I see a lot of scam merchants (my interpretation) trying to sell books online on how to make a fortune from selling photos of anything on stock photography sites. Despite these ads having testimonials from people swearing they are making thousands of dollars a month from their images they had lying around their hard drive, I can’t really see it happening. I know there are lots of so called stock sites where you can upload your images to and anyone can use your images for free (as long as they contact you first), some of these sites actually have some really nice shots, very professional in quality, but they are detrimental to the whole world of photography. Some major magazines use these sites, why bother paying a professional photographer to travel to some far flung place when Joe Blogs has already been there and is willing to give fairly good images for free that can be further edited to make them look really good? All these sites do is take money away from photographers who need to make a living. Avoid them like the plague.
There will be a fair few micro stock agencies out there who pay a very small fee (a few dollars I hear) for each image of yours they sell, but the only people who make money off these ads are the guys who are selling the books for 50 dollars a piece. There are a lot of people out there who really want to publish photos, I suppose for someone who really dreams about it the prospect of paying 50 dollars for a book that will unlock the photographic secrets that will make them rich is a damn good deal. I wouldn’t recommend anyone buy these things, but bet they would be a giggle to read. To actually make some money from your photos you need to have media customers (magazines/newspapers) and agencies who give you an agreement to pay for your images. But how do you get that?
Firstly, you need to have decent images and you have to enjoy shooting them. They don’t have to be magnificent Pulitzer prize winning quality, just good solid images. Ideally, you’ll have good images of a variety of things, good portraits, good landscapes shots, an eye for detail on clothing/products, interesting angles blah blah blah. This isn’t as easy as it sounds, many people have great portraits, but can’t shoot a landscape to save themselves. Some people are great at macro photography, but can’t do anything else. We all have our own strengths and weaknesses. Ideally you will have an all round ability, but if you don’t, well I guess you have to focus on what you are good at. Look at other peoples photos have been successful in the field of photography you are interested. Look at the angles they shoot from, how they arrange the lighting, figure out what makes their shots good. Keep practicing and improve your skills. When you look at your photos and look at those of someone successful and you think “my photos are as good as this persons” well then it’s time to move on to the next stage.
Secondly and most importantly, you have to put in the leg work to find someone who will buy your images. Even if you have a great set of images on your own website, the chances of someone coming along and saying “oh my God, your images are great and I want to buy them” is almost nil. If you are a member of a stock site that doesn’t pay you, people will find you but as I said before, at the end of the day other photographers lose out because you upload your images there. Also, when you give away your images for free like this you set your own bar low. People might want to use more of your images again, but they will give you the same rate, zilch. Sometimes your images might end up in a nice magazine spread and they credit you, mostly they will end up in marketing shots and you won’t be credited. When these are big corporations with massive budget who could have paid a pretty penny for your shots, you really have shot yourself in the foot. So, what you have to do is find people who will take your images because no-one is going to bang on your door to buy photos until you are an established photographer. So, get a small portfolio of say 10-15 images together of whatever you are good at. Have each image of a different subject, each image looking unique, put the strongest images at the start and finish of your portfolio and then start sending (by email or regular post if you can afford the prints) to whomever you think will be interested in them. If it’s a newspaper or magazine, try and find a contact email/address on the internet or in the publication, tell them why you think your photos will be good for them (most publications are happy to have someone pitch them some material). Check out the publication first, if it’s a travel magazine with a special spread on budget travel in Thailand and you send them a portfolio on the same topic the next month, they will just ignore you. Do your research, ideally you will send some unique to show someone. If it’s unusual (are you into some underground music, art scene that you can photograph easily, are you living in the wilderness with great animal shots, are you an NGO worker who works in refugee camps most people can’t access), if it’s unique, you can sell it. Tell the publication why it’s good, why you have the access that other people don’t, why you think their readers will be interested. Really sell yourself, if you just send some pictures and say “please hit me back if you like them and want to buy them” no-one will contact you, even if the pictures are pretty damn good. Don’t just send it to one publication either. Send it to a pile. Sometimes I have sent email portfolios to between 25 and 50 magazines or newspapers over a few months with very few responses. Most of the time you won’t get any response, if you take it personally you won’t get far. Just keep at it. A friend of mine took a portfolio to a magazine editor once, the editor looked over it, said it was the biggest pile of crap he had ever seen and told my friend to get out and never come back. Six months later my friend went back with the same portfolio, talked to the same editor (who obviously didn’t remember my friend), looked over his portfolio and announced that his images were amazing and gave him some work.
When you have been published before, it’s hard to sell yourself sometimes. There are things you can do to help yourself. If you’ve had an exhibition before, tell the editor about it, tell him or her about how successful it was. Try what you can to get your foot in the door. If you’re not established, you might be offered a very low fee for work as you aren’t a regular photographer, or even be told they will publish your photos, but they don’t have a budget. If you really want to get ahead, you do need publications, so you have a catch 21 situation. To be honest, if you stick to your guns and say you want a minimal fee you will probably get one. If you don’t want to cause a fuss and get a publication, it’s up to you to do a freebie, but if you pitch your work to that magazine or newspaper again and they say they can’t pay, don’t do it or you will eternally be doing free work.
When I started out I used the fact I had shown photos in small exhibitions to get interest and I did do a few free jobs, but only once for each magazine. If they wanted more freebies I said no, then they came through with offers of money. This way I managed to start getting paid for my photos and building up my portfolio. I always request pdf files or actually hard copies of each publication. Sometimes you get it, sometimes you don’t. Whatever you do get though, use it. Once you have had a few publications, when you write to someone trying to pitch work, say who you have done work for. Have all this information on a website with a selection of your best photos and a “tear sheet” section where people can see examples of your published work. Even then you’ll still get people saying they want to use your photos, but don’t hav a budget now, but could maybe have a budget for future work. I think this is basically lies to suck you in, I’ve fallen for it before and it’s never came true. I agreed to do some freebies with the promise that next time I would get paid once I had “proven” myself to the magazine. Next time was the same story, so I refused, then I got offers of money. People want to save money, if they think they can get you to work for free they will pressure you into it. Don’t fall into this trap.
I sometimes shoot events in Tokyo. My rates depend on how long I have to shoot, how many images they want and how long I have to edit and send them off. Recently I was asked to photograph an event in an exclusive club organized for the alcohol industry. I knew that to use the club for such events cost 1 million yen (10′000 dollars), entry to the event for customers was 10′000 yen (100 dollars) , so there was a lot of money going around. They told me what they wanted, I said I could do it and what my fee was. They said they didn’t have enough budget for me and could I do it for 1/10th of my quoted fee. I said there was no way I could do it, instead they should just ask a friend with a compact camera to do it. I didn’t hear back from them for a while, but then a few days before the event the emailed saying they couldn’t find anyone to do it, so could I do it for the previous fee I asked for? I told them at such short notice I would have to re-arrange my schedule and it would cost them a bit more. They agreed. People try to get free work or cheap work out of you, realize that you too can bargain your own position to someone who wants your skills.
After a while and a lot of hard ground work, being rejected more often than you get accepted you will build up a good portfolio and when You write to people, you’ll have more chance of being hired and clients you have worked for before will start to contact you about jobs. If you are lucky, you will even be represented by a good agency that will help you sell your work. It’s not an easy process, but if you are determined it will happen. Sometimes you get big money deals, sometimes it’s quite small. You have a lot of competition, so you have to be good. Most importantly though, photograph things you enjoy and stick to what you like, if you are lucky enough to start selling, great, if you don’t and you still enjoy your photos, you are no less of a photographer.