Anyone here into digital photography?

thesupe87

ArenaCreative.com
Jun 13, 2005
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D34DC311 said:
^^
Right now me my brother and my dad are trying to save up for a digital SLR, for my mom, she is kinda a freelance photographer, people from other states ask her to go take pics, for their weddings. kinda cool, but expensive hobbie.

Has anyone had any success with getting their photos accepted to BigStockPhoto yet? I never thought I'd ever hit this much, but I'm up past 150 already...and that's just when I'm bored at work, or in spare time :icon_razz
 

thesupe87

ArenaCreative.com
Jun 13, 2005
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www.arenacreative.com
150 pics - actually now I'm up to 181 :)

I sell anywhere from one to three images a day, so by the end of the week, that's not bad. Some days you don't sell any. Everyone is telling me that once you hit your first $30 payout, the next one comes a lot faster, becuase by that point you usually have a lot more pictures. Right now, I'm at like 10 bucks - but just 2 weeks ago, I was at 3 bucks. The number of images you have, as well as the quality of the images, definitely comes into play.

The thing is, you can host your images up at bigstock, then take them all over to dreamstime.com and host them there, and at the same time crestock.com, and also shutterstock.com - so between all of the sites, you can be selling your images on each one. I haven't really ventured out to the other ones yet, but maybe in the future.
 

thesupe87

ArenaCreative.com
Jun 13, 2005
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My image collection is almost at 250...yeah I know, I never thought I'd get this far either.

I have been using a lot of these types of micropayment websites lately - the key is keywording your jpeg images with an IPTC / EXIF editor, either in Adoboe Photoshop, or just download the free program called IrfanView.

I'm trying to see if one site sells more images than the next. I read that these ones below are a lot better than BigStockPhoto (besides iStockPhoto, which I haven't tried yet - since I hear they are like nazi's for image quality)

Here are the links once again - sign up, and try it out.

BigStockPhoto: (I've sold tons of images on this site, I still sell 1-3 a day at least)


http://www.bigstockphoto.com/?refid=GOUVAfUzdT

Dreamstime: (I am in the process of uploading my images, it just sucks because they don't have ftp upload support - and ftp upload makes life a heck of a lot easier / much faster)


http://www.dreamstime.com/res66228

Shutterstock (supports ftp upload also - I hear most people make the most sales with this one, I'll find out soon enough)


http://submit.shutterstock.com/?ref=59783

Fotolia: (supports ftp upload as well - in the month of February every image you get accepted, you get like free credits, or money or something- there's details on the site)


http://www.fotolia.com/partner/33662

Fotolia, Shutterstock, and BigStock all have multi-file ftp uploads, where Dreamstime does not. FTP makes things so much easier, since most image are over 1 megabyte.

If you've got any questions, feel free to ask them guys Thanks
 

thesupe87

ArenaCreative.com
Jun 13, 2005
72
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Heck yeah man, that 15-30 bucks a month I was making...turned it into like $400 -$550 / month now. That's with 400-600 images approved on each of the sites I sell them on. This is all in just a few hours real work each week :) It just takes time and patience to get it up there, definitely give it a shot. This only took me like 8 or 9 months.
 
Jun 6, 2006
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www.dreamertheresa.com
thesupe87 said:
I wouldnt want my kids' face on a box of korean yo-yos either...you have to be selective in what you're selling away the rights to. I just figure, hey - it's side money. If I can make enough to cover my celly bill each month, that'll be thrilling to me. I work full-time as a graphic design...so I only dabble with this stuff once in a blue moon in my spare time.


You might think you're being selective about who you're selling the rights to, but if it's a stock photo gallery, they'll take the money from just about anyone. So you really have no idea where your pictures will end up.

But if you know this ahead of time, and are okay with that (and they are, in fact, your own pictures), then more power to ya.
 

thesupe87

ArenaCreative.com
Jun 13, 2005
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www.arenacreative.com
Exactly. As soon as they pay for it, they have the rights to use the photos wherever. I would never upload anything I didn't have the rights to, or that I didn't shoot with my own camera.

MkIII N00b - link me to your gallery, I couldn't seem to find it. Which site did you sign up for? Keyword supra - we should get it to have all supramania images :) You never know...super street magazine or sport compact car could need an image of an mk3 supra, and our cars could end up being famous. I've sold images of my own supra multiple times - I just wish I could see the photos in action. They could be on websites, in print, anywhere really.

The trick to this industry is to sell your portfolio of photos as many places as possible, and you'll make the most profit. If you sell on just one or two sites, you're only hurting yourself. Its perfectly legal, also - royalty free licenses allow you to sell all of your same images from many different sites - as long as you don't sign up for exclusivity with any one specific site...
 

thesupe87

ArenaCreative.com
Jun 13, 2005
72
0
0
USA
www.arenacreative.com
Sometimes it takes about 5-6 days, tops. I'd start with Dreamstime, BigStockPhoto, and Fotolia. Once you have like 30-40 pics up online, pick your ten best and apply to Shutterstock. Shutterstock is where you'll make the most money :) Make sure you sign up under my links on my site, so I get the brownie points :p Thanks dude - let me know if you have any more questions. My email is thesupe87@ yahoo.com