Earn money selling Photos - Citizen Image

Citizen Image is yet another website that helps you to sell your pictures to prospective buyers, a process that they call “image syndication”. Based in New York and created for creative photographers and citizen photojournalists, Citizen Image will market and sell your photographs to various editorial, creative and media buyers.

Built-in cameras for cellphones are de rigeur and almost compulsory add-ons and the sales of digital cameras continue to grow at steady pace. Everyone wants to make some extra money from the pictures they take anyway and image marketplaces are now beginning to fill the gap.

Dosh Dosh’s Citizen Image Review

What types of images are Citizen Image looking for? Coverage of celebrities, news, sporting events and your typical landscape/city photography.

They advise that images for editorial content need to be unique and submitted as soon as the topical event or occurrence takes place. Citizen Image takes 50% of each sale and payments below US $200 are made via solely via Paypal.

Amounts above $200 can however be made in either check or Paypal. There doesn’t seem to be any minimum amount to reach before one can receive payment, although any amount under $50 can only be requested through an email to Citizen Image.

What makes Citizen Image stand out is their pro-active stance when it comes to marketing your images. Citizen Image does not passively rely on buyers visiting their website, but claims to constantly push your images to major editorial and creative outlets.

Their list of customers range from the LA Times to magazines like InStyle magazine and advertising firms like Saatchi & Saatchi. Impressive but are they for real? Maybe.

Your images will probably have to really good to be bought by those publications anyway. Members can also browse an assignment board which buyers use to post specific picture requests. Currently there aren’t many assignments, understandably so because Citizen Image is still relatively new.

What’s Cool.

• Images can be uploaded via cellphones or desktop
• Push-style marketing of images
• Java-based multiple Image uploader
• Each user has their own homepage to promote.
• Assignment board - where buyers can request for specific pictures.
• Breaking news images can be MMSed or emailed directly without being uploaded.

What’s Not.

• Citizen Bay takes 3 months exclusive rights for editorial images - you won’t be able to sell the images anywhere else.
• Lack of assignments. May improve with time.

Verdict

I think Citizen Image has much more features than Spymedia and I particularly like the breaking news option of sending pictures immediately via MMS or email without even logging in and uploading the specific images.

The multiple image uploader is also very convenient and push-style marketing means that your images might have an higher opportunity of being sold.

Of course, these are hypotheses and whether your pictures will get sold really depends on a lot more factors, one of which is luck. if you are a hobbyist, an amateur photographer or someone who simply lives in a celebrity-infested neighborhood, Citizen Image might earn some extra cash.