Article Surfing Archive

So you learned to take a great picture and now you would like to make some cash from them (and of course, share your artwork with the world). Here are three ways you can go about this without costing you a fortune.

-- Create your own products using your photos, such as framed prints, greeting cards or t-shirts, and sell them on Ebay. Ebay receives millions of visitors eager to buy, provides easy step by step instructions on getting you set up (their website also offers advice and tips on selling) and costs are very minimal. You have the choice to auction your product or let your customer "buy now". You can also open your own Ebay store and an extra benefit, if you have your own website, you can link to it from Ebay (thus bringing more traffic to your site). Your biggest investment in this is producing your products.

-- Sell products on Cafepress. They provide the products (framed prints, t-shirts, coasters, mousepads, clocks, teddy bears, keepsake boxes and much more) which you will apply your photos to (just upload and add to the product you choose) and they provide complete service (orders, delivery, complaints). You build your store (through their website) either using one of their templates or you can customize your own using HTML. They have a base price for each product and you set the price above that. You are paid the price above the base price. You can open a free store or you can pay a small fee each month and receive more benefits. Thou your products will appear in their Marketplace (which they receive millions of customers) so will millions of other products. So your biggest investment here is to advertise your store. I am not going into advertising here but there are free and low cost ways of doing this (read articles regarding this matter).

-- Submit your photos to online stock agencies such as Shutterstock, Fotosearch or iStockphoto. Stock agencies house large files of images and markets the photos to potential clients. You are paid a percentage or a set price of each sale. You give these clients permission to use your photo (such as in their magazine or on their personal website) but they can not resell to profit from.

Whichever way you decide to sell your photos, the better the resolution your pictures are, the better the quality. To achieve this, first you must have a high megapixel digital camera. This does not mean you need to buy the top of the line. A 5 megapixel is quite sufficient. Second, your picture should have a high DPI (dots per inch) such as 300. If you want a high quality 8x10 inch picture, you will multiply the DPI by the inch. For instance, 8x300=2400 and 10x300=3000 so you want your picture size (resolution) to be 2400x3000 pixels. You can always decrease the size of your picture but never increase the original size.

Before joining any program, be sure to read their terms carefully. I wish you much success!