and broadband access are key contributors to the surge in market share. However,  low price points have been the primary reason for their recent success.

What is microstock photography? Microstock photography is an offshoot of traditional stock photography. In most cases, microstock photography businesses are exclusively operated via the Internet, are open to virtually any photographer, photographers receive lower payments compared to traditional stock photography standards (ranging from $.25 to $15), and images are typically offered royalty-free to the buyer.

Can I make money selling my photos using a microstock photo site? While much has been written about the pros and cons microstock photography sites has had on the traditional photography market, in a nutshell, yes you can make money in this market.

Microstock photography sites have created opportunities for many individuals and businesses that did not previously exist. Regardless of your experience level or portfolio size, if you can produce marketable images you now have a forum to showcase your work in front of millions of potential customers.

The site I personally use for my graphic design and marketing businesses is Dreamstime. They offer a tremendous selection of very affordable images with an easy to use interface. Many of my customers no longer have a large budget for producing promotion material. Dreamstime provides a great value for any business in need of stock photography(generic subject matter, but technically sound images).

From a photographer’s perspective, I was amazed at the success many have had in selling their work. Here is a list of a couple of the more successful photographers at Dreamstime, the size of their portfolio, and the amount of downloads they’ve sold:

Ron Chapple Studios

Uploaded files: 15476
Total sales: 60089
Portfolio exposure: 100%
Downloads per image: 3.88
Message boards: 7
Monthly uploads: 672.87 average
Uploads this month: 0

Redbaron

Uploaded files: 5434
Total sales: 21239
Portfolio exposure: 35.11%
Downloads per image: 3.91
Message boards: 12
Monthly uploads: 98.80 average
Uploads this month: 0

If you are interested in pursuing this potentially lucrative photography market, I would recommend signing up for an account and exploring what possibilities exist for your style of photography, plus picking up this terrific book on the topic by Douglas Freer.

Things to Know Before Starting a Photography Business

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053 150x150 Things to Know Before Starting a Photography Business picturesYou think you’re ready to start a photography business. Everyone in your family loves your Christmas card photos. Co-workers always comment about the pictures on your desk. Friend and social contacts love your website. You sold 7 group photos of your child’s Little League team.

Before quitting your day job to pursue a career as a professional photographer, here are some helpful tips and references you need to review before acting.

  • Anyone with an eye for original images, the right equipment and film, and excellent technical skills can take good pictures. But to make a living out of taking stunning photographs needs more than photography skills; you must also be a savvy businessperson….Starting a Home-Based Photography Business by Jenny Fulbright
  • However you envision your future in photography, if you’re going to make money at it, you’re likely to start your own business. That’s right, you’re going to be an independent entrepreneur, where you set your own hours, are your own boss, and watch TV late into the night as you clip your toenails. ..Starting a Photography Business by Dan Heller
  • You need to decide what sets you apart from the competition. Research the marketplace and find your niche. Choose to focus your photography business in a kind of photography at which your excel or in some untapped area of the market…Tips for Starting Your Photography Business by AllArtSchools
  • If turning photography into income has a downside, it’s this…Turning Rejection Into Success
  • You must associate with people who do what you do…21 Hot Tips for Success in Today’s Photography Marketplace

Getting your first paid job in photography

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photography business Getting your first paid job in photography picturesGetting your first paid job in photography is not as hard as you think. The secrets to cracking open the door to professional photography require attention to the following rules:

  • Develop consistency. Being a professional photographer requires the ability to deliver quality results on a consistent basis. Learn your equipment, inside and out. Live with your camera, take it everywhere you go. Photograph a variety of subject matter under a wide range of conditions. The technical aspects of using your photography should come second nature, with your main focus on composition and creativity.
  • Network, network, network. Always keep your eyes and ears open for potential opportunities. Talk openly about your desire to work as a professional photographer. Show your photographs to as many people as you possibly can. Ask for work. When first starting out, no job is too small. All jobs have the potential to land you the next job. No opportunity? Make your own. Produce your own show or exhibit. Volunteer to be an event photographer. Create a website. Communicate with other professional photographers in your area. Professional photographers can be a great source for referrals, in the event they are over booked or have a job they are not interested in taking.
  • Being lucky. Make no mistake, luck plays a large part in how quickly your photography business takes hold. However, you must be visible and ready for people to notice your work. To quote Seneca, (Roman philosopher) …”Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
  • Be professional. To be a professional photographer you have to act professional in all your business details. Return calls promptly, invoice accurately, and deliver final product within the specified time period. Sound simple, but this is the primary reason for photography business failures. Word of mouth is the greatest marketing tool you can have.

