There will soon be an “e-bay” for photography, where users, businesses, art directors, agencies, buyers, and designers can all search for images to license. Students will search for ideas for homework assignments… while an Art Director at a central agency will search for an image to run a full-page advertisement in The Wall Street Journal. larablog articlelengthThe Art Director may pay 10,000.00, while the student might only pay twenty-five dollars. Price will depend on the popularity of the image and the use. The most successful photographers will earn more than ever before… and business-savvy photographers will also find ways to make good money. We will all fall further behind if we are less creative, less determined, and less motivated. This is the one constant in stock photography. Those who “get it” will prosper, just as they have always done. Those stuck in the past or slow to fade away will not be able to keep up and view more at issh path for photo editing.
How can photographers tap into this market?
Many professional photographers have lost sight of or never experienced the immense buying power of the “consumer” when selling their images to the editorial, design, and advertising communities. When I started selling my Animal Antics images, photos of funny animals in anthropomorphic poses or situations, as greeting cards, my eyes were opened. Although I make only a few cents per card, that can add up when you consider the fact that over 100 thousand cards are being purchased each month.
Even with such high sales, most people I speak to about greeting cards have never even seen them for sale. So, I find that a hundred thousand cards sold per month is only a fraction of the possible sales. It is amazing how much income you could make selling images to the general public, and this is especially true when you consider that images are a universal language and use clippingpathservices.co
Greeting cards with funny animal images are one way to do this.
However, this is not a great way to go. It’s possible, but not yet that the internet is the best way to do this. The above-mentioned “eBay” for photos…or some other mechanism to combine the elements of the customer, photographs, and transactions, should be in place. There is a need… The technology is there…it’s just a matter of time…and preparation.
This means that I have a website that works well in getting my images out to the public, and that it has content that people want. This content could include images that consumers can download and then print (and they WANT to print), images that they can license to their small business or images that they can use to spice their social media sites. Cafe Press is a company I have linked up with. They sell coffee mugs and calendars. ImageKind prints fine art prints. Many stock photo agencies license my photos for traditional advertising and promotional purposes. Blend Images is my primary source for conceptual imagery and ethnic lifestyle, Getty Images most often for business and concept images, Corbis for concept images, and Kimball Stock to license my anthropomorphic animal pictures. I still sell greeting cards under the Portal brand, published by and distributed through Marian Heath.
Every investment advisor will tell you to diversify.
This is especially important in times of uncertainty, and I believe these times are a good example of that. This advice is also important for photographers. How can we diversify? This means that I use a multi-pronged approach. Diversification is critical for me in my content, my target market, and my distribution.
Images are created for traditional advertising, design, and corporate markets. In these markets, I create lifestyle images and business images, as well as conceptual images. This is where I diversify the content of the traditional stock photography category. Next, I create images to sell…that is, images that can be used as products. This includes everything, from coffee mugs with photo imprints to photos for checks and photos for screensavers.
Once a year, I travel to photograph images of travel. I am constantly diversifying my content.
To diversify my distribution, I use traditional stock photo agencies such as Getty and Corbis and niche agencies such as Blend Images (for images that reflect ethnicity and business), and Kimball Stock for funny animal pictures. My distribution can be further diversified by selling greeting cards through Marian Heath greeting cards and hiring a licensed agent to sell and distribute additional “consumer images” for wide-ranging applications such as gift books, figurines, and picture frames!
Finally, I have my website, which I am currently fine-tuning to make my photos available to anyone interested and to guide them to the right distributor for their needs. I believe those of us who create such websites and learn from them will be able to have a significant advantage when the new paradigm comes along. I want to feel the thrill of riding the wave, not the pain of being crushed under it when it hits.