The Heaven Sent Digital Photography

What do you do with your photographs once they are considered good? You know the ones, the one you are proud of, the ones you like to show to other people, the ones you just know are good, knowing you were fortunate to be there at the right time with your camera on hand.

So what do you do with such photographs? Well I will assume that they are snap shot photographs, but I will show you how you can maximize them to your advantage. I define snap shot photographs by the way as those photographs you happened to take by chance rather than the well planned and thought threw approach normally used by professional photographers. I am not saying snap shot photographs are poor, rather I am saying that a much higher degree of control is put into the typical professional photograph. Snap shot photographs do sell, in many cases they sell well, but nowhere need as well as the well planned and executed shot.

I am now assuming that you are a good amateur photographer or a budding profession and wondering what to do with your photographs once you are happy with them. I think you know the answer to that, you want to sell but to whom. Well you are in luck; times have changed with the advent of the digital revolution, as it is now easier to sell your photographs, time and time again with ease. The way you do it is to submit them to an Online Stock Agency, for them to advertise them through the internet so that they can be downloaded and sold; making money for you, for the agency; while providing the buyer with an instantly downloaded photograph at a fair price.

However to understand, and fully appreciate the Online stock Agencies we need to discuss the older Offline Stock Agencies. These were the traditional way to sell your photographs. These agencies knew their business and knew how to manage and control their photographers, and they certainly did not encourage new photographers. Yes I am a wee bit biased against them; I grew up in the olden days and remember them well as remnants of the old establishments such as the banks.

Remember the banks of yesteryear, and how they used to take great pleasure in telling you that you were overdrawn and in debt, and as for obtaining a loan, that was totally out of question. Then banks realized that they could make more money from you if you were in debt, and then you were bombarded with offers of loans. I know this is a bad analogy in today's current financial climate, but there are similarities with the offline stock agencies.

Offline stock agencies ran like the banks used to. They demanded a sizable portfolio of your photographs before they would even consider your work. They did give comments when the photographs were not good enough and rejected, but the feedback was always discouraging, leaving you thinking that you are not good enough and you never would. When rejected by one agency, you try another, but one agency was as bad as the other. They were always in control, and it left you the photographer doubting your ability. They were also good at keeping the relationship strictly as Master and Servant.

Now the people who bought photographs from these agencies were usually local, normally living in the same City or county as the Agency, thereby limiting their supplier base, and in doing so the agencies limited their photographer suppliers.

Then the internet came along and changed everything. Stock Agencies could sell globally, and instead of thinking of a percentage of millions of customers they could think of percentages of billions of customers. So with an increasing demand for customers, these agencies need increasing suppliers, and that is where we come in.

In fact it gets better, because the way the images are displayed to the customers via computers, this will allow many more of these images to be easily viewed and downloaded by the customers. The photographer supplying the photographs even has the ability to tag their photographs, making it easier for a customer to locate, view and with a bit of luck, make a purchase.

And better still; the photographer supplying the photographs can simply upload digital images to these agencies instead of developing film and posting them snail mail to these agencies; that have to catalog them before presenting them

And it gets even better; these online agencies actually encourage new photographers. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying they have lowered their standards, no, if anything, standards have increased, but they have made it much easier for you to be accepted, and easier for you to submit your photographs; and hence easier for you to earn money.

It is a golden opportunity for you to have your photographs appreciated while earning money for yourself. You should start seeing the internet as being heaven sent; a great tool to promote your efforts.

I therefore hope this background has gotten your inspiration juices working, and that you can see an opportunity for yourself selling your photographs online.

If you are one of those people whose glass is always half empty, why not free up your hard drive and save your good photographs online and save on disc storage space, or even use the Online agency as a backup for your good photographs, that way if somebody likes your photographs and downloads them, then you can also make a few bucks.

If you are like the others, whose glass is half full, then you should be able to see the benefits off the online stock agency and how they can help you make a constant residual income. You should be able to make a plan of uploading at least ten photographs a month and watching your residual earnings increase exponentially as your photograph collecting increases and thus your sales increase.

What have you got to lose? It costs nothing to join these agencies, and it cost nothing to submit your photographs. They are much easier to join than you may think. Let us face it; you will be cataloguing your photographs anyway for your own purposes.

Gordon.

About the Author:
Gordon McCulloch is the author of the photofortune (http://www.photofortune.com) eBook which shows you how to make money from your photographs. He would prefer you to grab a copy of his free report at http://www.photofortune.com/freereport to see his style and enthusiasm for the subject.