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.
