What do You Do with those Stunning Photographs taking up room on Your Hard Drive? You let them make money for you.

I love to take pictures.  I have my camera with my almost all the time and I take pictures of everything.  I love scenery, textures, people and animals.  Taking pictures of all of those things make me happy but after awhile I wonder what to do with them.  Over the last year I have gotten into portrait photography and it was really nice to have a purpose for my images.  I was capturing moments in time for other people so there was always somewhere for them to go, but I was still taking pictures of stuff.  That beautiful fall scene on the river, that classic red barn down the road, the very funky looking mushroom.  All of this and more was what my camera was still filling up with when I wasn't taking pictures of people.

I started to feel like maybe I should stop taking all those pictures.  I was just filling up my computer with pictures I wasn't really going to use.  Some of them I might incorporate into my artwork but most of them would just sit and get dust on them (if computer files could get dusty).  I tried listing them on Etsy as a digital download but that wasn't working.  They didn't seem to be moving and the market seems so saturated with way cooler stuff then stock photography.  I also had to pay every time I did that whether it sold or not.  So I stopped doing that, no need to waste my hard earned money.

Then one day on one of my online craft communities someone shared a blog post about Creative Market.  This person was a graphic designer and had found her home for her designs.  Her downloadable actions where extremely popular and she had started to gain a lot of momentum with her sales.  Well of course I had to check it out.

Creative Market only sells items you can download.  How cool is that?  It is full of stock photography, illustrations, actions, mock ups and more.  Besides being a great place to sell your creations it is also a awesome place to shop.  I am not a graphic designer by trade.  I have been teaching myself how to use Photoshop and it has been a long and steep learning curve but I was so excited about all the images this site had to offer.  The prices are really great too.

So I looked into getting a shop.  I thought I would just be able to sign up and go but that was not the case.  You have to apply to have a shop by showing them where you are selling your items elsewhere.  I shared my Etsy store and my website www.heathersaulsbury.com.  At first thought, I was a little annoyed by this but then I realized it like being in any show.  If they let everyone in then there are no standards and if they can see you have been putting in effort every where else then you are more likely to commit to putting out great products.  Not be a fly in and fly out.  I was very anxious to list on here and it only took a few days to get an answer.  Let me tell you my favorite part.  You DO NOT have to pay to list.  Yup, thats right.  You get to list for free and if something sells they take a cut.  How awesome is that.  I was on board, I was so excited and then I started listing photographs.  I found it very easy to do and tried not to go overboard.  I didn't want to fill my store with the same items as everyone else.  I decided to focus my images mostly on Pacific Northwest landscapes and Bushcraft pictures with a few animal and flower pictures tossed in.  Within a few days I had my first sale.  This was the quickest I have ever sold something online and I have been selling online forever (at least it feels that way).  I was so excited.  The best part was that they took there cut, put my share on my balance sheet and the item stayed listed.  I did not have to do anything else after the initial listing.  I liked this site even more.  Making money in  my sleep is one of my favorite things.  I don't have to go to the post office, I don't have to find packaging, heck I don't even have to pay to relist.

I am really enjoying being part of the Creative Market community and I have continued to sell my photographs as stock photography.  After getting comfortable listing and sharing I decided to look into their partner program.  It is another thing you have to apply for but for every referral who purchases something you get 10% of it for an entire year.  Seems like a pretty awesome deal.  You promote yourself, the site and other designers selling great things and you make money.  The part that is so easy about this is that the designs are amazing.  So far, anything I can think of they have.  It is really a group of very talented people and a wonderful resource for people designing blogs, logos, business cards and anything else you need an image or action for.

To sum it all up, if you want to sell your photographs as a stock image instead of letting them sit in that dusty hard drive then Creative Market might be a great spot to start.  I wish you lots of luck and hope my article was helpful.  I would love you hear from you and appreciate all the support.