Commercial Ventures

[Chris_Johnstone]

In an increasing attempt to make some money from my photography (and reach my ambition of one day becoming a pro) I wondered how many people that posted here were (semi) professional?

Furthermore, what steps did you take in order to reach this status? Was it a business venture of some sort? Did stock photography play part? Did you contact magazines in order to sell images.

I already have a website through which people can buy prints but the means of payment are either through paypal or cheque. If I set up an eshop, what does this mean in terms of VAT and so on? I am not a business so I wouldn't charge it but do I need to declare anything? I'm a little vague on the law/stipulations in this area. If it helps, I use 1and1 hosting and was going to set up shop using their in-built shop.

Feel free to pm.

Chris

[ron1863]

I don't know about any semi or pro phorographers on WAB but looking at some of the members photographs, there are several who could be. I am sure that some of the Wabbers will answer your business questions.

Good Luck
Ron

[denisg]

Originally Posted by Chris_Johnstone

I already have a website through which people can buy prints but the means of payment are either through paypal or cheque.
Chris

Depends on the value you are selling and how the costs equate. Assuming you don't have a cc account directly with the bank then you could also approach companys like Protx, Nochex or Secpay etc. Do a Google on IPSP's (Internet Payment Service Provider's) and take a look at the deals they offer. You pay a monthly sum, often around £10 - £20, and a cc co commision, up to 3%, but you bury these costs into your product margin of course. These have an additional benefit of being secure and worth a mention and use of their icons on the front page of your site as a confidence builder.

Denis.

[jennyb]

Chris, you only have to register for VAT if your turnover is over (something like) £67,000 in a 12 month period. However, you can register for VAT if your turnover is below that and the benefit you get is that you can claim back all the VAT on expenses for your company. But, the prices of the products or services that you are selling then become 17.5% higher for your customers.

I am not a professional photographer so really cannot help with that but I did start up my own Internet business.

Good luck with whatever you decide.

Jenny

[pressld2]

I've been uploading to a stock site for nearly 3 years now and so far have sold a grand total of 1 photo! I'm tempted to try a few other stock sites, especially those that specialise in wildlife or macro but haven't got myself organised enough yet. I won't touch the micro payment sites like Alamy.

I don't know anything about VAT but Income Tax and National Insurance are both payable on any earnings from photography. This should mean that the cost of equipment can be classed as a business expense and offset against tax - I'm sure that's what people like Andy Rouse do - but as my total earnings after commission is still below £40 I really haven't looked into that in much detail.

It's a shame eeyore is taking a break from WAB as he is a semi-pro and could probably offer some sound advice. You could try PMing him.

Dave P.

[denisg]

Chris, just a little observation.

If you wish to sell photographs from your web site you will need a little more text content and some upgrading of your head section to incorporate more SEO optimisation. Even WAB fails miserably here.

You need to think like the customer and not the seller. You can have the flashiest site in town but if you don't have words and phrases on your site that people would search for in Google et al, you won't get many visitors, or should I say serious buyers. Test the results yourself. You use keywords like "wildlife photography" so try a search for that phrase and you will find around 1,530,000 hits. If you 'aint in the top 50-100 you are not going to get a lot of visits from searches!

Again, do a search for SEO or search engine optimisation and take some hints.

Ensure you have the correct robot instructions in a meta tag and a Google site map will also be of benefit.

I would also suggest you choose your gallery software carefully. Adobe Lightroom is ok but not particularly search friendly and there seems to be no navigation from individual pictures except last or next. There is no way of choosing to view a different gallery or route back to a home page. With some effort, gallery software (Free!!) such as Coppermine or Gallery can be adapted to look almost identical and part of the overall site if handled correctly and are fully open source coded to change what you want. They are also SE friendly but again can be made better.

Please don't take this as a criticism Chris, it's not. I'm no expert, but it is what I get involved with every day and SEO cannot be stressed highly enough for a successful selling website, or any website that wants visitors, IMHO.

Hope this helps.

Denis.

[wildlifesnapper]

Originally Posted by pressld2

I've been uploading to a stock site for nearly 3 years now and so far have sold a grand total of 1 photo! I'm tempted to try a few other stock sites, especially those that specialise in wildlife or macro but haven't got myself organised enough yet. I won't touch the micro payment sites like Alamy.


Dave P.

One sale in 3 years! Time to kick them into touch unless you've only got a dozen pictures with them.
Why shy away from alamy , it certainly not a micro site.

neil

[pressld2]

Originally Posted by wildlifesnapper

Why shy away from alamy , it certainly not a micro site.

You're quite right, Neil, it's not. Can't think why I thought it was. I'm away on holiday shortly but when I get back I shall sign up with them and see how I get on.

In all honesty, I think the reason I've only sold one image in 3 years is that my photos are not really good enough. This is not false modesty - I think I'm a pretty good photographer and know how to take sharp, correctly exposed and well composed images. But so do thousands of other photographers and my images lack that certain something that makes them stand out from the crowd. I only have to look at what's available through stock sites or even here in the WAB gallery to see that my images, while good (and sometimes very good ) are not the best available.

