:: aerobrain ::

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Selling Your Photos Online

You have a camera and you know how to take photos? Why not try to sell it over the Internet? You don’t have to learn e-commerce or Internet security to sell photos on the Internet. There are some websites which will help you to sell and even advertise your photos online.

However, not all photos are considered sell-able. The websites at which you are submitting the photos will review your photos before they can help you to sell those photos. Here are some tips to get the photos sold:

1 - Must have commercial value
Photos must have commercial value at which people will think it as a nice photos and also can be manipulated. For example, photos of a flower is considered a common photos and low in commercial value, but photos of a flower on a heart shape box will be considered as highly commercial.

2 - Size more than 4 megapixels
Most of the sites only accept photos with 4 megapixels and above. I think most of the camera nowadays can easily exceed 4 megapixels. So, this should not be an issue.

3 - Photos must be free of excessive noise
Noise is one of the area that the reviewers will always look at. Noise normally related to the ISO setting on your camera. The higher the ISO, the higher the noise. It is because the sensor will boost up the contrast as the ISO getting higher to allow slower shutter speed at a low light condition. Depending on the sensor on the camera, some will exhibit more noise than the others. If you already shot good photos but the noise is high, you may try to remove the noise using Adobe Photoshop. It is a pretty simple steps really but don’t spend too much time if the photos are not commercial enough.

So what the websites that gonna help you to advertise and sold your photos? Below are some of the websites that I have tried:

• Dreamstime
• BigStockPhoto
• Fotolia
• iStockPhoto

I personally prefer Dreamstime due to the easy navigation for upload and managing your photos. You may try others as well, but I’ve got my photos sold mostly on Dreamstime.

These websites using a concept called royalty-free photo whereby the buyers only pay for what they want to use the photos for, such as for website or printing, etc. Of course, there is an option if the buyer would like to take ownership of the photos with the price that you have set.

Why not try now. From my observation (not yet happen to my collections), you don’t need lots of photos to generate money, you just need a highly commercial photos which can sold a lots! Remember, you will get paid by how many times your photos get downloaded.

Some example of hot selling photos @ Dreamstime:

You may view my portfolio @ Dreamstime: MyPortfolio

All the best! Thanks for reading.

regards,
aerobrain

• Posted by aerobrain at 10:01:49 in Photography, Techniques
• 3 comments (387 views)