Where do you sell your VERY BEST photos? I'm new to microstocks - I plan to try out a few of the sites for my very good and great photos, but what if you have two or three photos that are so great that you think that they could become posters or calendar pictures or something? Do you still sell them on stock photo sites and if not, who and how would you try to sell them to? I'm talking about landscapes. Or am I missing the point, and if they are really that good, then they'll get downloaded a lot?

Anybody have any experiences selling on ebay? Thanks.

It's not so much the Where you post for you right now but the WHAT. Very few of us had any idea what would sell on these sites. Like you I first uploaded what I though was very good work just to have most rejected. They were Good Photographs...but not Good Stock Photographs. Over the years most of my first images that were accepted are at the bottom of my downloaded list.
I suggest you look at your BEST images, keyword them, but then look on a bunch of stock sites to see what comes up. Then look at the numbers of downloads for each image. On iStockPhoto you can sort by downloads. You'll be surprised how much the successful images vary.
What most of us learned early on is that the rejection/acceptance procedure is wildly variable. So be prepared to have your favorite "best" images peppered with all kinds of rejections as to: noise, artifacts, not-stock-suitable, bad lighting, bad background, too many similars, and about a thousand more objections. But some sites will accept almost anything.
I'm sure others here can add to the experience list. Good luck.


_________________
IStockPhoto
Shutterstock
StockXpert
Dreamstime
Fotolia
BigStock
LuckyOliver
FeaturePix
SnapVillage

so it's no problem to submit pics to several of the microstock sites at once?

What about landscapes? Is there a better place to try to sell them than the microstock sites?

and, what about the big three - corbis, getty images, and jupitermedia? I assume the pay is much better but it's much harder to get photos accepted? thanks.

CoachMike,
You should consider Shutter Point at www.shutterpoint.com . I only have 29 images up there, but made more money in four months that on all the other sites put together. Some people have a difficult time getting sales there, but the right scenic or wildlife will bring you what you think the shot is worth.

Most people set their prices higher than I do. I figure $50 per download is fine for me. Some manages to get four or five sales per year therre at $100 to $300. You don't have to get passed a reviewer; however you should at least be able to generate a good looking image with a minimal amount of noise and a reasonalbly sharp image in order for it to sell.

I notice thos images that sell would not necessarily make good Microstock inventory and would never get passed Shutterstock reviewers without being rejected. I actually made $200 within two days time on images flat out rejected by Shutterstock. For the number of downloads I had on Shutter Point I would have received a total of $1 from Shutter Stock. So it doesn't break my heart that I'm not good enough for Shutter Stock, because there are other ways.

Choose your work carefully, and good luck!
harry

Harry,
You didn't mention that shutter point charges a fee for space ?
That kinda turned me off right away.....


_________________
Good shooting and thanks for listening

bennym wrote:

Harry,
You didn't mention that shutter point charges a fee for space ?
That kinda turned me off right away.....

You are right Benny; I paid something like $21 for the 100 MB starter package. I also forgot to mention that you will have to delete many images that get a lot of skips by stupid Power Raters (Guys trying to review a lot of images to get a free month); if you get three skips (No Numeric Rating/Favorable comment) you will be asked to take action on that image.

A better site with no fee is MostPhotos.com. Similar to SP but no FEE and NO LIMIT to space. You also set your own prices for Exclusive (Means on time sale - not to be sold again), on the standard RF you get 70% of 29 Euros! That amounts to about $30 US. So I will be closing out my SP account when my subscription expires in August, 2008.

This would be interesting for you Benny.

I could be mistaken, but are you the same Bennym from BigStock Photos? You do some nice work Bro!
Harry

Thank you for the nice words Harry
Yes I'm the same bennym from BSP and a few other places....

Actually BSP is my best selling site.... I'll check out that other place you mentioned... thanks....


_________________
Good shooting and thanks for listening

Harry wrote:

...So it doesn't break my heart that I'm not good enough for Shutter Stock, because there are other ways.

Anybody who can sell stock at a few hundred dollars is good enough for Shutterstock. You just have to put up with their application process, during which just about everybody seems to get rejected at least once.

In my experience, getting three initial images past iStock is harder than getting seven past Shutterstock.

Both are well worth the bother.


_________________
JK

www.microstockphotography.info