Sell photos on photrade | By BenSpark

I had a conference call with Krista from Photrade today. We met at Blog World Expo and then caught up again at Tao for the Postiecon Party. Krista was very interested in my blog and the photography that I do and she sent me an invite to use Photrade. Right now Photrade is in beta and it is invite only. I will have a few invites for interested parties.

Photrade is pretty easy to navigate. I was able to sign up, edit my profile, add and avatar and then edit my preferences. Pretty standard stuff. I did all this while Krista was on the phone with me. I talked out loud and she took notes. She wanted me to work on the site as if no one was on the phone. That was cool. I was able to do that and then we talked about a section of the site after I had completed any tasks on that particular section.

While going through the site I did find a few things that were buggy, but hey they are in beta and that was the purpose of the con call. I think that it is great that Krista would take the time to go through the site with me to gather my impressions of the site. that speaks to a company that wants to have a good end product.

Okay so what can you do with Photrade?

Well, after you’ve entered information and created a profile and set your preferences you can upload your photos. There are two options for photo uploading, one is to do an individual photo at a time or use the Java multi-uploader. I’m going to stick with the single upload for now as I want to hand select my best work to see on Photrade. I also want to name each photo, enter tags and descriptions. There are a few improvements that I would like to see with the uploader. For one thing you can’t change the title in this location or rotate the image. If you want the image to appear a specific way you must do the editing either on camera or in Photoshop prior to it being uploaded.

Once the image is uploaded you can add tags, and a description as well as a title (must be done on the photo page). You can also set the prices to sell the photo in various ways. You can sell 4X6 8X10 up to 20X30. You can take the suggested price that Photrade sets as your price or you an increase the markup of your photo by adding an amount to the margin. So for example if a product is $4.00 and you put the margin at $2.00 then you would sell the product at $6.00. And you get to keep 90% of the sale of each image.

Photrade has unlimited uploading so send in your large images, they make for great posters. I encourage you to explore the site and request and invite. I should be getting a few and if you would like one let me know. Drop me a comment. Below is an example of one of the things you can do with your images. You can embed them in blog posts through HTML or you can e-mail them. they can show the Photrade ad or not and you can also choose if the copyright will be on the image also. I talked to Krista about customizing the copyright so it said the user instead of Photrade. That is an enhancement coming. In fact there are many enhancements coming and each time they meet with people about the site they get more and better feedback and make improvements.

Here are some features of Photrade.

…Getting PAID for your Pictures:

1. 1. Get Paid for Every View of Your Photos
2. 2. Get Paid for Every Click on Your Photos
3. 3. Get Paid when Anyone Links to Your Photos
4. 4. Name Your Price for Your Prints (don’t worry we do the printing/shipping)
5. 5. Name Your Price for Companies who want to Use your Photos

More Features:

* • No Limit Uploads – No limits and always for Free.
* • Easy Multi-Photo Uploader – Quick and easy to put up entire folders at a time.
* • Customizable Pages – Customize your pages and express yourself.
* • Photo Privacy – Control who sees your photos and who can buy them.
* • Simple Sharing – Email photos to friends/family or post them on your blog or MySpace.
* • Tag, Comment & Rate photos – Get feedback on your work, share thoughts with others.
* • PhoTages – A collage of your photos to post on your MySpace, Blog, etc.

You can see my gallery on Photrade. BenSpark’s home page