Nice photo sell

Just sold a photo of mine for use on a phone book cover for one year. $500 for one year usage. Probably should have been closer to $1,000 but not too bad. Nice surprise. If I would have put it on iStock photo I would have had to sell it at least 500 times!

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James Pratt
www.advridermag.com
www.-james-pratt.com
www.motorcyclestock.com

Can you post the picture? Which phonebook?

Can't reveal either until it is published in April.

I asked the buyer how they found me, which I always do so I can better target my marketing. He said he went to Corbis and Getty to find a picture to use, but they didn't have anything that caught his eye. So he searched Flickr and found my photo, then google'd to find my phone number. Said they compared hundreds of photos and chose mine. They were right up front about paying, didn't mind at all. Very professional. I had them a low res for-placement test image in about 30 minutes. They mocked it up, showed it to the decision makers, it was approved, and I had them the final 70MB tiff file within a couple of hours and a usage contract to boot. They really liked that fast service.

HINT: You might be able to guess the image from my flickr account. Cool

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James Pratt
www.advridermag.com
www.-james-pratt.com
www.motorcyclestock.com

Congrats James. Just goes to show as we discussed before on the pic I sold to national geographic, more and more companies are looking to flickr to find images. I do wonder how you were able to deliver them such a large file. Did you deliver it in person on a disc or do you have a way to to get it to them digitally. That was an obstacle I had with NG is the email limited the file size to 10mb.

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[URL="http://flickr.com/photos/thisbejonas/"]My Flickr[/URL]
[URL="http://justashotinthedark.com"]Just A Shot In The Dark[/URL]

I use Photoshelter.com to deliver images to my customers. I archive my stuff there and it is linked to my web site, just go under archives. I can upload full res images and customers that I allow can download low res proofs or high res images. photoshelter is specifically designed for commerical photographers. I am very happy with the service they provide.

A little more detail on how they work. For customers that I do a lot of work for on a regular basis, I create a user name and password to log into my site. There they have whatever access to images I choose to give them. They can download stock images using the fee structure I set out, or I can one time price them.

In the case of this customer, I didn't have a relationship with them and it was a single image deal. Photoshelter has a way for me to create an "instant sale" where I create a URL to the high res version of that image. The URL is only good for 72 hours. I send it to the customer, they download the image, and the URL disappears in a few days.

I could invoice them through photoshelter if I like but they they get a cut. In this case I just created an invoice in my accounting system, exported it as PDF, and emailed it to the customer. The entire transaction took a few hours and was all electronic.

_________________
James Pratt
www.advridermag.com
www.-james-pratt.com
www.motorcyclestock.com

Well I've made $700 this month at istock, $600 last month and will continue to do that every month from now on.
I know you guys don't like iStock but the $17,000 I've made in micro stock in the last few years has allowed me to purchase a lot of gear.
I have about 130 images at istock, my goal for 2010 is to have 500 uploaded and bring in $2000+ per month.
There are people that have made well over $1,000,000 at iStock, it's all about numbers, and what you want to put into it.

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Bob Ainsworth
http://www.BobAinsworth.com

Great Web Site Hosting -----> http://www.lunarpages.com/id/bobain2

AinsworthPhoto wrote:

Well I've made $700 this month at istock, $600 last month and will continue to do that every month from now on.
I know you guys don't like iStock but the $17,000 I've made in micro stock in the last few years has allowed me to purchase a lot of gear.
I have about 130 images at istock, my goal for 2010 is to have 500 uploaded and bring in $2000+ per month.
There are people that have made well over $1,000,000 at iStock, it's all about numbers, and what you want to put into it.

No problem with that. Glad it is working for you. I download from istock for our magazine all the time, mostly nicknaks on white backgrounds.

_________________
James Pratt
www.advridermag.com
www.-james-pratt.com
www.motorcyclestock.com

AinsworthPhoto wrote:

Well I've made $700 this month at istock, $600 last month and will continue to do that every month from now on.
I know you guys don't like iStock but the $17,000 I've made in micro stock in the last few years has allowed me to purchase a lot of gear.
I have about 130 images at istock, my goal for 2010 is to have 500 uploaded and bring in $2000+ per month.
There are people that have made well over $1,000,000 at iStock, it's all about numbers, and what you want to put into it.

