Anyone sell through Photographer's Direct?

Hi All,

I'm thinking about expanding the marketing of my images through "portal" sites. One I came across is Photographer's Direct. The prices they list for recent sales seem a bit low, but fees are determined by the photographers, not PD.

Anyone market their images through Photographer's Direct? Good experience? Bad? Indifferent?

Thanks!

Take a look at the specific type of image that is requested in this venue. More than likely you will not have anything that is called for. I am registered with PD and I find the requests to be so specific that it would be a miracle if you could supply them with a request. I wonder if this stock site is a site of last resort. Given the amount of RF images that are available seems that clients look at a site like this when all else falls. Oh well, we might get lucky

jim

I belong to PD. I've been there about 1-1.5 years but have not had a sale. I do have one image still on hold...but it's been like that for 6-8 months and I think it's more that's it's been forgotten than them waiting to make a decision.

Anyway, I have two friends who also belong. One has sold 2-3 images for $250 each, I believe. The other, who sold stock solely for awhile, sold one image through PD. (Luckily he had other venues! )

So, basically, it's fun to check the emails and see if I have, or can get something, for the request. If I sell something - fine, if not, that's okay too.

Alamy keeps saying they are going to switch to uploading and once they do I may use them as well. I don't have the patience to create DVDs to mail out to them.

Good luck with whatever you decide!

Wow! This all sounds so familiar. I also belong to PD and have not found any of their requests to be something I can fulfill. They are also very particular about cropping. Basically no cropping is acceptable. Maybe I am just not a good enough photographer, but the animals and birds I shoot, even with a 500 mm lens and a 2 x TC on a 1DMK2, many times will need to be cropped to give the impact I desire.

RE Alamy, I also have considered them. Sending DVDs doesn't seem like an efficient method of uploading in this day and age. Browsing their inventory also shows hundreds of images of similar subjects as mine. some of these are excellent images, some seem like images any of us would reject as goof ups - but they are still for sale on the site!

I'd like to add beside last resort and amazingly very specific request, quite often I see the pic request as a kind of buyer's market where many sellers compete to sell their images (up to hundreds and even thousand) to one buyer. The process is transparent but the buyer position regarding the price is undeniably very strong. Many of them realize it so they try it also to get cheaper images.

Thanks for the responses so far. I'm also considering Almay, but they have strange size requirements -- but that's a subject for another post.

For those that have images on PD -- are they mostly nature/scenics, or do you have others (e.g., travel) as well? I wonder if the lack of sales is because of low buyer traffic, or simply the difficulty of marketing nature shots as stock no matter what the venue.

The point Fadil makes is interesting -- perhaps the de facto bidding war explains the seemingly low prices.

It's been interesting for me to read this thread. We've managed to avoid stock houses, but I'm always watching them. If nothing else they are competition for our direct sales, but they also provide marketing ideas for me.

On a different angle, we nonetheless sell a few images every year through stock agencies, but only when they approach us for specific images--- much as it sounds occurs with PD. That would seem normal to us, and image by image we have the choice to reach in our files, shoot fresh or bypass.

The one photographer I know who continues to do well with stock lives and breathes by the special requests from agencies. The game is to get out and shoot immediately when a shopping list arrives from an agency, upload thumbnails for consideration, then follow with a disc when a sale results. Requests can be really wierd at times, but sales are quick and ratio of sales is very, very high compared to images residing in agency files. Our friend evaluated at the end of 2005, and that year requests accounted for almost 2/3 of stock income. The same analysis hasn't been done for 2006 yet, but last I heard request sales appeared to be even higher.

With my nose unashamedly peeking under the tent flap, it would seem that in the era of increased competition and lower prices, filling those photo requests would be a bonus for PD rather than a bother.

Martin:

No experience with photographers direct.

Ed:

My last agency submission was 17Gb. Even on my cable broadband, do you know how long that would take to upload. If an agent tells me to upload images, you can bet my next question will be, "Can't I send you DVD's instead?"

Martin, mine is nature and travel. But i dont put many images as I feel their strength is in the pic request. I believe images in PD are broad in category sense both in their library and pic request. As for the difficulty of marketing nature shots (in PD) I can't make any conclusion. But observing the general market tendency and the discussion here and there, nature photos supply is abundant (everywhere). It must have an effect on that difficulty. And perhaps it also leads us to think that "we have to try harder".