I've been told I take fairly good photos, and should try selling them. I pass off such remarks with yeah yeah,I'll do that some day. But in reality, I don't quite know how. Is there anywhere that buys photos off *freelance* photographers like myself? Some way that photography can pay for my travel, perhaps...without being too serious though. More of a means of supplementary income.

I assume you go about like Peter Parker. Copyright your pics on something like Flickr and then try to push them on a news website. I think it's knocking on doors (virtually) my friend

Unless you are an exceptionally good photographer with connections that will let you and your camera go to the right places, I seriously doubt you'll be able to make much money from your photos.

You can see what you're up against by doing a search on a site like http://www.istockphoto.com/ . If you think your photos are better than the ones on sale for US$1-20 there, you may have a chance to make _some_ money from them. But pay for your travel? Not this millennium, I'm afraid, unless you travel only by local bus near your house.

By the way, I suspect that free photos from the Wikimedia Commons gradually will out-compete even pay-almost-nothing sites like iStockphoto.

Good luck, though!

Bjørn
http://bjornfree.com/

You've got a few major outlets for freelance photography. I'll talk about a downside to freelancing at the end.

1. Newspapers and Magazines
Two ways to go with periodicals, trying to sell stock (already taken) or submitting queries for assignments.

Let's look at National Geographic Adventure magazine's guidelines:

quote:

We accept freelance queries for most of our regular service-oriented departments. Ideas for features are generated both by the Adventure staff and by freelance contributors.

If we have to sell readers on our magazine, then freelancers must sell us with more than just notions and place-names, so please do not send us any unfocused wish lists of multiple queries. Restrict each submission to one or two well-developed proposals that have been crafted especially for us. A carefully considered proposal combines support for profiling a particular destination with some premise or hook. A good query has a headline that suggests what the story is, a deck that amplifies that, a strong lead, and roughly one page that clearly describes the premise and approach of the piece. The query should answer these questions about the story: Why now, and why in Advenure?

Stock photos are hard to sell, and if you're lucky you might get them into the gallery portion that most magazines have reserved for generic photo submissions. The smaller the magazine, the less they pay, but in the North American market it's probably worth about $200 to get one of those photos published.

Newspapers obviously need images of things that have already happened, so it's typically easier to start out with a local paper if you can find something they need. Editorial work is all about building relationships with your editors, and this usually means starting with the little guys and building your portfolio until you can move up. Start phoning the travel editor at your local paper, checking magazine websites for submission guidelines, or emailing to ask for submission guidelines. As long as you contact the right person, they'll usually be happy to inform you of their unique procedures.

2. Stock Photography
First off, there's a lot of debate about this in the industry right now, but microstocks are the devil. Imagine that you're a carpenter making $30/hour to do woodwork in your neighborhood. This is your sole source of income, and you're paying for all the materials and time. What if some hobby woodworker with a bunch of tools in his garage started giving his work away for free to the people you used to sell to? Microstocks will net you 2 or 3 cents per image and are generally a pyramid scheme of sorts where you have to accumulate referrals in order to get a bigger share of the profits. You'll need to have thousands of photos online to see any real income.

Now, true stock photography also requires that you put thousands of images online, and sales are much less frequent, but if you know how to work them you can earn a reasonable amount of money. Many editorial photographers also keep a healthy amount of stock photography out there. Check out http://psc.photoshelter.com/ and research a few other options if you're interested in this. The upside to proper stock is that you may be shooting hundreds of images each month anyways, so why not host them somewhere that buyers can browse through them?

I have a photoshelter account, but it's worth noting that they're a new agency and people are complaining about not making any money through them. There is a ton of information about these agencies floating around the internet.

3. Personal Sales/Fine Art
This route requires a healthy amount of promotional work on your end, but printing out post cards, gift cards, prints, t-shirts, or whatever you can think of, is a way to make some occassional coin. Photoshelter offers personal archives that allow you to sell your own prints. Etsy.com offers similar services for materials you've already made.
Check out this thread for more information about the Etsy route.

4. Wedding and Portrait Photography
I know this is veering off topic, but one way to fund travel is to work short contract jobs that pay well. Wedding photography pays well, and you don't even have to be that good of a photographer to do it. It would be nice if you were a good photographer, but so much of the work that I see from so-called professional wedding photographers just makes me ill. You'd probably have to buy different gear and learn some new skills, but it's the easiest way to make money with a camera.

Freelancing Drawbacks
A friend of mine is a freelance travel writer. She makes a living, and constantly has work, but the thing about her market is that she has to accept every assignment she's offered, otherwise they'll start sending it elsewhere. Because it would be professional suicide for her to say no to certain editors, she actually has to farm research work out to other people just so she can stay on top of everything. I mentioned before that freelancing is all about building relationships with your editors, and a big part of that is being able to give them what they want when they ask for it. You'll never make any real money in that industry unless you behave like a professional. Just doing it now and then, as you fancy, may be fine for the local paper, but how much travelling can you do on $20/image if you're only getting published once every few months?

You also better be shooting with a decent camera. Editors want tack sharp, low-grain, high-resolution files.


That's all I got. Casual freelancing is a nice idea, but at most it'll maybe pay for that new UV filter you've been wanting.

You could also create a blog about your travels and put advertising on it.

If you write well, and have nice pictures to go along with the story, your blog will become popular.

Microstock is totally killing off alot of professional photographers incomes and now that really high quality digital is available for cheap it will only get worse.

Shane

The Photoshelter team had some good ideas, but they just couldn't pull in the buyers and are folding as of this month.

I guess that's what happens when you try to take on Getty.

I deal with that a lot here in Kentucky where I freelance taking pictures of horses on people's farms. Why pay me $100 when someone can just go grab a royalty-free image of a horse for $10?

The sad thing is...those are the honest ones. I know large publications even that have no fears of grabbing "freebies" from http://images.google.com - they won't even pay for microstock!

I am slowly learning that the best way to beat the microstock wave is to make sure your photos have a subject or background that is unique to the local area...then market them locally. Even if its just a signpost or building that people recognize, etc...it makes a local business look better because people know they are using local work rather than the internet.

- Greg

thanks everyone for all the idea's and feedback. it's very helpful and interesting. my fiancee is a photographer and started out as travel photographer, but has now broadened her horizons and is beginning to make a living doing what she wants to do most, photography. you've all given me some new idea's that i'll definitely share with her....