NEW PARADIGM SHIFTS IN STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY - PART II (Continued) CONCLUSIONS & RECOMMENDATIONS The more online marketplace distributors you have for your non-exclusive stock images, the greater your sales potential and income. We know of some photographers that have 50 to 70 distributors for their images. (Naturally, only a handful of these distributors are online marketplaces like the ones we've featured, the rest are traditional agencies.) Your only limitation is the time it takes to upload and manage all those online accounts! If your time is limited, and you only have the resources to fit one more online marketplace into your schedule (and you're already with Alamy), we suggest you try to get on with AcclaimImages.com -- that recommendation being based on the current statistics we've shown in this article. Keep in mind that Web traffic statistics can change within just a few months. And despite the stats and recommendations, you'll find that some images types will sell better at one outlet than another, because of the type of clientele the marketplace attracts. No matter how smart you are in your distribution plan, this is still a numbers game, and you have to give it a fair amount of time to really determine what works and what doesn't. Start out at each marketplace with a fairly good number of images (at least a few hundred), and with as diverse of a selection as your library of images will allow. Plan to leave those images online for at least one year. Those marketplaces that start to sell your work will intuitively encourage you to add more images. And those places that don't move your images can sometimes surprise you 18 months later. The point is, even if a marketplace is not performing to your expectations, you have already made the time investment to upload the images, and you'd be foolish to remove the images unless an exclusivity conflict develops with another distributor, or you suspect that the marketplace is withholding payment on past sales.
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