Comments on: Taking On The Big Boys – Create Your Own Website & Sell Your Photos Online

By: Sameer Jain

Sameer Jain — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 07:36:41 +0000

I organise Photography Tours and Workshops in India and will use some of the tips given in the post. I could market the photographs clicked by participants and these could be good for publishers who are looking for related photographs. http://www.18mm.in is the link to my website which is currently built on existing templates, the total cost of domain, hosting and templates put together was less than $35.

By: Frederic Sune

Frederic Sune — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 02:26:26 +0000

I have my stock website up and running since January 2008. Here is the link: http://www.torontostockphoto.com
Everything is working perfectly. I can send directly to my clients any portfolio (lightbox) I have created online with my website. Very easy to use and ecofriendly too.

By: Andrea Matone

Andrea Matone — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 10:48:01 +0000

I have also been thinking about setting-up my own website for some time now. I have tried many routes, including flashy portfolio sites which were great to look at but remained in the circle domain of just friends and colleagues. I finally decided to go back to a simple html site losing on image and graphical impact but gaining on SEO. It is all recent as I am still working on this. I also contribute to various photo agencies on a non-exclusive basis but I wanted to give it shot to see if I could market images on my own. Don’t know where it will lead. Like you Jakcob I’ve put in endless hours into this, perhaps with consistency, optimizations and good photography , results may come! http://www.andreamatone.com

By: Jacob Maentz

Jacob Maentz — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 05:24:03 +0000

I have also recently went live with my own personal photography website. I was debating whether to try one of the many micro stock agencies or just try doing it on my own. I'm very happy with the decision I have made to create my own site. Although, I must say I have put many hours into working on the site and many more to go as the site evolves.

I do believe in the long run, however, that having your own site will be more profitable and can open up many more leads with magazines, companies, etc. We shall see how everything goes.

Selling photos is a hard business, but like anything, with time and dedication (and good images) you can be successful.

http://www.jacobmaentz.com

By: Chuck Staley

Chuck Staley — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 23:39:52 +0000

Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner, Andrew. In answer to your question: No Microsoft only provides the site. And as for the thousand hits, they didn't happen the first month. It took a lot of promoting to get up to the thousand hits for last month. (I got 37 hits from this website so far.)

That's another nice feature -- getting daily site reports so that you can tell what is working for you.

Keep up the good work!

By: Andrew Gibson

Andrew Gibson — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 16:51:38 +0000

Chuck, you make an interesting point. How did you achieve a thousand hits in the first month? Did Microsoft help you with SEO?

By: Chuck Staley

Chuck Staley — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 18:32:46 +0000

I built my own website and got the domain name I wanted, all for free! Actually, Microsoft paid for everything because I signed up for their Office Live promotions. Building the website was as easy as using a word processing program. No HTML language to learn. Last month I had over a thousand hits!

If you'd like to give it a try you can log onto my web page, see what YOU can do to display your work, then go to the bottom and click on their logo over to the right.

Not only is it free, it's fun!

http://chuckstaleygallery.com

By: Dan Bannister

Dan Bannister — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 15:53:48 +0000

I started doing this at the beginning of this year simply because of all the turmoil in the stock business. Since then, I've had tremendous success with clients placing orders for imagery directly off my site. And because my work is fairly versatile, I've picked up new corporate clients based on the strengths of my travel stock so, I definitely think clients are running from the mess that is the stock industry as fast as many pros are.

Case in point, Alamy now boasts over 10 million images! Do photo eds actually have the kind of time it takes to browse through thousands of images online for an image that is suitable?