Best Selling Picture Books Of 2016

If you think photography is a costly hobby, you are correct, it can be. But that doesn’t mean that you need pro-quality equipment to make money from your own photos! Best Selling Picture Books Of 2016

In actuality, if you have got a good phone camera along with a steady hand, you’re already in with a shot.

However you get your clicks, there are an increasing number of opportunities to monetise photos you’ve already taken. And when photography’s already your luggage, there are heaps more ways to develop your abilities, and income; from selling your Insta inventory to pulling a Brooklyn Beckham (famous parents optional).

You know the drill: read, learn, and give it a celebration for yourself!

If you’ve got a digital camera (or fancy picking up one for a steal), you will have more options for selling pics to stock libraries, to websites for prints, or for print-on-demand products. This is because cameras will usually produce larger file photos (although some camera phones are trumping digi cams nowadays so this isn’t always the case).

Got a camera phone? A growing amount of inventory libraries are catering for mobile snaps, and you still have a shot at the other biz thoughts below. Continue reading!

It helps to have…

Some kind of editing program will help buff your pics for best results, so it’s well worth sniffing out a decent package (and learning how to use it!) So you can earn more money with your photos.

Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop are industry standards for photo editing. But they cost bucks! Don’t crack open your wallet until you’ve checked out the freebies:

FastStone Image Viewer can open RAW files directly out of your digital camera and save them as JPG, TIFF or PNGs. OK for basic edits like colour correction, straightening, cropping and contrast.
Raw Therapee is a Lightroom-like editor with loads of resources for tweaking colors, curves and much more.
PIXLR is a convincing alternative to Photoshop, and even simplifies the very same shortcuts right out the bag. You can run it directly from a browser through the app for free.
GIMP can do a lot of what Photoshop excels at, though some users reckon it’s a tougher learning curve.
There are tons of phone editing programs to be obtained for free or a couple of pence, but Snapseed (iPhone, Android, free) always makes the best-of lists.
Don’t forget the bloatware image software bundled into your’puter, telephone or laptop. Most can make light work of the fundamentals.

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Selling Through Stock Libraries

Stock libraries buy’n’ sell digital photographs to use on websites, in books, on products and even in ads, together with the photographer getting a cut of the sale every time.

Selling photographs through a stock website is a top way to surf passive income streams: you can upload a photograph once and sell it over and over again, pretty much forever!

You might need to submit a choice of pics (and be accepted) before you may become a stock library contributor. After that, some sites will keep on reviewing all your submissions, and will gladly bounce any they don’t think meet criteria.

What that means is you’ll always have to be on the ball about choosing your best shots. Don’t get too hung up about rejections, however; join a number of sites and post pics to them to find the best possible policy.

Which Websites Pay Most?

Swing by Alamy first. Their pupil contributor scheme provides you 100% of the sales price of your pictures for two years. Total win! Your uni will need to be part of the scheme, but lots of UK and US institutions are already on the books. Best Selling Picture Books Of 2016

Alamy reckons images typically sell for $90 (USD) each, but you could get anywhere from $20 to $500 depending what it is used for. If you’re not a student, or your uni isn’t enrolled, the pay-out’s still a fairly decent 50%. Selling phone pics through their Stockimo program (iStore only) earns you a 20% cut.

Other Websites to Check Out:

Picfair comes with a twist: you decide to what extent your images sell for. Picfair then add 20 percent on top for their cut, but the sales price you set is what you get if your image sells.
EyeEm: if Instagram and Alamy had a love child, this is what it would look like. EyeEm is a photo sharing site but, if you want to earn more than’likes’, you could also pimp your pictures through the marketplace. EyeEm split every sale with you 50/50, with photographs selling from $20-$250. EyeEm Bonus: regular how-to content, themed missions run by big brands, plus you can upload pics via the net or phone.
Foap is built around phone photographers, with everything managed through the program (Android, iTunes, free). Foap sells pictures for $10 each and divides it 50/50, so you will make $5 per pic. They also run monthly Missions, where you can submit photos on a theme to be in with a chance of winning extra money and perks.

