Magazines

How To Sell Your Photos
Direct To Magazine Publishers

By Andrew Hudson

Magazines

Magazines are a good way to see your picture in print. There are many magazines covering a wide variety of subjects, and they need pictures for each edition.

This was my first published photo. My 1996 image of India's Taj Mahal at dawn won an award in National Geographic Traveler magazine.

Look for photography competitions. My first published photo appeared in National Geographic Traveler magazine, winning a photo competition in the Jan 1997 edition. I think I received $100 for that.

Magazine editors are generally not photographers, they're writers -- what they're really looking for is not photos but stories. So try packaging your photos with a pre-written article. Think of some interesting and unique angle about your trip or the subject of your photos. Write in the style of the targeted magazine, with a similar word count. You can re-purpose the same article for different magazines, that's what a lot of freelance writers do. Check the magazine's Web site for submission guidelines and address. I wrote some articles for Shutterbug magazine and Postcards magazine, which paid $1 a word.

Magazines often have fixed pay rates, so there's no negotiation. Articles are commissioned and paid by word count. A typical article may be 300 words or 600 words. Photography rates depend upon the size printed, so a full page pays more than a half page, and the cover shot pays the most.

How much can you get for a magazine photo? Perhaps $50-$500 per image, depending upon the size and placement. For an article? About $1 per word, so $600 for a 600-word article.

Now that we've discussed the ways to can let other people use your photos to make money, let's see how you can use your photos to make money.

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