If you´re a designer, probably you have lots of unused graphics, webs, loops and Flash files, and you don´t get any profit from them. You could sell the rights of use of these designs (stock design) for a very low price but lifetime. You won´t become a richman but some extra income is always welcome, don´t you think?
Imagine you earn 100US$ a month, this would sum 1.200US$ a year… Enough to buy a good new computer.
Advantages of selling stock resources?
- You can make some passive income, this means you work once to create the resource and you sell it very cheap, but forever.
- It´s a social network, so you can meet other designers. And other designers will use your designs. This facts can help you to make yourself a name.
- It´s a market test. Looking at the sales, you can check which product or style has the most success.
Disadvantages of selling stock resources?
- As a designer working by order, I had some doubts about this kind of business. Maybe it could impoverish the industry, maybe it could be counterproductive for my business.
- You´re letting your resources at the reach of the competence.
- Your clients can choose stock images instead of works made by order. In my case I´d have to sell 300 times each design to match the income provided for a single design made by order.
Where to sell your designs?
My prefered place is from the Envato network, creator of such great webs as PSDTuts, Vectortuts, AETuts, Nettuts… and owner of some marketplaces:
- Graphic River online marketplace for graphic resources.
- ActiveDen marketplace for Flash developers
- Theme Forest html templates, WordPress, Joomla, Flash Sites
PSD Templates, Javascript, PHP Scripts… - Video Hibe video resources.
- Audio Jungle same for audio.
How does it works?
You simply have to create an account, fill in a test (quite simple) to demonstrate you´ve understood the terms of use of the web and you´re ready to upload your graphics.
The web itselft sets the prices, quite affordable, and negotiates the whole process.
How much can you earn?
If you sell your graphics exclusively in Graphic River you´ll get 40% of the sales, which is quite a good percentage comparing with other similar webs. If you sell your resources in other sites as well, then you get 20% of the sales.
This web hasn´t been working for a long time, but seems to be as effective as the other ones in the net; for example Flash Den, where some users have earned thousands of dollars selling their resources in Flash.
There is a referral program too, after you create your user you are provided with links like this: http://videohive.net?ref=SOSFactory. Whenever somebody click on it and deposit some money I would get a percent of it.
My advise
As a marginal business I think it´s not a bad idea for designers. You can make some easy money, but be careful not to share your best weapons.
I´d sell old works, designs you don´t use anymore, failed orders or made in your free time, experiments… and I would keep the high quality ones for my own clients.
23 October 2009 at 1:52 AM
Hey, Sergio, muy buena información, hace un par de días estaba subiendo una ilustración de Halloween, preparé todos los archivos (zip, high res..) pero al subirlos, que me aparece este mensaje: “image resolution must be formatted as 300X600″ y debido a eso no lo he podido subir, el archivo de alta resolución es el que me da duda, es de 1200×900, como sea, quizá me des un consejo, ya que has subido mascotas a GraphicRiver. Saludos
23 October 2009 at 9:17 AM
Hola Diana, creo que se refiere a la resolución de la imagen de previsualización, en cualquier caso, contáctale si tienes algunas dudas.
23 October 2009 at 12:01 PM
Hola, Sergio, ya lo solucioné, gracias por tu consejo, al parecer era el sistema. Saludos.
23 October 2009 at 2:25 PM
Hola Sergio
Que tal te parece el deviantart, ¿lo has probado?
23 October 2009 at 6:37 PM
Hola Pol, arriba en el encabezado tengo un icono con enlace a mi cuenta de Deviantart pero hasta día de hoy creo que no ofrecen este servicio, es sólo una red social. Corrígeme si me equivoco.
23 October 2009 at 6:37 PM
arriba está su icono de deviantart, Pol,
23 October 2009 at 6:39 PM
hey, lo más parecido que hace DA es que puedes darle la opción Buy Print y vender tu arte, pero no es lo mismo.
25 October 2009 at 7:29 AM
it was really helpful to receive such experience
thanks
25 October 2009 at 7:34 AM
about the exclusive issue …
is it about the whole resources or just some of them!
example ..
does it mean selling all of my resources to one my marketplace – exclusively-?
or
selling the product A only in one marketplace & sell any other products in other marketplaces ?
thanks
25 October 2009 at 1:40 PM
Hello ims, second one, it means one resource is exclusive for that marketplace.
27 October 2009 at 12:44 PM
Esta muy interesante, pero lamentablemente quienes no dominamos el inglés nos seguimos quedando atrasados. Ya que los mercados hispanos no tienen ese tipo de apoyos.
Oh aprendemos inglés o seguimos sin entrar a los mercados competitivos
27 October 2009 at 3:18 PM
No hay otra opción, amigo, pero vale la pena, aprender english es una inversión
2 November 2009 at 12:52 PM
i want to try,thnks..
21 January 2010 at 5:32 PM
Sergio, can you give me a exemple of high res size before you upload it?
Like your mascot design B-Boy, how big the high res file is?
Thanx for you tutorial, you rock!
21 January 2010 at 5:38 PM
Hi David, you can see the technical details at the right of every item: http://graphicriver.net/item/mascot-design-bboy/29245
IMAGE RESOLUTION
4500×5500
Cheers.