Photographers how much do your picture views matter
2012 has been a phenomenal six months of some of the most intense picture viewing on my Smugmug, Flickr and Deviant Art accounts I have ever recorded. In 2011, I had around 64,000 picture views for the year and thought that was awesome, this year so far in the first six months I have had some 671,000 picture views. It is possible given the shoots I know I have upcoming for the rest of the year that I might actually reach a million picture views this year.
The sad part is sales, I have sold exactly 3 pictures, these are my first ever sales. At that rate to make a living off this I’ll need 100’s of millions of picture views a year to make any kind of livable money off photography.
My work has been seen on KUOW and on KIRO TV’s Seattle Insider, some of my Occupy Wall Street pictures were picked up in Germany as part of an international journalist’s pool, and I have had lots of people ask me for permission to use my pictures as an avatar or for some other personal use, and I am good with this.
So the question is, with all these amazing picture views, and amazing feedback, and the hundreds of downloads of the pictures, how do picture views equate to dollars.
In my experience they don’t.
So how does anyone make money off of photography?
Hopefully someone will let me know, because what is on the net right now is pretty lame, I do not have the ability to frame and hang out at small local fairs, and I don’t take landscape pictures, I do Cosplay, punk rock shows, and parades with people in various states of dress and exhibitionism. I am not all that interested in doing landscapes or other nature oriented make you feel good pictures. I do graffiti, and subcultures, riots and protests. Let the world know what your tricks are for non-landscape photographers to make a couple of coins by answering here, I’ll be interested in what you have to say, and I’ll roll up the comments later and give you full credit.
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Cosplay, Flickr, Germany, Image, Occupy Wall Street, Photography, Seattle, Smugmug
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