How To Sell Your Artwork

Have you ever dreamed of selling your photos or artwork commercially on the web? The task can seem daunting, but it is so rewarding when people start purchasing your babies! So, where does one start? There are many, many stock agencies world wide, and they all have their own way of doing things. Some of them require sample images before they will approve you and allow you to upload images. Others have a grueling process of submitting photos. in the beginning, I ended up spending about 5-10 minutes per photo only to have the image rejected. When you are dealing with 300 images, that can be very time consuming and not very productive. It took me six months to get over 300 images submitted to 14 agencies. It was a learning process that I am going to pass on to you.

The most important element of getting your photos sold is to have them properly key worded so that they are visible to search engines. There are special applications that can be purchased to aid in key wording that will associate them with each image on your computer. Then when you upload, the data, called meta tags, goes with the image. If you don't want to spend money on a new program and time learning it, you must add the keywords to each image once they are uploaded to the agency. You can begin to see how this can be very cumbersome if you are dealing with several hundred images and multiple agencies. Fortunately, I found a service that helps you distribute, promote and track all your digital media with multiple agencies. It is called Isyndica, and it is an answered prayer for stock contributors. Here is how it works. Upload your photos or artwork to their website. This is where you add your keywords to each file. Take the time now to get the correct keywords added. If you take care of it now, you will do it just once instead of adding meta data on each agency site. You should have a minimum of 20 words and a maximum of 80. All sites are have different requirements on the amount of keywords they will accept, most will accept 50-80. I found it was easier to delete some key words before submitting to an individual agency than to add keywords on every site. My brain got tired. At this point you may be asking, "What are keywords, anyway." Keywords are words that describe the image that a person would use when searching for a particular image. Here is the formula for coming up with appropriate keywords. First come up with a title for the image, keeping in mind you want to be as specific as possible. Don't get too creative here. Again, you want to use words that describe the image and you want them to be words you would use when searching for that particular image. Next add a description. (I skipped this step initially and had to go back to each agency and add a description to each image. That proved to be very time consuming. I don't recommend doing this). Pretend you are describing the image to a blind person, being as descriptive as possible. Now between the title and the description, you have your keywords! Here is another trick. Go to a stock agency website and do a search for a similar image, then take a look at what keywords they used. At first your mind may be blank, like mine was, but you will start to get the hang of it and words will start flowing to you. Use location, lighting, time of day, adjectives, anything that describes the image. Be sure to be as accurate as possible with your keywords, however. Agencies can suspend your account for keyword stuffing. Once you have your title, description and keywords set, you are ready to start uploading your images via FTP (File Transfer Protocol),to agencies.  Just follow the directions, it's as easy as pointing and clicking. To make is easier, there is a list of agencies that are working with this service, so you don't have to go searching for them. You will need to go to each agency, register for an account and get their particular submission guidelines. This can be somewhat time consuming at first but once you have your channels configured, you can upload quickly and easily as often as you want.

A note about selecting your images for submission. First I would look at what is selling at several agencies to get an idea of what they are looking for. Next, when choosing your images, they must be clean and tack sharp. Also, digital noise is a huge consideration. Most images are rejected for one of two reasons. Either they are not sharp enough or there is too much digital noise and/or distorted pixels. View your image at 100% and be ruthless before deciding to submit it. Choose only your best work. You are going to need an 8 mp camera at a minimum, captured in raw and then saved as a jpg. Do not do multiple saves as this degrades the image. Do any computer processing you feel necessary, then save it as the highest quality jpg. That is the file you want to submit. Be extremely frugal with sharpening. Most of the time this distorts the pixels too much and it will be rejected. Once you have been brutal in the selection process, and you feel strongly about your image, stand behind it. The approval process can be very difficult and disappointing when an image is rejected. I discovered that what one agency rejected, another accepted. The whole thing is suggestive so it can become frustrating, but not every agency will like every image. If you want a complete portfolio of your images, I would recommend Zenfolio. This is a site that will showcase your images and has avenues for selling them as well. You decide what images you want, arrange them anyway you like, set your own pricing and there are options for merchandise. I love this site! It is a very intuitive and answered all my needs. Use referral code: XZD-AXX-NAZ to receive a $5 credit.

Ok, are you ready to get your artwork out there? Have fun and enjoy the thrill when someone chooses one of your images. It's exhilarating, so take time to celebrate it.

P.S. I have added links to a couple of stock agencies so you can get an idea of what to expect.