I studied photography at college. Way back then we learned about reciprocity failure, used 35mm, 120 and 5 x 4 film and were taught the alchemy of mixing artistry with craft.

Times have moved on and nowadays, although I still keep my trusty Nikon FE-2, 99% of any photography I produce is digital.

I don’t earn my living as a photographer, and probably wouldn’t want to either, as the perceived value of images has fallen to nearly zero, with companies like Getty almost giving photographers work away. In addition the ease at which people steal photographers’ work from the web by linking, copying etc, has made it unusual to think of actually paying the person who did the work.

Think of the last time you saw a Powerpoint presentation with images taken off the web. Did the photographer get paid? Did they even get a credit?

Anyway, whilst the market is very different now, there are still opportunities to make some income from your images. As part of my eventual strategy to generate my own income, I have recently joined one which is challenging many of the assumptions in photo sales – Picfair.

Picfair makes it very easy to get selling. After signing up for an account, and filling in your profile, you proceed to upload images and then tag them with meta data, such as content, where taken etc. Finally you choose your price and then submit.

It all seems very clear, adult and honest, which is a commendable way to do business.

The company doesn’t make judgements on your work, so it’s up to you to decide if you think it’s good enough to sell. Pricing is entirely down to you, and you receive 100% of the price you place on your images. Picfair takes a small cut off the top of the price. The licensing of your work is also really straightforward. In essence, from my understanding of the agreement, the buyer is paying for a non-exclusive licence to use the photo in most non-commercial ways, i.e they can make a print, use it on their site, use it as an illustration but they can’t resell or use it in a commercial environment such as the main image in an advertisement. (Now I’m not a lawyer, but I used to know someone who played one….OK, rubbish disclaimer there but, what I’m trying so say is that this is MY understanding of the agreement and it makes sense to me)

On top of that, yesterday I sold my first image with them – Bluebell Wood, and made £5.00 from the sale.

Proof…

So it’s not going to pay the mortgage yet, but I am really excited by the possibilities of passive income from something I enjoy doing. Picfair seems to be onto something here.

Making money off Picfair isn’t a difficult process. Just shoot, edit, choose, upload, tag, price and then wait for the sale. You don’t need me to write a bulleted SEO baiting mock article on this topic, so I’m not going to.

But so far, I like the service, I’m happy to recommend it and on top of that it’s earning me some money.

If you’d like to see what else I’m currently hawking on Picfair – just click here.

Give it a go, and let me know how you fare in the comments.