Big Name Websites

Dreamstime provide up to 60% for exclusives. How much your photo sells for also goes up the longer it is downloaded: newbie images begin at between $0.34 and $2.38 (USD). If you are shooting a phone, begin with the free Dreamstime app (Android, iPhone).

IStock hands over 15% of a picture’s sales price, but guarantee a bigger cut if you make the pic exclusive to the website. Photos typically sell for #7 or #20 a go, but the type of licence or subscription plan the customer buys determines how your slice is calculated.

Shutterstock coughs up $0.25 (USD) per sale on the most common subscription plans, but say you will find a larger cut as your life earnings pass various levels. To put that into context, once you’ve earned $10,000, you’ll be bumped up to the heady heights of 38 cents an image…

Playing the Stock (photo) Market

Earning money with stock photos can involve a substantial cash-in, but there are a few things worth bearing in mind…

Stock photography is a numbers game: if you want sales, you will need to upload a great deal of quality pics to several sites.
Photos of individuals are always in demand, but anyone you pap might need to signal a model release form to say they’re OK with you with it (your inventory library will have template forms you can print, sign and publish ).
Assess the accounts terms! When will you get paid, and in what currency? What happens to your photos if you want to cancel your account later on?
You often won’t get a state in how clients use your photographs, so in case you don’t want your selfies turning up in advertisements for STDs or hemorrhoid ointment, don’t upload’em!
Sign-up for contributor newsletters, as they could clue you in on what sells, what to snap next, and even how to enhance your camera or editing skills.
Add loads of keywords when you upload your images. It helps people find (and hopefully purchase!) your pics.

Selling Your Prints

There is loads of freedom in selling prints (i.e., printed copies of your photos). You decide what to shoot, who to market to, and for how much and, like selling through stock libraries, it can be a wonderful little passive revenue earner.

Now, before you leg it down to Boots to batch print your holiday snaps, there’s a bit more to it. While you can run off photos on your home printer or at a high-street laboratory, better quality means greater profits! Best Selling Picture Books Of 2016

That means using a suitable printing lab (one that specialises in art or framed prints), opting for expert paper, or perhaps selling restricted or signed editions. Sounds like a drag? Not necessarily; there is inspiration below to get you started.

Use a Photo Host

Photographer-friendly website hosts give you a safe place to store your digital pics, a portfolio (which means you can show’em away ) and shopping tools (so you can sell prints, downloads and wall art).

They even handle the printing and any stamp each time you make a sale. Hashtag hallelujah, right?

But the big catch is, not only do they charge for hosting your site, they also take a cheeky cut from each sale — and that’s not everybody’s cup of cocoa! If you want to give it a whirl, be aware of free 14-day trials until you pony up the cash: try Zenfolio or Smugmug.

Get Your Own Photo Shop

As an alternative, you can always get your own website or Etsy shop and hang onto more of your gain!

Getting prints or gifts to market is also super easy; go for print-on-demand and you won’t need to store some stock (or be out of pocket if you can not shift it!) .

Sell on Social Media Platforms

Eventually the social media giants will wise-up and start letting us sell photos and other content right from our profiles.

But until then, have a tip from street photographer Daniel Arnold: he offered Instagram followers the opportunity to purchase prints from his feed and made $15k in one day. Obviously it helps if you’ve already got a solid fanbase, but if you have talent (and the ideal hashtags) it’s worth a shot!

The best thing about selling on social media is that you don’t even need a website: your feed is your portfolio, and you have got a massive potential audience!

>>LEARN HOW TO SELL YOUR PHOTOS AND VIDEOS ONLINE HERE<<

Go print-on-demand

Print-on-demand is a brilliantly simple way to generate moolah from mouse mats, keyrings, t-shirts, bags, books and more — often using zero set-up costs.

The real beauty of print-on-demand is that while you can advertise tons of goods, none of them really exist until somebody buys’em — so there is no stock to shop, lose, or fall over. Better still, there are sites out there that do all the printing, printing and submitting for you, so all you have to do is take the photographs!

Photo books

First stop: Blurb, the self-publishing publishing platform (learn how that all works here!) .

