Selling Stock Photography Re: 'Photographers Direct' and 'PhotoDeck'

I have had my images with Photographers Direct for about  5 years now and the information being posted in this thread is misleading

PD do have an option to list your photos with them for free and they do an excellent job of marketing.  They publish a customer newsletter monthly and they have an impressive customer base worldwide. Photographers with them can upload as many images as they want as long as they continue to be rated acceptable or better on upload. Their criteria is not too rigorous and you can easily request another rating.

Photographers also have the option to receive specific image requests for free and PD sends out such requests almost daily, with many of those notices with multiple image needs - a good way of seeing what their market is looking for and what price they will pay.  I have sold images via such requests but most of my sales are from customers searching the PD database and finding mine so good  key wording is "key".  My sales are down over the years (as expected!) but I am totally happy with their performance, level of service and make an excellent free stock distribution solution with good photographer commissions and information flow.

As PD not have the high res images (just 500 pixel max sizes) you need to be able to organize and deliver the high res versions to the customer yourself.  All of my high res. images are with

Photoshelter www.interfaceimages.com  (which I pay for) and as a frequent travel and assignment photographer all I need is access to any Internet browser to deliver high res images from my PS archives to the PD customer as I travel.  Be aware that many image requests have a short deadline of only a few days or less so you need to be on the ball to get the sale. 

They only want a 20% commission, the photographer keeps 80% - very rare these days. You need to negotiate the selling price with the image buyers yourself so no need to accept arbitrary pricing but you need the skills to do so.  You pay the PD commission after you get the $.

Note: They will not accept photographers who are with any Micro stock agency and PD owner Chris Barton goes beyond the call of duty to help protect photographers rights. He has my total support.

I thought I should clear up the misleading information about Photographers Direct. This is an unsolicited post. Happy New Year to all!

Re: 'Photographers Direct' and 'PhotoDeck'

Posted by: "Brad n Lisa" we2grahams@yahoo.ca   we2grahams

Tue Jan 4, 2011 1:44 pm (PST)