Build your own stock photography website - tools?

[David Chin]

Hi all,

I have been thinking about building and hosting a small stock photography website to host my own photos.

I'll probably end up using Wordpress and create one blog post per image. Visitors can download a watermark-free low-res image (say 320 x 240) for free, but would have to pay a fee for the high-res version.

My question is, what do you think is a good service for tracking and billing the high-res downloads? The service should also allow for automated downloads immediately after the payment is received.

Some services I have in mind are Paypal, SmugMug and a microstock website. The problem with the microstock website is that my photos would need to be accepted first.

Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts and experiences.

--
Regards, David Chin
Digital photography notes and stuff:
http://www.dpnotes.com/

 

[bdownes]

I'd recommend having a look at joomla, it has many more options than wordpress and I believe there are plug-in’s for joomla that will help you make such a site really easy.
Figuring joomla out at first is a pain though but after that it's easy.

 

[owenleve]

http://www.ktools.net

Also, look at http://www.photoshelter.com .

--
[email protected]
http://www.courtlevephoto.com

 

[Michael Todd]

I haven't talked to you in a long time!

I've been doing stock work for a few years and I've contributed to several agencies. My experience is that the agencies that sell work are the ones that customers go to first and possibly have accounts with.

I've been with a few start-up agencies and they just never got off the ground.

Do you have images that are totally unique and can't be found anywhere else? If that's the case, then I think you've got a good chance. I'd suggest you might start by sending emails to photo buyers of potential clients and just say "hey, I've got all these shots of this one subject matter. You can see a sampling of my work here . Please send me any photo requests you might have and I'll go through my extensive archive of images to find the perfect match."

Just a thought.

--
peace

Todd Muskopf

http://www.muskopf.org
http://www.muskopf.blogspot.com/

 

[Hayden Simons]

Joomla...interesting idea. I've got a Photoshelter site set up and was just thinking myself that I may could host my own site for selling photos. I sell very few...its mostly a hobby.

I was looking at this software:

http://www.ktools.net/photostore/index.php?PHPSESSID=44c1155829701f7443f898be42d90589

Anyone had any experience with that software or something like it? Joomla sounds like it may be a good idea. Any partiuclar plugins for joomla you recommend?
--
personal website: http://www.haydenandlaura.com

 

[Jan_Shim]

Hi David,

I'm glad you started this thread as I was just able to take a closer look at stock opportunities. Am a professional photographer and I've worked hard to build an online portfolio using Wordpress.com blog: http://shimworld.wordpress.com/

The international traffic has been fantastic with close to 320,000 hits today and I strongly believe in the networking effectiveness of the blogging platform. I have clients including major banks who has my blog bookmarked and from time to time buy one-time non-exclusive images for product promo purpose etc.

A few months ago, I sold a high res hornbill-in-flight photo to an American environmental group for a brochure there were doing for the Malaysian government

http://shimworld.wordpress.com/2008/08/25/a-new-world-of-opportunity-in-wildlife-conservation/

Point is, blogs work but I need a platform where I can categorise my images so clients can find them easily instead of labouriously going through my blog posts and external galleries. I am a member of stock agency (I've had my photos qualified) but stop short of uploading them to the site because I have a problem with their Terms of use just as i have issues with Facebook's handling of "User Content" hence the desire to self-host a stock image bank.

I'm not 100% certain that it isn't going to require a lot of effort to run and maintain one so I'm open to all ideas if it's indeed worthwhile to pursue.

--
Jan Shim
http://www.janshim.com

Hi all,

I have been thinking about building and hosting a small stock
photography website to host my own photos.

I'll probably end up using Wordpress and create one blog post per
image. Visitors can download a watermark-free low-res image (say 320
x 240) for free, but would have to pay a fee for the high-res version.

My question is, what do you think is a good service for tracking and
billing the high-res downloads? The service should also allow for
automated downloads immediately after the payment is received.

Some services I have in mind are Paypal, SmugMug and a microstock
website. The problem with the microstock website is that my photos
would need to be accepted first.

Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts and experiences.

--
Regards, David Chin
Digital photography notes and stuff:
http://www.dpnotes.com/