Anyone submit to the stock photography sites?

[BamaGirl]

Is it worth the time and effort?

[F.Gordon]

1. Me.No.Understand

:shrug:

Are these sites that pay you or are these submission sites for "royalty free images"? Sorry can't help ya', and it appears that no one else can either.

Hopefully someone else will come along that can.

:hi:

[FloridaPat]

2. Here is an interesting site. THe fellow that runs it tells how to start

a business and other intersting photo selling items.

http://www.danheller.com/

[BamaGirl]

3. Thx for that link!

[regnaD kciN]

5. I have one of his books...

...Profitable Photography in the Digital Age, or something like that. I wasn't all that impressed. He has a lot of basic, extremely generalized information about marketing, websites, stock photography, etc., and even more in the way of vaguely-discouraging bromides like "if it was easy, everyone would be doing it," but not much in the way of new or constructive ideas.

The most useful information I got from him was his own personal business breakdown, which was that 40%-50% of his business came from sales of prints, 35%-40% from licensing of images, and 3%-5% from photo assignments. (He didn't mention where the remaining 5%-23% comes from...maybe selling books on how to run a photo business? ;-) )

[hyphenate]

4. I don't know an awful lot

about stock photography as it is now, but back in the "old days" when I first was considering photography as a profession, you needed at least 10,000 images to submit to be qualified. Back then, photography was very expensive, and it was more than I could afford to do.

On the other hand, I know one guy who DID go on to be a pro photog, and made a good living with it. You know that one photo that Corel uses as part of its logo, of the hot air balloon? This guy I know took that photo. Of course, this guy also worked at Columbia Records back in the 60s, and took a lot of pics of famous bands and bandmembers (including the Beatles!) and so he had money to back him up as well. Since those days, he and his wife have traveled the world and done pretty well for themselves.

One guy I read about took one photo that made over $25,000 for him through sales. It can be lucrative, but you really need to stop looking for artistry, and concentrate on the mundane. Most stock photographers take pictures of every day things, every day events and every day people. Stock in and of itself is for advertising and articles in magazines, and uses photos to illustrate, not to enlighten, and not to illuminate. Thus, if you ever read an article, say in a cat magazine, and they have photos in the article, it's likely that they were chosen from stock instead of commissioned for the piece itself.

For anyone who wants to prove their artistic view through their work will be sadly disappointed in submitting photos to stock. On the other hand, if someone is out to make a buck, and has no innate skill in photography only enough to make a sharp image, they are more likely to succeed with it. As with most other jobs, hacks succeed very well at it.