Selling Online?

Hey I was thinking about selling some of my backgrounds, however I don't know what that involves. Are there services that are popular that actually get visitors or would I be better off creating my own website? And if I created my own website what do I need to do legally to sell my works? Anyway with your guys vast expertise I would assume that your knowledge extends beyond my feeble mind. Any suggestions?

There is a world of options out there. Pros and cons to every one of them.

High traffic images sites that allow you to upload and keyword your own images include iStockphoto.com, shutterstock.com, fotolia.com and others. It's the simplest way to go but you are competing with a lot of other images and royalty yield per image is pretty low from what others tell me.

High traffic images sites that allow you to submit images for consideration to be published. I have about 2,500 images at fotosearch.com. Most of them are vector images and they have yet to accept a seamless tile from me. The royalty yield on them over the last two to three years has been about $3.00 per image per year.

You can create your own site and wait for traffic to build. There are web applications available that contain everything you need other than an online credit card processor account. ImageFolio Commerce and Lightbox Photo are the two I am familiar with. In my case, I had my web application at ExpressClipart.com custom written. It displays and retrieves images for download, has a shopping cart, stores customer records, and presents a EULA for acceptance before it will complete any purchase. You are welcome to explore my site, ask questions, and use our EULA as a guide to creating your own.

Hope that helps. As you explore your options and develop specific questions, feel free to ask more specific questions and I'll be happy to share what I can.

Hey CysticCraze .....a group of us are trying to talk Vlad into creating a royalty-based system by which authors can sell their textures from here.....

http://www.filterforge.com/forum/read...ssage81994

Just a note to keep in mind that selecting a deal involves more than just the percentage split. You are better served to step back and look at a lot of other details ... such as:

• The selling price of your images
• The reputation of the site
• The policies of the site
• The screening done by the site

The best returns we've seen are from a high priced site. We only get a 20% royalty but they charge $25.00 an image and nothing appears on their site that they haven't approved for publication. Our 20% amounts to $5 an image which is a heck of a lot better than getting 70% of a $1 or $2 sale. The worst returns we've ever seen were from a now defunct site called RebelArtist.com. It was run by the same people that originally created Clipart.com and Photos.com. Rebel Artist allowed artists to upload, keyword and price their images and had no inspection for quality or copyright rights. They paid a royalty of 70% but were overwhelmed by an abundance of images that had little or no value commercially. Artists who had uploaded good, original work saw increasingly less return on investment because buyers never found their work.

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StevieJ wrote: Wow, Sign Guy!!! It sounds like you are offering the best royalty split with authors!!! I wouldn't beat around the bush about it.....just put an advertisement on FF's site sidebar.....because I know that there are alot of FF authors looking to sell their textures.....

Wow Stevie ... once again you enter spreading misinformation and venom. Why you choose to feud with me because I am willing to share 15 years experience publishing clipart and being published by others with members here is beyond my comprehension.

Nowhere in my response is there even a hint of a solicitation. Fact is that I am not even accepting new artists and have existing agreements with Jffe, CFandM, Kraellin, and Redcap ... each of which pays a 50% royalty for online sales with us doing all the publishing (no extra effort required of the artist) and each of which has not produced much in the way of earnings. Talk to Craig and ask him why I told him not to even submit his work.

Here's a link to 669 tiles from Jffe we have had available for online purchase for nearly two years. In that 21 month period there have been just two tiles for Jffe sold. In that same time frame, tiles of my own creation ... mostly done without the benefit of Filter Forge ... have sold over 1,000 units.

As near as I can figure, your animosity is based in the fact that I do not agree with your views regarding FF providing a venue for texture sales and have stated counter arguments. Instead of debating the arguments, you respond with character assassination replies. Sounds to me like you have nothing to back up your claims as to what a wonderful world would exist if only FF would see the light and do as you wish.

Both of the examples I cited were instances of a publisher paying me a royalty on sales of work. Not me publishing the work of others. So your statements are totally out of context and have no bearing as to what was said.

Do you have any direct experience with publishing artwork or being published by anyone who paid you a royalty? That is what the original poster wanted to hear and what I replied to openly and with no hidden agenda.

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StevieJ wrote: Sign Guy wrote: have existing agreements with Jffe, CFandM, Kraellin, and Redcap ... each of which pays a 50% royalty for online sales with us doing all the publishing What happenned to Constantin, Rawn, etc??? Sounds like you have recruited quite a few FF authors from here.....confirming what I'm saying to be true..... I'd like to see FF do something to allow those authors to sell from here.....

Actually Fred mentioned the offer in the FF threads and the FF authors contacted him...

Well...Stevie to let you know that 50% is not much when the target market was not buying..
I seen the numbers and figures for the months that Fred had that up and running and they were not all that good nor impressive due to the changing needs and wants of the shops customers that Freds sites cater to...
In fact I made more from doing an article for a mag...Would have taken me many, many years at Freds site for that..

However I am still torn on TexturePacks being sold through FF....The big question is FF willing to put up the expense and Man/Woman power/risk to do this...
Then the FilterPacks seem to me IMHO to be a good way to go....I think that they would do better then just the textures themselves..Think of them as an add-on or expansion-pack..hehe

I am still in the process of putting up things at the 3d studio which I was going to do years ago but got completely sidetracked from it....
Thats my 2cents for the moment until I clear the head from the cobwebs...

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StevieJ wrote: What happenned to Constantin, Rawn, etc??? Sounds like you have recruited quite a few FF authors from here.....confirming what I'm saying to be true..... I'd like to see FF do something to allow those authors to sell from here.....

Constantin preferred to sell filters. I paid his asking price. Rawn never signed up. What does that have to do with anything anyway.

Actually not that many.

We know you'd like that.

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StevieJ wrote: I'd be offended if you so loosely threw me under the bus like that here.... Sad

No ... it was at a point where I had elected to close down digitalartnow.com and my only motivation was to save Craig the time it would take to generate tiles to meet our specs and upload them.

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StevieJ wrote: What misinformation, venom, and feud??? I was going along with you.... Question

Stevie ... I'm starting to think the joke I made about you being off your meds struck a raw nerve. Get a grip. You've stated your arguments and now have carried your animosity towards me over to another thread. Vlad, by now, is well aware of your wishes, those of a few others, and the counter arguments. Let's both stop this BS.

Can I just point out that they sell individual filters? I mean seriously, they are selling art work on the site. Having Filter Forge is having unlimited textures. However some people only want to buy one texture, so they buy the $9 1 texture addition of FF. In no way insulting FF is recieving 100% of the benifits from our filters. They have a good business going why would they draw users away from buying their $9 filters by allowing people to buy single images?