Dont Put All Of Your Eggs In One Basket

While I understand how it may seem easier to track sales and what not with having your files at just one library, you are settling yourself short.

Do you know that there are many buyers that will only license from their favorite libraries?

Having your images at one select site is limiting your income and chances of sales. If you have your images at every site possible (that you are comfortable selling at) you are spreading your eggs into different baskets and giving yourself more opportunity to make more money.

Selling everywhere possible is a great way to go for those that want to get their images seen.

To those of you that really want to make good earnings per sale, check out mid-stock sites or even the big ones like corbis, getty, etc.

Login or Register to post comments and reply to other visitors

charmingclipart: I have a question....how to deal with the pricing differences? what if the same image is being sold for$1 in one site and $20 on other...Would that be a problem? Or not at all because each company has a difference license, some more or less restritive than others? Jamie Voetsch: Most sites are very restrictive if you really look at the fine print. We are nearly "Truly" royalty-free but have a few restrictions. That's why we encourage you to price more, but also give you the freedom. Jamie Voetsch: On another note, you may also want to use different screen names at each site so it makes it harder for those thrifty shoppers to use your screen name to find the $1 image at another site.

Dennis Holmes Designs: What about http://www.alamy.com? Jamie Voetsch: Alamy, I've heard, is a very good site. I have been told that you can make some decent earnings there if you have a "gigantic portfolio" Dennis Holmes Designs: Jamie, How big is "gigantic"? Jamie Voetsch: I dont know myself, but I have heard that you need about 20,000 images to make decent earnings there. Dennis Holmes Designs: Cool. That's doable. :)

Dennis Holmes Designs: Do they all except the same formats? Dennis Holmes Designs: I mean how do you process your images so all the sites will except them? I'm sorry this may be a little off topic. Jamie Voetsch: Thats a difficult one since I dont know what each site wants! I guess if you start from vector, you can pretty much generate any format needed.

Grafically Minded: I agree 100% - exclusivity is for the birds (or for the lazy that like to sell themselves short like you said) Jamie Voetsch: I'm not sure if its laziness most of the time. I think some of them really believe that they're getting a better deal being exclusive, but they aren't.

MilsiArt: well... I don't want to sound too much 'clever', but on this list are some sites that are 'phasing out' from big sales as stockxpert for example as well 123rf which pays miserably low $1.25 for EPS vector... I'd advise that Featurepics.com added to this list because they are combined stock agency (but not yet big) as Veer. Sure Alamy is great place if you have plenty of images to offer - but, sales there are rare and your images compete with over 16 millions of others. Three last ones I didn't even heard about. MilsiArt: Well... Third of three last ones somehow dissapeared ;-) Jamie Voetsch: I dont recommend these to everyone of course. If you dont mind making a measly few pennies or a buck from the image sales, go for it. MilsiArt: Jamie, it is not point in making a buck or pennies - it is point in final lump sum. My expirience says that on some places listed here some people can have decent earnings and some are living from it, but many others never live to see their first or second payout. Also, for some people that works and for some other that doesn't work. It is a bit of sense for microstock needed to succeed there. The point is in very high volumes of daily sales there. In contrary, mid-stock has its middle pricing structure and it is very good also with much lower volume of sales. But, I agree with you that bestsellers on that places can be bestsellers on mid-stock too. Now, there is difference in subscription and single sales models. Also, there are completely different buyers structure on mid-stock and on subscription sites. But, I see some authors even here are selling cheap ($20 for EPS for example). If volume of sales is such high that it justify lower pricing, I will be the first to follow that phyllosophy because it is always better to sell 20 times for $10 than just once for $100. But, mid-stock niche says that sales volume is not so high that we all can expect 50, 100 or even more sales a day as it is the case on some subscription sites. What I think Clipartof should keep under control are in fact minimum prices authors can be able to set for their works. If with many authors it comes up with selling for example compass rose for $20 from one author and slightly different compass rose from other author is priced at $100 which one will sell more? Such free pricing policy can bring up some other author to make compass rose for $5 and sell it even better than mentioned two other authors who sell their images more expensive and we come up with having sales only on cheapest images. That is what I would like to be handled buy Clipartof crew. Some kind of control and making limits for authors in what price range to sell their images. Authors can't be loyal to each other - we all have our unique but different needs as well we can not all adopt to low pricing and some of us can not afford to sell by high prices. Jamie Voetsch: I completely understand. We have considered setting tiers of pricing, but I dont want to be too controlling. We may be looking into this later on after we have completed other tools. Dennis Holmes Designs: I think that is a good idea. I have some artwork that took a short time to produce and I have others I'd like to do eg: logos that take considerably longer and would like to be able to price them appropriately. MilsiArt: Good... If tiers are there, then buyers will be more content. The main point in lower pricing is having big buyers base. When there are many buyers prices may go down. Until then, it should be controlled on some way.