The world of professional photography can be a rewarding and prosperous career path. The biggest hurdle to overcome is self-doubt. Talk with professional photographers and learn from their mistakes. Going it alone can be a tough road to travel. Every job has a learning curve and photography is no different. Having a circle of peers in the business can be a tremendous resource for knowledge, encouragement and assistance.

Listed below are a few links to additional articles related to landing your first paid photography job:

Google Adwords Made Easy – free e-book

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google adwords cover big1 Google Adwords Made Easy free e book picturesIn my quest to spread the word about our photography blogs site and to gain the maximum exposure for all the great photobloggers contained within, I am in the process of crafting my first Google Adwords ad.

Over the last couple of years I have built up quite a few free Google Adwords dollars from my host Go Daddy, but have never used any of them. After spending most of this past weekend reading about Google Adwords for generating traffic, I remembered my cache of unused credits. What luck!

If you take a moment to view the right sidebar (near the bottom), you will notice an offer for a free e-book “Google Adwords Made Easy” by Brad Callen….this is the book I have been reading religiously for several days trying to figure out the keys to massive traffic. And what an amazing resource it has been! The book offer is free, no hidden charges, no tie-ins, just free knowledge.

Instead of just talking about this great book, I thought I’d share it with you. This 85 page book is for anyone interested in creating Google Adwords ads OR anyone wanting to gain a better understanding of the whole keyword selection process( that should cover most of us). Not sure how long I will keep this offer going; probably until I come across another book I’d like to share with you! But again, this is a no risk offer. Feel free to help yourself.

Hope you enjoy the book!

What are you thinking about?

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thinking 300x150 What are you thinking about? picturesIn the increasingly crowded blogosphere, finding out what your viewers want and need is key to your blogging success. In my field of photography blogging, I feel there are way too many sites with images only. While many enjoy these types of sites, from the perspective of a blog owner, image only sites leave little room for brand differentiation.Yes, marketing is important whether your are trying to sell cars, or entice viewers to frequent your site.

If you review the top rated photo blogs, you will find that in addition to great photography, there is also interesting written content as well. Photographers love to read about other photographers…type of equipment they use, the conditions under which the image was made, special tricks used during the shoot or in post production, etc.

This first question to consider is, “how do you find out what people want or need?” That’s easy, you ask them. The “asking” part of the marketing equation is often overlooked, since it is perceived to be a difficult task. However, producing a product without quality research is risky at best.

So get started today and try your hand at some simple marketing strategies. People love to give their input. Do you have comments on your blog? That’s input. However, if you want specific answers to your specific questions, there are several tools I use which can help you.

  • Zoomerang- Easiest way to ask, fastest way to know. Zoomerang offers an online survey service used by thousands of companies and bloggers alike. In addition, they also have a free 30 day trial. I have used this service for scholastic research as well as for blogging. Simple to set and a snap to use.  Learn more about Zoomerang
  • Skribit – A plugin application, whereby visitors can recommend topics that want to read about. You can use this application in a variety of ways. It’s fast, free and simple to use! Learn more about Skribit
  • SurveyGizmo – The SurveyGizmo plugin for WordPress gives you the best of both worlds. Use SurveyGizmo to build powerful, sophisticated and custom-styled surveys, but stay in WordPress to monitor responses. Learn more about SurveyGizmo
    What are you thinking about? pictures

Don’t publish another post until you read this!

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Great traffic on photography blogs does not happen by accident..or does it? Clearly, to be successful photo bloggers, visitors are important. What I am about to show you will forever change the way you manage your blog, so don’t publish another post until you read this.

It is no secret that Google is not just an important player in today’s online world, it is the most important factor in determining your online success. Google’s US search market dominance hits an all-time high this year with 67% of searches performed, with Yahoo Search (20%), MSN (5.25%), and Ask.com (4%), far behind.

But what does Google’s success have to do with photography blogs? Patience, I getting there. Google’s dominance in the search engine market has enabled them to compile more data than you could possibly imagine. But lucky for us, Google is the sharing type. Most users of Google have probably never noticed all the valuable applications they simply give away. From maps to office applications, widgets to data trends…yes, internet search data trends. By navigating your way around that minimalistic browser, you will find Google trends to map your way to blogging success.

