Pixiq

The idea of selling stock seems to generate more than its fair share of fantasy. Well, it sounds good, doesn’t it? You have all these pictures, and a quick trawl through any online stock library confirms what you privately thought — yours are easily the equal of the bulk of what’s on offer. So, simply find an agency that will take your images, upload them, sit back and wait for the money.

Ah, maybe it’s not quite so simple (except for the waiting bit, which is guaranteed). Getty and Corbis don’t want any more pictures? Well, there’s Alamy, for instance. And there are also microstock agencies. The word ’microstock’ has an attractive ring to it, of something that has been properly worked out. Like a cross between a microlite and micromanagement. However, what the micro is really referring to is the size of the sale, although this is not the post in which I’m going to enter this very disputed area. I mention it as one of the last-resort routes that many photographers take in order to pursue the legendary income from stock. There may be better ways.

While the idea of stock appeals to most photographers, the reality takes some business sense and some effort. A few moments ago, before starting this paragraph, I thought I’d just check the books available claiming to tell you how to sell stock, and I admit to being surprised. I know I could be accused of writing too many books, so I’m in no position to complain, but there are more than 20 out there on stock photography alone! It’s hard to imagine that all those are justified, but of course it’s an indication of one more reason why stock revenues to individual photographers are falling across the board. There are more and more suppliers while prices sink lower and lower.

None of this is reason for despair or giving up, but it does call for realism and adaptation. The first step, obviously, is to have access to an effective e-commerce site to which you can upload images. Well, yes, Getty for example is an extremely effective e-commerce site, but it’s not the only one. And stock sales are essentially passive sales — you wait until someone finds your image because they’re looking for something like that. Of course, you make life as easy as possible for the searcher by keywording and doing all those things, but at the end of the day, you wait.

But why stick at one stock agency? The days are long gone when picture libraries demanded total exclusivity. Why not run, in addition, your own e-commerce site that you manage? A site that you can promote actively to potential buyers whom you target? Over the last month I’ve been through the process of setting up a new e-commerce site for just this reason. For historical reasons I have stock images with a number of different agencies, although the main one is Corbis. Nevertheless, it was time to re-think my own website. The platform I’ve been using up to now allowed me to be semi-independent for e-commerce — I could put up whatever I wanted, and the operator managed the sales, taking a percentage. It was less useful, however, at providing three other things I wanted integrated: a good-looking portfolio, communicating with assignment clients, and a blog. And I was paying a not-inconsiderable monthly fee. What I wanted was complete independence, to customise a site, without a lot of pain, and then set about promoting it directly.

The market for e-commerce photography sites is now much more competitive than it was eight years ago when I signed up. As a result, there is a good choice of platforms for self-managed sites, with improving features and at good value for money. PhotoShelter is probably the best-known, but on recommendation I went with a newer, similar, platform called PhotoDeck. Web design and management is not something I particularly want to add to my list of skills — life’s too short and there are pictures waiting to be taken — so it was good to be talked through the things I needed to do by Jean-François, who founded and runs PhotoDeck. These were: transferring my domain ownership to me from the previous agency, managing that with the registrar, setting up an account for a blog host, and choosing a blog design from one of the many available from the ubiquitous WordPress. J-F advises to keep separate the three components: domain registrar, website platform, and blog host. That helps avoid any possible conflicts in the future — a small point but sensible.

As for my PhotoDeck site, customising it was very simple; a matter of choosing styles and colours, and making the links. The blog is a separate, WordPress site, but integrating the design with the rest of the site keeps it looking like it’s all in the same place, like this...

By far the biggest job is prepping images for upload, and the biggest, most tedious part of this is the captioning and keywording. It’s actually quite a lot more than that, because there are several other fields that need to be completed for every image, including the rights release status, location/city/country, copyright, and a few more. A small chore for one image, a major task for several thousand. Even with two people working on this, it’s a job that will go on well into next month. It's here — all constructive comments welcome.

All this is step one. Step two is marketing your site. More later on that....