Deciding where to market and sell your photos

If there is one thing that is tempting about exclusivity it is the simplicity it would introduce into my workflow if I only had one outlet for my images to consider. While I don't personally think being exclusive to one agency is the right thing for me I can see it does work for some photographers. Only working with one agency obviously is a great time saver when it comes to submitting images. It doesn't stop there though as each agency has their own slightly different way of doing things so often optimising submissions for each one can be a time consuming task before submission begins.



Before that there are of course all sorts of decisions that often have to pondered; will it be RM or RF, Traditional or push it through the micros? This is one reason I like images like the one here of a competitor in the recent Tour of Tasmania cycling event. These guys often manage to have more branding on them than Picadilly Circus and move way too fast to grab a model release. So, despite the emrgence of editorial on some microstock agencies, I consider this an RM (rights managed or L on Alamy) photo and don't spend any time thinking about how or where to try and sell it; It'll go up on Alamy, and perhaps gekkoimages seeing as its Australian content.

Many stock images aren't as clear a decision though. I don't like the idea of putting the same images with agencies working at different price points so I often do have to decide where each image will try and earn me some crust. I think this is an interesting process we have to go through as stock photographers and will be analysing some choices I make in future posts.