Ho-hum. There's nothing for it - I'll just have to improve!

Dave P.

[wildlifesnapper]

Dave, don't put yourself down I've just had a quick look through your gallery and there are some lovely , saleable shots.
I don't know whether they are all full frame or not, but that's a tip to anyone wanting to use alamy - do as much cropping in camera as possible because you have to upsize your images to 48mb minimum.

Good luck if you give it a go and I hope you are pleasantly suprised

neil

[zan]

I think the hardest thing to do with wildlife photography is to differentiate yourself. Why should someone buy your photos over someone else (who is better known\more experienced\better travelled)? You have some really nice shots on your website, but I think you could sell yourself better on there, and make your galleries a bit more eyecatching.

I don't really consider myself a pro\semi-pro photographer, but I enjoy it, and occasionally sell a few images. This basically pays for the website, and gives me a wee bit of spare cash which is nice. No sales have come through the website right enough, or through the stock agency I'm currently with (although I don't really have a lot of photos with them anyway).

Anyway, my website name is in the sig bar, or PM me for more details if you like.

zan

[Paul Miguel]

Hi Chris

It took me about 7 years from seriously taking pictures to going full time - I was able to work part time and build up my business alongside.. Making money from nature photography is perhaps one of the hardest things anyone can try to do - but that doesn't mean it's impossible. Having looked at your website, you definitley have ability; however in the commercial world there are a million high quality images of every aspect of nature, some of which are very similar indeed, and getting your own noticed is very hard.

One of the main things you need to decide is where are you going to sell your work? With so many picture libraries and other photographers out there, I would suggest trying to do something local - see if any magazines/newspapers could use your work, and if possible, try and write complete articles. I still write a number of nature/photography articles which form a large part of my work, and did this for years as a semi-pro. Perhaps the best advice I could give, is try to do something different. That's very difficult to do, but in a world of high impact bird of prey photos, and robins on spades, there is potential for more in depth images, and ones that have a story to tell, and I think these could be the pictures that separate some from the crowd - just wish I could spend more time on them myself..!

Happy to give any more advice or PM me..

Paul

[Chris_Johnstone]

Hey guys and gals,

Thanks for the advice, I'm really grateful for it. There's a lot for me to get to work on. Through my hosting service I can use google site maps and so on. I have a few keyword in the meta stuff of my index page but I could probably add more, lots more. I guess in this world you wouldn't be frowned upon if you put lots of keywords that don't really relate to your site if it got you some hits. I'm sure millions of people do this.

The hosting also provides a service with Protx at an additional cost.

With my galleries I do understand I need to make things a bit more user friendly and setting up some sort of ordering process. A search engine thingy would be really useful. Does anyone know of any order tracking programs that can create invoices and delivery labels etc? I can use the one on my hosting but it's an online affair so and currently I can't always be online.

Yea, Eeyore is good to talk to. Where has he gone?! I applied for a job as a school photographer (hah) :-)

Thanks for the advice on the VAT etc, I don't see how I can hesitate setting up a little shop.

Chris

[jennyb]

Originally Posted by Chris_Johnstone

Yea, Eeyore is good to talk to. Where has he gone?! Chris

Eeyore is busy with more important things like getting a new job and getting married. He'll be back soon.

Jenny

[Chris_Johnstone]

can't argue with that!

[matt_xyz]

A few months ago I thought I would have a go at selling some images and got around 25 accepted at Alamy. Since then, according to the Alamy stats, they have appeared in searches over 170 times, but each time alongside hundreds, sometimes thousands of other images. I have only actually had my images viewed 3 times!! I realise it's a numbers game and if I had a few hundred images maybe they would stand a chance but it's a fair bit of hassle preparing images for Alamy and there really doesn't seem much incentive to upload anymore.

Many of the more selective stock agencies either don't want new photographers or will only take those who can guarantee a very large volume of high quality images. Many don't just accept ad hoc images like Alamy does.

I've talked to other photographers about selling images and it does seem very, very difficult to make money out of wildlife photography. I think there are now just too many people with good kit who can take competent images.

Pete (Eeyore) does have experience of selling images, although I'm fairly sure he mainly sells non-wildlife images.

Matt

[The Black Rabbit]

Originally Posted by zan

I think the hardest thing to do with wildlife photography is to differentiate yourself. Why should someone buy your photos over someone else (who is better known\more experienced\better travelled)? You have some really nice shots on your website, but I think you could sell yourself better on there, and make your galleries a bit more eyecatching.

I don't really consider myself a pro\semi-pro photographer, but I enjoy it, and occasionally sell a few images. This basically pays for the website, and gives me a wee bit of spare cash which is nice. No sales have come through the website right enough, or through the stock agency I'm currently with (although I don't really have a lot of photos with them anyway).

