Don't Sell Your Photos For Next To Nothing

There are a variety of ways one can sell their art and photography. The trick is to watch that you don't allow usage or sell your art and photographs at a mere pittance of their actual worth. In other words don't settle for just pennies. You deserve much more than this for the images you create. Why should someone else be the one to profit more than you off your creations? Print on demand photo sites such as Red Bubble, Imagekind, Deviant Art and similar sites offer prints for sale using your images. There are pros and cons to this approach. It is easy to get started using a free account, uploading photos and hopefully to make a few bucks or cents when someone buys a print of your image. The downside of this is the amount of money you receive is virtually next to nothing unless you are very lucky to sell an awful lot of prints of your images. This is also goes for greeting cards, posters and any media where your art and photos are used as the basis of the product. Quite often many of these print on demand sites want exclusive royalty free rights to your photos. In other words you will have to agree to their terms not to sell your images in the same fashion from another print on demand site. This also holds true for stock photography sites. In my opinion this is totally unethical and is totally a disadvantage to the rightful copywriter owner of the image itself. Therefore it is very important for an artist or photographer to read the fine print, terms and conditions before signing up with a print on demand photo website or stock photo website. Do research on the sites and read user reviews by googling everything you can find out about how such sites work. It would be well worth the time before its too late and the artist falls into great disappointment. It is just not worth it otherwise to jump into a sticky situation in hopes of making a few measly bucks from your hard work. Yes, creating art and obtaining that perfect photo shot can be time consuming. Don't just give it away. Artists and photographers have to put bread on the table too! This is especially true when one is new to this type of business. The newcomer of an artist or photographer can be easily duped into an uncomfortable situation because someone wants your images for very little or at worst free maybe in return for a simple credit. Don't fall for it. This will not pay the bills nor be good for your self esteem. However, there are those individuals who don't mind these technicalities of selling images from print on demand and stock photo sites. Much all depends on the person's desired niche if they wish to sell their photographs and artwork as cards, prints, posters, mugs, keychains, etc. Remember that the company or person with the printing business will prosper more than the artist who allows usage of their images for very little in return. A decent premium home printer with premium printing paper can do the same thing. This way the artist can print as needed when someone requests a print. Even greeting cards can be created from home with a home printer. The only limitations of a home printer is photo sizes. Posters for example would require a commercial sized printer which can run in the thousands of dollars which is probably not feasible for those on budget. Another and probably the best alternative is to sell your art and photos from your own domain and website as digital art downloads and photo downloads. This way one can set their own license terms, prices and have complete control over the images. That way if another company or individual wishes to use one of your images for mass production of products such as posters, mousepads, postcards, etc, the artist or photographer can state his or her usage license and fee for the usage of the photo. This way a much higher price can be asked for the photo art or photograph requested according to quality, style, popularity, size and type of usage (non-commercial or commercial) of the image itself.