Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Thanks for the comment! Submitting Your Photos to 500px Prime As you’ve probably heard, 500px has launched a commercial licensing marketplace: 500px Prime offers a simple full­featured license that is competitive in the industry while providing one of the highest royalty rates ­ 70% ­ to our photographers. I was pleased to see they were based in Toronto and I liked the notion of supporting a Canadian based photo sharing site as I had with Flickr back in 2004. Just one question, Should we try google+ instead? I currently use Photoshelter (which I highly recommend) as the service behind my Image Library where people can view the photos, or buy them directly. To their credit, 500px changed their stance on this about a month later and flipped the royalty rates to 70% for the photographer and 30% for themselves. I myself removed my work from sale on their site and then found them putting the licensing buttons u nder my work just as you did. We feature the unique, crazy, and beautiful stories behind the photos you see on 500px. These 180+ accounts get a lot more action/views as they are pushed to users unlike the “regular” users on the rest of the site. Great point raised here Michael. I downloaded and installed and viewed my page – pretty good I thought. By far the biggest issues for me are the Chinese expansion implications, photographs that appear to be on sale, and the issues around voting, favouriting and the quest for popularity. I understand that for a small startup company revenue generation can be difficult, and that some of the things I have objected to above are the result of their attempt to monetize. Quite a few photographers negatively reacted to the choice to use the word dignity alongside a 30% royalty. Ultimately I think the best place to post your photographs is on your own website, and point there from social media, but that isn’t for everyone. Wish there was a way to have one site for well-intentioned snap shooters and one for a more refined level of photographers. I went and checked it out and seemed alright to me, but then I read your article. Great article. I’ll be updating this post or writing a new one to address what I believe are the implications of the Chinese website for 500px users soon. 500px declined half the photos for the generic reason of them thinking it wasn’t commercially viable. I do think that their choice to display pricing below your images despite your having not opted into their sales programs is unfortunate. At first, I thought I was hacked or it had something to do with technical difficulties until I learned something about hot linking on this post. I’d be interested in selling in the near future so will keep Photoshelter in mind, even if there’s more cost involved-if it makes life easier I think it’s the way to go in this instance! Photoshelter is a good option, but it is around $10 per month. Hi Michael, Thanks for your answer, We are not expecting to make a fortune with print sales, of, no it’s not our plan. I ignore it. I have never offered my images for sale on 500px so any questions regarding their marketplace will probably be answered by 500px support if you ask them. That said your work on 500px may not get great scores (though it might) – but I don’t think that is a bad thing. I really appreciate your article on 500px. I did not realise that the best way to get noticed on 500px was to follow a thousand other photographers, post photos and then pick up photographers with fewer followers than yourself. You'll meet inspirational photographers, and discover how they capture the images that blow your mind every day. Many thanks for writing such an interesting piece. That isn’t really much of an answer, but regardless of platform what are you hoping to get out of it? I’ve heard of a few that were great (before I heard of them) but have devolved into various unsavory attitudes and cliques. Makes no sense at all. EDIT #2: (December 28, 2015). 500px wrote back that I had been refunded in full but it would take up to 2 hours to show up in my account. On with the list! A pittance in return for a license is usually a sign of what is to come in terms of service and respect. Most if not all of you’re points here are very valid. 500px ISO is home to the best photo stories on the web. All have their drawbacks. Its been 2 years since 500px expanded beyond being a simple photo-sharing service by launching a commercial licensing system for photographers. Its kinda strange that you need to pay for plus account. They say you’ll be able to delete images off the Chinese site soon, probably after they finish transferring all the images (or those not censored by China). That means your subject has to be sharp and clear if you want to sell your photos through 500px and its distributors, but there are certainly ways to get creative. 500px support confirmed with users asking for an explanation that indeed this was a 500px website. So while I encourage people to use G+, I think any social media platform is best used to send visitors to ones own website, not to house that content itself. It would only be a valuable backup if you can access your full resolution files, and only then if you originally shot them in jpg (no RAW backup if you shoot in RAW). At the beginning of that 500px post I mention Photoshelter which is where I house my Image Library (the rest of my site is self hosted with Dreamhost). Keeping an eye out on our trend related blog posts and staying on top of different articles that are shared in our Contributor Newsletter is key. I am still a fairly new photographer (and college student) and have been using zenfolio for the past year. This group is for your and world's pleasure, so let's keep it simple: post only best photos, the one's that you consider your best art works. Let’s take Antonett Ewan as an example – she has 12,354 followers, yet the vast majority of these have no followers themselves. Your needs may be different than mine though, and I don’t really have experience with other sites so I can’t really recommend anything else. My account was terminated by them for violations in their term agreement, (I stupidly posted my new domain name which pointed to their marketplace). I’m not sure what you mean about the right clicking though – do you mean in terms of theft prevention? Keywording is a theme that usually comes up when advising photographers on how to improve the discoverability of images for buyers. As for the rest of the 500px service, I don’t know many who continue to use the site, and many started abandoning the place back around 2013 when I left for good and the evidence was ample that photographers were not something 500px seemed to respect. The only thing I did like is that the overall quality bar for the work shared there was a bit higher than flickr… and unlike the flickr of way back when, they didn’t seem to have an innate hatred of professional photographers and the idea of using