selling stock photography

Hi everybody,just a quick question, I'm thinking about adding to my

web site an option for selling stock photography,but my question is

how do you control it, is there an option that would block the photo

until they pay for it and then they can down load it ? What sould I

do?

thanks

cynthia

Cynthia:

The absolutely easiest way is to offer only low res on your site and have photo buyers contact you for a high res when they want one. This approach may turn some buyers off, but realistically most photo buyers don't expect individual photographers to offer that level of service, at least not just yet. Don't forget that storing high res images on your site will take up a lot of space.

Having some sort of shopping cart system would probably be your best bet if youb decide to try this. Once the client has submitted the order and the payment has been approved (assuming you'll accept credit cards) you could set it up so the following page contains a link to the high res image they just bought. Exactly how depends on the system you go with but please do spend some time researching this before you make your mind up since fees and level of service varies a lot between different vendors...

Hope that helps.

Mikael is right. Two more points to consider: (a) unless you are

selling royalty-free, there will be at least one exchange of emails

before you settle on a licensing fee. (b) for all sites except the

largest, the volume of transaction doesn't justify having instant

downloading. <a href = "http://www.terragalleria.com/stock-photography.html">Terra Galleria stock photography</a>