Anyway, my website name is in the sig bar, or PM me for more details if you like.

zan

Absolutely.
The key thing these days surely (when "everyone is a photographer") is to STAND OUT, to differentiate yourself from the thousands of others taking pretty well EXACTLY the same photo.
Also I would guess, to sell images you would have to take shots that please other people, not yourself. I think thats more complicated and more frustrating than it sounds....

TBR

[StuartDH]

Personally, I wouldn't aim to sell images on the Internet as the competition is just too fierce and most people look at images for fractions of a second.

Even if WAB had an images for sale section and promoted it heavily on the front page where we got 0.5 million unique visitors in the past few months I still doubt we'd make many sales or much profit. I think the stock companies work on the basis of stack 'em very high sell 'em cheap(ish)

Just a thought, but if someone fancies looking into the feasibility, costs, organisation etc, we'd consider looking at doing some WAB exhibitions of member photos around the UK in galleries, museums, shopping centres, service stations etc. I think WAB could easily get local press, radio and TV involved and it'll help promote the British countryside to the public

Stu

[The Black Rabbit]

Originally Posted by StuartDH

Personally, I wouldn't aim to sell images on the Internet as the competition is just too fierce and most people look at images for fractions of a second.

Even if WAB had an images for sale section and promoted it heavily on the front page where we got 0.5 million unique visitors in the past few months I still doubt we'd make many sales or much profit. I think the stock companies work on the basis of stack 'em very high sell 'em cheap(ish)

Just a thought, but if someone fancies looking into the feasibility, costs, organisation etc, we'd consider looking at doing some WAB exhibitions of member photos around the UK in galleries, museums, shopping centres, service stations etc. I think WAB could easily get local press, radio and TV involved and it'll help promote the British countryside to the public

Stu

Not that any of my images are high enough quality to print to a decent size there Stuart, but that would be an EXCELLENT idea for many other better photographers on WAB I'm sure.
Doug

[StuartDH]

We wouldn't use the photos from the site, they'd need to best quality original from the photographer's PC for prints, but it might be possible to have an exhibition that combines prints, with plasma screens or projectors for lower res slideshows?

[eeyore]

Originally Posted by Chris_Johnstone

Yea, Eeyore is good to talk to. Where has he gone?! I applied for a job as a school photographer (hah) :-)

Thanks for the advice on the VAT etc, I don't see how I can hesitate setting up a little shop.

Chris

I'm (supposedly ) taking a break from wab to concentrate on other things in my life - like getting m buisness website up again, finding a job near my sweetie etc etc (btw I dont actually get married til next march - we are in the organising phase at the mo) - but as you can see i'm still lurking in the background and may make the occasional appearance.

On the topic at hand - I've sold a lot of images though mainly not wildlife . The majority of these have gone to magazines and you need to solicit them directly you can't rely on reactive web visits. Get a BFP handbook to get editors addresses etc (If i can find it I'd be happy to post you my old one)

The only sales I make on line is prints - my sites down at the mo but when it was up i did get a reasonable ammount of custom , though I was selling macro, abstract, fine art and landscape rather than specific wildlife.

I'm disapeearing back into the ether now but if you would like to chat through things chris i'm happy to help - i will pm you my email address before i disapear in a puff of purple smoke.

[Chris_Johnstone]

I think there is some value in saying that selling prints over the internet does not guarantee much income but at the same time I think you must have that facility present. It would seem ridiculous to go onto a well known photographers site and have to then goto a stock agency or something just to order a print. The minute the buyer needs to do something unexpected is the minute they will give up and look elsewhere.

In saying that, I think articles and directly contacting magazines etc is a very good idea and persistence is probably important. Standing out is one of the most important parts of being successful but it goes hand in hand with devotion and patience. Often I think it would be easier just to become a wedding photographer and use your spare time to shoot wildlife...

Does anyone know of any photo galleries that have search facilities in-built. It seems like it might be a separate process altogether.

Gotta keep the chin up...

P.S got in just before me Pete!

Chris

[The Black Rabbit]

Originally Posted by eeyore

I'm (supposedly ) taking a break from wab to concentrate on other things in my life - like getting m buisness website up again, finding a job near my sweetie etc etc (btw I dont actually get married til next march - we are in the organising phase at the mo) - but as you can see i'm still lurking in the background and may make the occasional appearance.

On the topic at hand - I've sold a lot of images though mainly not wildlife . The majority of these have gone to magazines and you need to solicit them directly you can't rely on reactive web visits. Get a BFP handbook to get editors addresses etc (If i can find it I'd be happy to post you my old one)

The only sales I make on line is prints - my sites down at the mo but when it was up i did get a reasonable ammount of custom , though I was selling macro, abstract, fine art and landscape rather than specific wildlife.

I'm disapeearing back into the ether now but if you would like to chat through things chris i'm happy to help - i will pm you my email address before i disapear in a puff of purple smoke.

Blimey!
I'm getting married in 3 weeks!