Blurb lets you create photo books by simply importing your Facebook or Insta images — and you can sell your final novel on Blurb or Amazon.co.uk. You could also advertise books on your own website (if you have one), but have Blurb/Amazon handle the payment. Easy! Best Selling Picture Books Of 2016

Gifts and Goodies

Turns out you can slap a photo on pretty much anything, from shower curtains to pet clothes and PJs; and you don’t even need a glue gun to get started!

Most print-on-demand outfits let you upload your photographs (or illustrations), select which products you want to sell them on, and give you a cut of the profits if they sell.

CafePress pays you 10% if your products sell in their market, but you can choose to have your very own online shop and add a mark-up into the cost (which you get as your royalty) instead. It is free to set-up and run a store, but CafePress take 10% of your royalties each month, up to a $10 max.
Zazzle lets you set your own royalty rate between 5 percent and 99 percent but, while it is tempting to dial it up to full whack, remember that your cut is added to the sales price: go OTT and you may find it more difficult to make sales.
With Spreadshirt you may add a mark-up of $1 to $20 on items sold through the market, or you can open your own shop and catch 20% commission.
Redbubble starts with a product base cost and allows you to add on a mark-up — the default is 20%, but you can tweak it as much as you like.

Running a print-on-demand shop is low-fuss and cheap — if you’re contented with the occasional sale, it can be a wonderful way to make money on the side for relatively little effort.

The word from successful sellers is that, to make proper bucks, you will want to put in the hours (so the same as a project, sadly). We’re talking uploading lots of photos or designs, getting the word out, and generally making an effort!

Go Freelance

Selling photographs anonymously online is easy enough. But if you want to build a rep, get more glory or just have clients of your own, here are some tips to get started as a freelancer photographer:

Know your niche. Whether it’s individuals, pets, food or something completely left-field, it’s easier to market yourself whether your portfolio showcases what you do best.
Take time to learn your craft. You can get lucky selling stock if you don’t understand your aperture from your elbow, but you can’t afford to chance it when someone’s paying you for wedding pics!
Workout your rate and be sure it covers your time, your prices and leaves you a little on top for profit. And get insurance to your equipment!
Give to photo events, parties or portraits for family and friends to develop a portfolio, and ask them to spread the word for you. Or search out your favorite bloggers and pitch them your pic ideas!
Batter your social networking account with your best pics, let folk know you are available, and tell’em how to get in touch. Get cheeky and choose alternative promo shots for brands, then tag them to get noticed.
Get in contact with picture editors at newspapers, magazines or sites and ask if you can submit photographs or cover local events.
You might have more chance of getting adopted by Madonna than obtaining a press pass, but it’s like a golden ticket which could get you into sports, fashion and other exclusive events. You’ll want to apply each time (or be a member of the National Union of Journalists) but, as soon as you’re in, you’ll get loads of saleable photo opps!

While everybody with an Insta account appears to reckon they’re a pro photographer, the reality is that being a freelancer is probably the toughest route you can take.

You’ll need a great deal of patience, perseverance, good shoes and adequate pics — and you may well have to give away images for free when you first begin to get noticed. If you’re in it for the career, do not quit. If you are in it for the money, get your game on with the other ideas on this page in the meantime!

Bonus Tips for Aspiring Photographers

Carry your camera anyplace — and not just when you’re doing something or going somewhere special. Loads of businesses and brands are after photos of daily life and often it is the simple things that produce the best pics — think streets, food (street food?) , facial expressions, family, pets, sports… anything!
Back-up your best pics (or some you’d hate to lose): keep copies on an external drive or in cloud storage (Dropbox gives you 2GB of space for free).
Once you start getting sales, get to grips with tax and the freelancing fundamentals. It will save you stress in the long run, and could save you cash on your tax invoice.
You might not be able to sell photos if they include trademarked products, brands or even certain buildings. Check out the terms with your stock library, or get the company involved and ask if you need permission to hawk your own snaps.
Don’t just do the same-old or what everybody else is doing. Quirky, cute or weird is always in fashion. Amen to that! Best Selling Picture Books Of 2016

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