Image of Farmall Tractor in Alpharetta, GaPhoto byImage by Author

How to Sell Your Photography Online in Alpharetta, Ga

If you are a photographer in Alpharetta selling your work online, or just starting out and want to kick-start your income, there is one site that few people are talking about.

Let’s face it, photographers can be some of the biggest snobs out there. After all, we are artists. We can’t be bothered by such mundane things as debasing our art to make money. Well, some can’t.

I’ve been a professional photographer in the Alpharetta area for about 30 years and I’ve heard these types of arguments over and over. One of the first and loudest came back in the early part of this century when digital photography became a thing.

“That’s not real photography!”

The first guy that mixed mashed berries with his soot for cave drawings probably got similar pushback.

But that was nothing compared to the natural offshoot of both digital photography and the proliferation of the World Wide Web. I’m talking about micro-stock. Suddenly, photographers were selling their work for a dollar or less. I know, I was one of those.

“It will be the death of photography!”

You’re probably hearing the same thing about AI art now. But here’s the thing. That was 18 years ago. My income from stock has grown steadily each and every year since then. Why? Because I’m not afraid to try something new and test the waters of innovation. And because I’ve built my portfolio from those first pictures of a seashell to over 30,000 images online.

As I told one naysayer early on, if you sell an image once for $1,000 or a thousand times for a dollar, that’ the exact same income. “But it devalues the product.” Keep telling yourself that. A few years later, he emailed me, wanting my help to get him started with micro-stock.

Picture of Fried Chicken Displayed as Wall ArtPhoto byImage by Author

But I could see the market shifting in 2005, and it’s still shifting. Ride the wave or get knocked off. That’s why I have a simple image of a plate of fried chicken I bought at the Alpharetta Publix that has made me thousands of dollars.

And that’s one photo in my portfolio. Cost to me? About 15 minutes of my time and $9. And I got to eat the chicken.

But about 10 years ago, I began expanding my photography into the fine art and Print On Demand (POD) markets. Fine art. That sounds fancy. Maybe I can make some money there.

And so I did. Fine Art America, is one of the oldest and best known and I sell quite a bit there to this day. Others I have used successfully include Saatchi Art, Society 6, and Displate.

But one site hit my radar early on, but I was a bit hesitant to try them out. They sold framed and unframed prints, just like the others, but that wasn’t their focus. They sold photographs printed on, well, pretty much anything.

I didn’t want my work on T-shirts and coffee mugs, did I? Then, I thought, why not? So, I finally caved and gave RedBubble a try. Since then, it has become my highest generator of income outside the stock photography market. They have literally hundreds of products and add new ones all the time.

I’ve sold my famous fried chicken image on a throw pillow. I don’t know either. I’ve sold images of Alpharetta churches on duvet covers. Twice. And yes, I’ve sold coffee mugs and T-shirts. Dozens of them, maybe hundreds.

The site is very easy to set up an account and get started. And, if you want, you can limit the types of products they sell your pictures on. Don’t want your epic landscape to show up on a shower curtain? No problem. You have control over that. You also have control over your markup.

And that brings up one subject you need to be aware of. Some of these products sell for a lot of money. Duvet covers, for instance. You want to get a fair markup, but you don’t want to price yourself out of the market. I tend to set my markup at 100% for the average products, and on a declining scale as the prices go up. On the really cheap stuff, sticker, pins, and postcards, I tack on a flat bottom line.

If you are a photographer in Alpharetta, who is, or wants to sell your images online, try Redbubble. It will not land your work in a museum, but it will generate income.