Photographers of all levels will soon be able to check out Photrade.com, a free new site (now in the private beta stage) where users can “share, protect, and make money.” Not only can you display your images, you can also sell stock, prints, and merchandise through the site’s Adcosystem, an ad-supported system that pays photo owners for every image view (unlike storage sites like Flickr, which allow you to maintain your galleries in cyberspace, but don’t pay you a penny for it).

Both amateur photographers and pros are invited to sell their images in a fully protected environment (all images are watermarked to prevent misuse or theft). If selling is your goal, photographers can pick a suggested minimum price, a suggested marked-up price, or a custom price. You can also earn money through an ad-revenue setup (either through banner ads in your gallery or in the images themselves, and from splash-screen ads). This ad-revenue service is similar to the newly launched Dimpls site, which allows users to place logos and ads next to relevant pictures to get click-through cash.

These two services (especially Dimpls) are obviously more geared to amateurs who don’t want to give away the photo farm for free (though isn’t sharing the real goal of posting your images online? I don’t even consider how much money I could be making off of the kids’ snapshots that I upload for Grandma and Grandpa to view in Florida). And how much money can I really make anyway?

I am curious to see if (and how many) pros would actually use Photrade.com (the site keeps emphasizing that it’s for professionals, too, though I’m hard-pressed to see why any pro would want to “compete” with your average Joe in selling his or her images here). Consumers and strapped-for-cash companies will likely be checking out sites such as these (and there will be more), instead of having to pony up their pennies for more expensive online stock houses.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2008 at 11:48 am and is filed under Jennifer Gidman. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.