I just signed up… I think it’s a fabulous alternative to big stock agencies. They have great SEO video tutorials. They’ve educated their photographers on optimizing their sites to be SEO friendly. I’ve learned so much.

However, Photoshelter also needs to do more direct marketing for the Photoshelter community. To generate traffic from targeted buyers. Of course, each photographer needs to do that too. But that’s why big stock agencies get to charge the high commission. For the visibility.

Here’s a great interview with the EVP of Trunk Archive, “boutique” stock agency, representing the archives of top tier photographers: http://artproduce.wordpress.com/2009/07/17/trunk-archive-qa/

“Our business model is based on the idea of promoting individual artists and their archives. We don’t sell “stock photos.” We only license the work of very high-end photographers,”

i also don’t put tons of stock into SEO for being successful on the direct to photographer situation. I just think it is all about brand and marketing and ultimately having enough great content as a single photographer to give the creative community reason to visit your site/portal.

but i do agree that art buyers do not care where it comes from as long as they can find it and its the image the want. a smaller niche group may appreciate the one off nature of a small direct relationship. For that premium, they can have the exclusive on the image and at a more reasonable price than with getty, although less the payout to getty, it would be worth it for the photographer…i think.

back to work on my getty submissions ;-)

Another good thing to do is complete the google local business tabs once you have a gmail account. This can be very important for those in your community to find you: local.google.com. It’s called local search I believe and you don’t hear much about it.

Work on those outgoing and inbound links. My visitors are mostly increasing through having many different referrals, everything from the search engines to facebook and twitter. It all adds up.

I am sure that any time, any era has its challenges. Conquering the web, along with our chosen field, is ours.

I think it will come, but probably not in my lifetime.

“astockphotoeditor” is correct, marketing your work through the giant photo agencies will mostly result in a photographer making the most money. HOWEVER, Photographers also will have the least amount of control over pricing and editing of images. After 1 year on a major agency site, your images will begin to be buried in search engine results and the amount of money particular images make will go down as the images move lower in the search order. At which point, it becomes apparent that you will need to make more images and upload them and get yourself on the “Stock Photography Treadmill”= keep making more images at a lower cost that are great quality, then edit, keyword, upload, and repeat the process over and over again. One problem with this method is that the big agencies are editing more and more tightly and accepting fewer and fewer images per shoot, but their rejection comes after you’ve already invested a load of time and money. Plus, the agencies aren’t bound to charge any particular price for your images. They can offer rights-managed images for microstock prices if they want to, and certainly they’re already doing this with RF images. There’s just no control over “return on investment” when you use a major stock agency.

Finally, as new models of tracking and licensing stock images continue to evolve on the web, large agencies may become irrelevant. What is needed (or is on the way) is a very specific image search engine on google images (or some other search engine) that can search across all available stock images. Such a huge virtual agency and search engine may create problems for Getty and Corbis. The next five years should be fascinating.

If you are a generalist and you shoot general lifestyle or like to shoot many different subjects and you can produce a lot of high quality work at a low cost ($20 per image or less!) and you have or can get a contract with Getty or Corbis, then your best bet is to sell your work through one of these two giants. (Keep in mind that Getty and Corbis don’t like giving contracts to generalists. So if you don’t already have a contract, you will have to “Specialize” to get a contract.) This is a difficult, if not impossible way to make a living and I believe any stock photography endeavor should only be a part of your overall income at this point in time.

If you are a specialist, (see Mark Turner’s Post above) and lets say you shoot frogs and you are the world’s champion “Frog Photographer,” perhaps you can make money by licensing images yourself. This can be done with a great deal of work letting everyone know you are the best “Frog Photographer in the World,” and, as Rob mentioned, having a professional website that allows art buyers to purchase high res images at any time of the day or night at competitive, industry rates. This takes a lot of time and energy and you will spend more time driving traffic to your website and building clients than you could ever believe. But after several years, and with great images that buyers want and need, you should be able to make a decent dime off of your “Frog Stock,” because you will be the most popular stock image site for frogs.

I’ve pretty much given up on all of the agencies, each for their own reason, and won’t participate in MS, so I’m slowly setting up my own stuff at Photoshelter too.

It will be interesting to see if this is a trend that really gathers momentum and puts us back to where Stock was years ago with a bunch of boutiques and mom and pop operations (before Getty and Corbis gobbled them up) or if the two big boys are just too big to stop.

I do have two specialized websites with large numbers of images online: Pacific Northwest Wildflowers at and Inland Northwest Gardening at . These both have individual image pages with text descriptions that are search friendly. Do I get much business from them? No. Most comes from direct contact with buyers by e-mail.

We’re in the process of creating the ability for you to set up your own store/domain so that you can directly market your photos to buyers.

We have 1200+ photographers and 200,000+ images. We’re still very new but we’re growing and are in this for the long haul.

If there are any particular features you are looking for please let us know. We really want to meet the needs of photographers and buyers.

twitter: @clustershot

i COMPLETELY agree with you that you must continue your outbound marketing activity like calling, visiting and direct marketing.

but ultimately, i believe to be successful (or more successful), the modern photographer should use both inbound and outbound techniques to drive visitors to their work/website, and convert them into revenue.

:D
Stacy Leigh

thanks
:)
Stacy Leigh

Stacy Leigh

Allen: A direct cut and paste quote from your website:

“Search engines are changing constantly.”

Which is my point. How do we better spend our time; chasing ever changing search engine parameters, or direct marketing to our potential clients? I can tell you that no client has ever found me on the web on their own, but I stay in business by using direct campaigns PERSONALLY referring clients to my website. I’m not sure being found on the web by searches through Yahoo is all that it has been represented to be. In addition, with stock only being a small portion of an income stream (and getting less and less due to microstock pricing)is it worth it?

After some frustration, I find that I am much more successful shooting and when I’m not shooting, contacting clients; rather than spending hours on website optimization.

Your point is well taken however, and maybe I should consider hiring it done.

Your site has poor SEO because you don’t have text, nor do you generate separate pages for your content.

You might want to get the SEO Cookbook for photographers
http://pa.photoshelter.com/mkt/seo-kit-for-photographers

cut out the middle man!

I thought you were joking, but then saw your name and remembered the stuff you did w/ Chip Willis and the real doll. Heh.