On-Line Photo Galleries
Advance Notes: The Internet is replete with on-line photo sites that offer a photographer a place to display his/her work. Some sites are free and usually supported by advertising. Others charge a fee. Before you choose one,
For the active stock photographer, placing your images on a Web-based on-line photo gallery can be a showcase for your stock photography. In some cases, it can also be an opportunity to make new photobuyer contacts and sales. The photo albums, or "malls" as they are sometimes called, range from companies that provide film printing service, to high profile sites that attract professional photobuyers.
If you are just starting out you can sign up with a free site to test the process. These sites usually limit entries to three or four dozen images. You also have to put up with boundless advertising accompanying your page. You need to be aware that professional photobuyers rarely frequent these kinds of sites.
Some on-line photo sites don't permit extensive keywording. This would limit the ability of a photo researcher searching this site to target in on a specific image that needs to be described in several specific words. Be sure to choose a site that allows extensive captioning (photo descriptions) for each picture. You'll find Portfolios.com does this, but it's expensive: $599 per year. It does not carry any advertising.
We have listed a few dozen current gallery sites that we have discovered over the past year. We've listed them all, but be prepared that some of them may already be out of business by now. Which brings up a second caution note for when you choose a free site. Research the stability of the site carefully, the way you need to do when choosing an Internet Service Provider. If the site is not in business in a year from now, you'll have an uphill task to transfer the increasing numbers of your images to another site.
And finally, the site may be free and well-designed, but if it's getting few visitors, it would not be the site for you if you're planning on selling your stock photography. You can check whether a site gets lots of visitors, by using the (free) software, www.alexa.com, to see the ranking that Alexa gives the site.
Two gallery sites we can recommend with confidence, are of course, our own: http://www.photosourcefolio.com, and http://www.photosourcegroup.com. Our Folio site offers you the chance to display ample-sized photos, and is associated with our well-known website www.photosource.com, which gets 8,000 visitors (50,000 hits) per day. That's a million hits per month. No other stock photography-oriented site on the web gets this many hits per day. For our marketletter subscribers we offer an extensive on-line gallery called www.photosourcegroup.com. This is a text-centric site that works with search engines such as Google. The buyer types in a keyword phrase in a search engine, plus the word photosource, to land on the photographer's page.
If you have discovered other Photo Gallery sites that we have not listed, or if you have comments about existing sites, please share them with us.
Name of Business Email Web Address Cost
Adobe ActiveShare ---- www.activeshare.com FREE
Album Express press@notetab.com www.fookes.com/album $24.95
Anexa ---- www.anexa.com FREE
Club Photo ---- www.clubphoto.com FREE
DotPhoto.com support@dotphoto.com www.dotphoto.com FREE
FlipAlbum fabeta@ebooksys.net www.flipalbum.com FREE
Folionet ---- www.folionet.com FREE
Fotango support@fotango.com www.fotango.com FREE
Fotki.com ---- www.fotki.com FREE
FotoTime support@fototime.com www.fototime.com FREE
Global Photographers Search webmaster@photographers.com www.photographers.com FREE
Imira.com ---- www.imira.com FREE
InfoPics.com info@infopics.com www.infopics.com FREE
Morephotos wdsales@wdweb.com www.morephotos.com $200
OnlinePhotoLab feedback@onlinephotolab.com www.onlinephotolab.com FREE
OzImage Stock Library feedback@ozimages.com.au www.ozimages.com FREE
Pbase.com image@pbase.com www.pbase.com FREE
PhotoAccess.com support@photoaccess.com www.photoaccess.com FREE
Photofolio ----- www.photofolio.com FREE (trial)
Photographers Index info@photographersindex.com www.photographersindex.com FREE
Photo Highway info@photohighway.com www.photohighway.com FREE
PhotoReflect.com kgoralski@expressdigital.com www.exposuresonline.com $34.95
PhotoSourceGROUP info@photosource.com www.photosourcegroup.com FREE
PhotoSourceFolio info@photosourcefolio.com www.photosourcefolio.com $4.95 month
PhotoStockPlus info@photostockplus.com www.photostockplus.com FREE (trial)
PhotoWorks info@photoworks.com www.photoworks.com FREE
PicturesNow.com info@picturesnow.com www.picturesnow.com FREE
PictureTrail feedback@picturetrail.com www.picturetrail.com FREE
Portfolios.com info@portfolios.com www.portfolios.com FREE (trial)
Shutterfly info@shutterfly.com www.shutterfly.com FREE
ShutterPort info@shutterport.com www.shutterport.com FREE
Snapfish info@snapfish.com www.snapfish.com FREE
Sony ImageStation info@sony.com www.sony.com FREE
Webshots support@webshots.com www.webshots.com FREE
Yahoo Photos info@yahoo.com photos.yahoo.com FREE
Note: Data can change from month to month. Consult a search engine such as Google.com to get the latest updates. Rohn Engh is director of PhotoSource International and publisher of PhotoStockNotes. Pine Lake Farm, 1910 35th Road, Osceola, WI 54020 USA. E-mail: info@photosource.com . Fax: 1 715 248 7394. Web site: www.photosource.com .
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