I shot a picture a couple weeks ago of a thunderstorm over the lake (Lake Michigan) and I got a really good shot of lightning over the my local power plant and it was on FB and the company wants to purchase rights to publish the photo. I have never sold rights to a picture before and really don't know what is fare and I am looking for any advice.
You will need to find out the following before you can price any image:
Rights managed basis
Do they want it for website use?
Print use including brochures, annual reports etc?
If website, how long - one week one month, one year, two years
Size in pixels if website?
Exclusive use vs non-exclusive - exclusive is VERY expensive
Royalty free basis
This is based on the size they require. I never license royalty free because it gives them the right more or less to use the image how they like.
If you go to my e-commerce site, here and click on any image, then Buy License, you will find a drop down pricing box. Before you can do this, you need to find out the above (Rights managed).
Cheers
Sheila
PS Whatever you do, do not sell yourself short. You have a unique image and they want it!
Sheila, the the photo pricing calculator on your web site is very nice. Did you write the code for the calculator yourself, or is it a Javascript plugin?
Thanks, Joe. I wasn't familiar with that hosting service. The detailed price quote calculator is a nice feature, which I don't think is available in the better-known photo hosts, such as Smugmug and Zenfolio.
Photodeck is purely a site to license images rather than a photo sharing site. It costs approximately $30.00 a month so its not cheap! I have a Statcounter on my Photodeck site and am getting more and more hits via Google et al. The price calculator on PD is editable by the photographer. You can set the price range as high or as low as you like. It even allows for premium pricing for model released images. I have also linked many of my images on PBase site to my Photodeck site. I have set up a gallery here for rights managed images. Just click on the gallery, then image, then "buy license" which will take you to my Photodeck site.
Photodeck take no commission and they handle the downloading of the image to the client after payment direct to the photographer. I should state that there is a deal going currently, I believe, where I get a discount of my monthly fee should I introduce a new photographer. Thought I should be up front about that!
I don't know if Zenfolio or SmugMug allow the link to Photodeck on their sites. I know for a fact that Flickr do not allow "commercial" sales of contributors but they could not explain to me in many communications between Flickr and myself why this is so since they have linked up with Getty, the biggest stock photography agency on the planet. All I can say is that Yahoo must have been paid a lot of money by Getty to access Flickrite's work!
