As I’ve mentioned in the past, I am not a professional photographer by any stretch of the imagination. That being said, I did have a short stint in the fulfillment industry that required that I look for areas where pro photographers “hang out” to see what their needs were, etc. One of the surprising places to find a number of photographers active is in LinkedIn’s Groups, and you will actually find a number of professional photographers that also have professional profiles on LinkedIn. If you’re looking to increase your visibility, or if you just want to interact and ask questions with other photographers, you might want to join some of the groups on LinkedIn.

Note: Mario Sundar, Community Evangelist at LinkedIn, is a good friend of mine. Please feel free to bug him if you have any questions about LinkedIn;-)

Some quick groups to check out (will require logging in at LinkedIn):

Photo Marketing Association

Photographers on Flickr

Photography Industry Professionals

Since I had a recent (and very short-lived) career in this field, I did learn a lot about how photographers attempt to display and sell their work online.  While I am not a professional photographer, nor do I try to make a living selling photography at this time, I do hope this list helps people interested in this  arena locate some of the more popular and reputable online services (the ones mentioned are the ones I’ve seen photographers mention the most in a variety of forums and social networks).

Some popular services to sell your photographs online:

DeviantArt
Etsy (more of an arts & crafts community)
Flickr (Flickr largely has partners where you can get work done; most of the photogs I’ve talked to sell their prints on one-off occassions)
Fotomoto (disclaimer: I used to work there)
Imagekind
Shutterfly
SmugMug
ZenFolio

A couple of things to keep in mind:

1. While these services will help you display your images, you will largely be responsible for promoting your work
(this will take marketing on your end). I have some quick tips for promoting your photoblog, for example, but this isn’t the only thing you could do and/or should be doing.
2. Some of these services do charge you to host your photos (subscription fees).

3. Some of these services will only charge you if an order is actually placed (varies by company for costs…but you can generally expect somewhere close to 15% of the total sale price).

4. Many of these services, if not all, will handle the fulfillment process for you (shipping, printing, etc.)

5. All of these services may not offer what you need if you are an event or wedding photographer, such as password-protected galleries and the like,  so you might want to look at services like Instaproofs.

Reality check:
1. Many photographers, even serious professionals, will tell you that selling prints online is not an easy
thing to do. As mentioned above in the paragraph above, it takes a fair amount of marketing to get your name and images out there.

2. Selling photographs online should be viewed as a passive form of income for most.

3. Set reasonable prices for your work. Fields like nature and wildlife photography are very saturated with many images from pros and amateurs alike, so  you would really only want to charge a great deal if your images are very unique.

4. You may have to sell across multiple channels to sell images, inlcuding using more than one of the online services mentioned above.

Stock photography:

Since this is not even remotely close to an area of  familiarity or expertise of mine, I am not going to cover this arena at all.  This article on selling photos online with stock agencies should give you some leads.

Since I recently had a very short stint in the industry of photography, much shorter than I would have liked, I did learn a fair amount about what people do to try to gain additional readers to their photoblog. Here’s a quick list of the things I see successful photographers do relative to things like Social Media:

Register your blog at Networked Blogs (requires a Facebook account).

If you are a pro photographer, or if you are just looking to get additional exposure, consider creating a Facebook fan page as well.

Consider creating a Twitter account. You should also view this fairly comprehensive list of Twitter photography resources, and you should also consider adding yourself to the Wefollow Directory under Photography.

Register at Cool Photo Blogs.

Register at VFXY Photoblogs.

Register at Photoblogs.org.

Some other tips for promoting your photoblog.

As always, don’t expect a massive influx of visitors overnight just because you do these things (not all of us are photography pros like Stuck in Customs).  But if you gain a few more readers to your blog that appreciate your work, doing some of the little things I mentioned will be well worth the 20 minutes or so it takes you to do all of  the above.

Note: Localized photographers, such as wedding or event photography professionals, would do well to keep an eye on what customers are saying about them on services like Yelp.

Sukhothai, Thailand

Originally uploaded by dbillian

Now this picture was obviously modified a fair amount. Since the photo was taken in the middle of the day – which means the sun tends to wash things out and/or contribute to overexposed pictures – I had to do a lot of tweaking to get the picture the way I wanted it (I liked the composition enough, so I just needed to take a little time to adjust other aspects of the photo).

I personally don’t use Photoshop at this time, largely due to the fact that work historically takes up a great deal of my time and learing a fairly complex piece of software would chew up the little free time I do have (I typically work for startups, which would now include a photography startup called Fotomoto.com). Picnik, at least for now, fulfills most of my needs because I am not trying to become a professional photographer (I have nowhere near the consistency required to be a pro, nor do I *think* like a photographer would when looking for a shot).