the platform for some self-promotion – something flickr would delete your account if you got caught doing. Pays 100% commission. This encourages photographers from countries with lower economic indexes to join 500 px with the idea they’ll make money, given that a sale for a photographer in let’s say Russia or Poland, is more valuable to the photographer. Yet, I’ve never received any royalties, and my account says I’ve never had any photos licensed or sold anything. I’d rather make photographs and dabble in html/css here and there than wrangling plugins and themes! I didn’t sign up to sell any stock images. I, like many of the others, have been toying with joining 500px but I don’t think it’s for me. I get a message that someone is interested. I am not sure if Flickr has changed their stance on links to websites in captions etc, but I wish they would. I’ve dabbled in programming (js,php/mysql), and I decided after my last failed gallery attempt I wasn’t going to spend 6 months to get it right, I’d sign up and give Photoshelter a shot instead. So I guess it depends on what someone is looking for in a platform to share their photography. If you read the post I referred to by Sarah Marino (if you haven’t already) I think you’ll find that many people think the same way about the selection on 500px. In the end, none of the sites available for us to share are perfect I suppose. If you … But rarely post to them and I spend less time working the Google SERPs. 500px ISO is home to the best photo stories on the web. Anyway, i don’t find any insights about, if people do actually sell there. That said, they clearly do make some sales, so success there is at least possible. they only have one persons answering to help@500px.com, and that person will mark a ticket as ‘solved’ without even answering, at all. Apparently, copyrights and royalties don’t mean all that much!? See what photos come up for different keywords. Interresting article, thx for sharing. Sadly, 500px has become an equal-opportunity display of lower quality work occasionally interrupted by a few great, albeit similar, images. At the top of my post I recommended Flickr over 500px, and I would still do that today. I sold large and small prints through their original marketplace, but the web/print licensing has not delivered any results. Over the last couple of years, I have been questioning where social media photo sharing will lead us. I had reached the top (locally at least) for both with little return. Thanks for writing this and sharing it on G+ Michael. Nice Post man, seems a lot more people are starting to share my opinion of 500px. This is something that probably happens on many photo sharing networks. Free, easy, and effective are not often things that intersect. I’m a programmer by trade now, but it would be nice to earn some money from the photography I do as a hobby. Frustrating – but lack of communication when someone is critical is something I’ve read a lot of before. It is possible that 500px support may answer this question for you. Also, I didn’t find any of my photos on the Chinese mirror site, nor am I able to sign in there. Pulling my files — if they let go of them!! It’ll be very interesting if customers value quality enough to pay amounts that make it worthwhile to the photographer. I do already sell my photos under rights managed license through Photoshelter but was hoping to get on other licensing platforms with better SEO. Frankly, the only reason I don’t use it is because the photography there is usually so attractive to me that I’m just too intimidated to place mine alongside!! I can’t disagree. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. My main issue with this is the fact our images were copied onto Chinese servers, but the way 500px handled this is also problematic. Thank you for the comment Thomas! Personally I set up lists on social media (Twitter and G+ mostly) and follow mostly those photographers and individuals who I can learn from, are friendly, and engage in conversation from time to time. Today I wish I could do it all over again and continue enjoying my photography for myself. Selling thru 500px would seem to mean a buyer could potentially use it for business or commercial purposes, forever, for any purpose - for only one payment to the photographer. Your Licensing portfolio should reflect changing trends and should not be seen as static. If you find any photo of yours, take a … Update your contact information and complete your payout setup, so you’re easy to reach when the time comes. If they really do, they are vegan. But there is a sameness to so much of the subject matter and look. 500px is a site that only photographers go to and photographers are not going to buy other photographers work. I have tried to connect 500px for an explanation but all I get is automated response. Thanks for your comment Gary! I will respond as soon as possible. These were usually $2.99 and provided a limited license to use the image for personal digital wallpaper. I see photos are also available as fine art prints for purchase; I don't know how much of the selling price is paid to the photographer and how much goes to 500px. You can't directly download a photograph from 500px for free, but if you need to save a photo for legal use, there are some tools that will help. If I recall they have a limit on how quickly you can upload things there, and beyond that you have to pay. A paid membership is currently not an option for me, and I would prefer something that doesn’t require a lot of time. Yes Michael that was my reference to theft protection. After reading this article it looks like 500px might not be the platform I’m interested in if all it will brings is more disconnected ‘likes’ on yet another social media platform. Flickr or 500px: Feedback. Relying on any online platform to sell photography in our best interest with any semblance of honesty is naive at best. Have these things changed since this blog was written? Call me paranoid, but I’m tempted to have someone buy a license (with my money) to see if I get paid. The subject of 500px comes up often enough in online conversation I thought it would be beneficial to write down some of the issues I’ve had over the years and communicate why I no longer participate in sharing, voting, or viewing there. Seams to me that their budget is kinda low… not earning to much from people selling the images so they need to come up with something. I started an account when I first started out in photography, and the initial response I got was really positive, until I realized most people who liked or Favorited my photos, only did so, so I would either follow, or in exchange like or favorite theirs. I find them excrutiating to deal with in regards to receiving payment for sold licensed work. so I’d start there. I wanted real criticism, from real photographers to help me better my craft and also a place to offer my experience. 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