Comments on: What to Consider When Charging for your First Sale

By: steve

steve — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 23:26:17 +0000

I sold my first flickr "stock" sale for $1000, after I'd initially asked for $1500. It was for a book cover in a run of over 8,000 copies. Slightly below market value from the research I'd done, but still a good price for something of that nature. The only other deal I did I was paid $400/photo for 4 pictures to go into a private marketing book for a Casino. That job was solely about location, they needed pics of a locale that is not very photographed, and they wanted it to be genuinely from that area. Not something that you come across on stock sites too often. Sometimes it's about the niche instead of looking at what everyone else is doing. I also took those pictures the DAY AFTER they contacted me to see if I had any pics of the area. 3 days later, POOF! Yes, yes I DO have pictures of that area. Sometimes you have to make the sale happen. $1600 for about a day's work is pretty dang good if you ask me, screw the going rate of reprint rights. The funny thing is that these pictures were really the expendable ones in the long run, and the priceless family photos go for $30 per 8x10. Kind of sad, when you think about it.

By: Corey Scherrer

Corey Scherrer — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 05:05:55 +0000

This is a great resource, thanks! I suffer a pricing duality personally. I work for a stock photography company, but my personal photography is completely separate. I never really think about a price for my own work since currently I'm not looking to make money from it. In the off chance someone wanted to use my work commercially, and I agreed with the usage, It is nice to have a good reference.

My advice to anyone out there is NEVER sell exclusive rights to your work to one entity unless they are paying handsomely. Once you have given up rights to your work, you loose all potential future revenue and usage.

By: Chester Bullock

Chester Bullock — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 17:52:31 +0000

Good article, and a helpful one. Might be even more helpful if it explained the different types of rights you can sell with the image, which bring different prices. Might be too much detail to go into though.

By: Rachel Kenison

Rachel Kenison — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 02:27:14 +0000

When I sold my first photo off of flickr to a German postcard company I did some research. I think what I got is a fair price for limited quantity/use rights. It has become a more frequent "good problem" to have and I haven't had anything to really help me price my photography. I also have no idea what to ask for when it comes to photo shoots. So, thanks for the ASMP link. That is a great resource.

By: john griffin

john griffin — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 21:57:27 +0000

wow. such a great article and resource.

this is an issue we are tackling at cutcaster. pricing content or finding the correct market price is very hard like you pointed out but creating a platform to determine the pricing based on both the buyers and sellers input and negotiations is what we wanted to do at cutcaster when pricing photos or videos for licensing.

on one hand the seller can set their own price or use our cutcaster algorithm to find the correct market price but on the other hand buyers can submit a bid for content so they can also find the correct market price if things get out of whack or people price their content too high. also sellers have the chance now to accept or reject a bid and won't lose out on sales they never hear about.

this platform puts the power back in the hands of the creators as well as the buyers of all different budgets so they can learn from one another and also still do business without losing out on sales bc they don't know how to price their content or have the option to negotiate a price.