If you don't mind, I'd like to see a sample of your iStock images.

AinsworthPhoto wrote:

Well I've made $700 this month at istock, $600 last month and will continue to do that every month from now on.
I know you guys don't like iStock but the $17,000 I've made in micro stock in the last few years has allowed me to purchase a lot of gear.
I have about 130 images at istock, my goal for 2010 is to have 500 uploaded and bring in $2000+ per month.
There are people that have made well over $1,000,000 at iStock, it's all about numbers, and what you want to put into it.

Can you give some insight into what type of photos sell best of istock? I'd like to start getting a little more serious about photography.

Bob can probably reply better than I, but I do PURCHASE a lot of stock photography on iStock. What we mostly buy are things on a white background. We buy all sorts of stuff to enhance our magazine layouts. Here is a list off the top of my head of things we have purchased in the last few months, all on a white background

Various types of money from different countries
pics of guns
turbans
almonds
stamps from different countries
hieroglyphs
sheet of old worn leather
boots

_________________
James Pratt
www.advridermag.com
www.-james-pratt.com
www.motorcyclestock.com

jamisonj wrote:

AinsworthPhoto wrote:

Well I've made $700 this month at istock, $600 last month and will continue to do that every month from now on.
I know you guys don't like iStock but the $17,000 I've made in micro stock in the last few years has allowed me to purchase a lot of gear.
I have about 130 images at istock, my goal for 2010 is to have 500 uploaded and bring in $2000+ per month.
There are people that have made well over $1,000,000 at iStock, it's all about numbers, and what you want to put into it.

Can you give some insight into what type of photos sell best of istock? I'd like to start getting a little more serious about photography.

http://www.istockphoto.com/most_popular.php

People in business situations sell really well. Which I'm going to try and focus on this year.
Like James said just a wide verity of stuff on white sells well. You never know what people will need as you can see from James's list.

This guy has a great port. http://www.istockphoto.com/most_popular.php

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Bob Ainsworth
http://www.BobAinsworth.com

Great Web Site Hosting -----> http://www.lunarpages.com/id/bobain2

Hey Bob, what is the ratio between Accepted vs Rejected images. If you don't mind me asking. I have a very small amount on there. Maybe 12 images. I know it takes hundreds to make any money. I get frustrated by how many get rejected over how many get accepted. I know it's my skill level and all but they are sometimes way to picky. For example I have uploaded 3 or more of the same subject but at different angles or arrangements. They reject them because they are too similar. Well maybe the artist would like a choice of what angle if he likes the subject matter.

Sorry to hijack this thread James. And super job on the cover of the phone book.

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Online Shop
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Flickr Page

My photo just came out. It is on the cover of the User Friendly Phone Book that is being distributed around OKC right now.

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James Pratt
www.advridermag.com
www.-james-pratt.com
www.motorcyclestock.com

And speaking of stock images, just to give you an example of what sells on places like iStockphoto, I am looking for a cheap stock photo of either a moving van or someone carrying a big stack of moving boxes. It needs to be something I can crop vertical about 1/8 page wide. It is on a page for my wife's real estate marketing packet about moving. It will end up being 8.5" tall and about 2" wide.

You never know what someone is going to need on a stock photo site!

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James Pratt
www.advridermag.com
www.-james-pratt.com
www.motorcyclestock.com

photographr wrote:

Hey Bob, what is the ratio between Accepted vs Rejected images. If you don't mind me asking. I have a very small amount on there. Maybe 12 images. I know it takes hundreds to make any money. I get frustrated by how many get rejected over how many get accepted. I know it's my skill level and all but they are sometimes way to picky. For example I have uploaded 3 or more of the same subject but at different angles or arrangements. They reject them because they are too similar. Well maybe the artist would like a choice of what angle if he likes the subject matter.

Sorry to hijack this thread James. And super job on the cover of the phone book.

IStock normally doesn't reject like that unless it is very close to the same image. What I would do is upload them at different time in different batches.
For example if you have several images that would sell but are similar submit one with batch (A) and after it is accepted mix the second image in with other photos in batch (B) etc...

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Bob Ainsworth
http://www.BobAinsworth.com

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