Before I go too far, let me lay down the breadcrumbs to locate Google Trends…Google>more>even more>Labs>Google Trends. It’s amazing that most of the links you will find on these pages were once small companies which were bought out for millions, and are now just a blip in the world of Google!

Ok. Now that we’re warmed up it’s time to get down to business. Before you start any business or in our case write a post, you should start by defining your target audience. The target audience will be the customers or viewers you plan to pitch your product/post to. Make sense? Good. As we lay out our plans to define an audience, we start by thinking in broad terms. For our example, we will pursue field of photography. And since you are reading this article on my site, we can refine our product to “photography blogs”.

google trends Dont publish another post until you read this! picturesNow, you will need to pull up the Google Trends page which recently discussed. What is Google Trends? “With Google Trends, you can compare the world’s interest in your favorite topics. Enter up to five topics and see how often they’ve been searched on Google over time. Google Trends also shows how frequently your topics have appeared in Google News stories, and in which geographic regions people have searched for them most.”

From the description about Google Trends, I have emphasized, in bold letters, the key reason to use this tool is to increase the exposure and traffic of your photography blog….”in which geographic regions people have searched for them most.” Just a few paragraphs ago, we talked refining our product, or in our example blog post to “photography blogs”. With the use of this tool, we can determine what parts of the world the most searches for our topic occur, and then redefine our topic even more. After we enter our phrase into the tool and enter, here is the data we are presented with.

photography blog trends1 Dont publish another post until you read this! picturesWe can see quickly see that “photography blogs” is an increasingly popular keyword phrase. This is a good start, but there is much more we have also learned. In addition, Google makes it easy for us to drill down to the locale of users searching for our phrase. In the case, we can quickly see that
web searchers from India are the number one searchers for “photography blogs”. This is valuable information as we try to define our product/customer relationship equation. In using this data, it is clear that we can greatly increase our potential viewing audience by incorporating Indian related content, in addition to our photography blog subject matter. Although you don’t have to focus on the largest searching audience of your blog post topic, it would be wise to select one of the top audiences or change your subject matter to suit the audience you are after.

As we continue to sort through the search data on our keyword phrase “photography blogs”, we see thatregional photography blog trends Dont publish another post until you read this! pictures Google also gives us the “city” where the top searches of our phrase are performed. In this example, we see that ” New York City”, “San Francisco”, and “Washington, D.C.” are tops on the list. Again, we will greatly increase our viewing audience combining our general topic “photography blogs”, with content related to one or more of the top cities.

Using Google Trends will allow you to simultaneously compare up to 5 keywords/keyword phrases on one graph. Besides viewing where your search is coming from, I like to use Google Trends to determine if there is a seasonal nature to what I am writing about as well.

city photography blog trends Dont publish another post until you read this! picturesGoogle Trends really is a wonderful tool that can boost your traffic and drive results for free. Yes, the most under-appreciated blogging tool is free for the taking…if you know where to find it. So give it a test drive and let me know what you think!

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Comments Contest Update

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jessi room 111506 Comments Contest Update picturesThe first ever Comment Contest at ILovePhotoblogs.com is off to a fantastic start and doing extremely well. I am very excited about the reception I’ve  received so far, and we still have 2 weeks left! The contest competition is still wide open, with Sherry working very hard to hold onto her slim lead, with Pweng Bee not far behind. So crank it up and let the comments fly.

One clarification I need to make about when the contest will actually end…CONTEST ENDS SEPTEMBER 30, 2008 at 11:59pm EASTERN STANDARD TIME…Thank you Alan for that question.

While one of the major objectives of this contest was to encourage visitors to comment, comment, comment,…I am always in the market for new site reviews…and Suggest a Site users….If you have never visited the Randomizer 1.o, this is a must-see for photography blog enthusiasts…

Over the past few months, several visitors have asked about advertising on our site. At the time, I was not set up to handle the logistics of accepting page sponsorships. However, I’ve just completed the PayPal backend to the site and we are now able to offer this service to those interested in advertising on the web’s fastest growing photography blog site! Since many of our viewers are new to photography blogging,  I’ve set the rates to incredibly low prices as a way for new advertisers to test the waters of self-promotion. Space is very limited, so act now. If you have any questions about our programs, please contact me.

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