NFT flipping Guide

If you're looking for a way to make more money off your photos, then this article is for you! The full-time photographer I met while at the Sony World Photography Awards told me his secret - selling rights of the first refusal. All it takes is flipping the image before submitting it to licensing sites like Getty. Here's how:

1) Take a screenshot of your photo in Lightroom or Adobe Bridge and rename the file so that it doesn't have any spaces or special characters. For example, "portraitofgirlraw.jpg" would become "portraitofgirl___raw.jpg".

2) Find the thumbnail of your image with the extension ".thumb.jpg" in your hard drive and rename it to the same format.

3) Go to Shutterstock and click on "Add Image". Upload your renamed file first, and then select "Browse..." to upload the thumb small image as well. Then upload another version of your photo that has no watermark or metadata with a similar name as the filename. For example, if you uploaded a file named "portraitofgirl_raw.jpg", then you should also upload a file named "portraitofgirl_edited.jpg". If you're only selling one version of your photo, then rename your current image's extension to ".jpg" and upload the small image as a different file.

4) Make sure your image's name has no spaces or special characters, especially if you're uploading a version of your photo that has been edited. I'm not sure what will happen if you do, but it might cause problems for your licensing later on. There shouldn't be any issues with spaces or special characters in the filename though.

5) Download the file after it's uploaded and rename it to something without a space or special characters again. For example, "portraitofgirl_edited.jpg" should be renamed to "portraitofgirl_edited___edited.jpg".

6) Upload the new file to the same licensing site where you uploaded your original version from. And if you have more than one version of your photo, then rename each version to the same format.

7) The next time you upload a new version of your photo, don't include any watermark or metadata with it. If a licensing site asks for these things, just give them a blank file instead and upload another one. The metadata will be more important when trying to sell your images, later on, so avoid including it if possible. The only exception is if you want to tag people in the photo so that they can be easily located in other photos (for example, if you're selling this exact image).

8) Don't forget to remove all metadata from the original file with the smart previews before uploading new versions of your photo.

9) When you're done uploading a photo, then wait for the licensing site to email you about it (which usually takes about a day or two). Make sure to write down which sites are interested in your photo if it's not obvious from the email. Also, make sure you include images from each site in your portfolio so that people know you own both versions of your photos.

Most of these websites only buy rights for small images, so make sure to resize larger ones if they're interested in high-res versions as well. If they're not interested in licensing high-res versions, then feel free to delete the smaller versions from your hard drive after a couple of weeks.

Some examples of photos that have been flipped before selling them are below. The original version is on the left, and the final version is on the right:

How flipping affects licensing

This sounds confusing, but it won't be when you see how it turns out in practice. Here's an example of how this works: Photographer A takes a photo of someone on the street and uploads images of both versions to licensing companies like Getty and Shutterstock. Once they're published, then Photographer B decides he wants to license them for his company's ad campaign. He contacts Photographer A to negotiate a price and only has to pay for the rights to low-res images because he can still download high-res versions for free from licensing sites like Getty.

Here's how this situation plays out if Photographer A didn't flip his images:

1) Photographer B finds a photo that he likes and contacts Photographer A. He offers to pay $1000 for the rights to use this photo in his company's ad campaign. The image is published at 1/2 resolution to the web and in print ads, but there are no high-res versions available online or offline. At the same time, there are no licensing rights available on Getty or Shutterstock.

2) Photographer B discovers that he can download a high-res version of the photo for free if he was able to find any larger versions (which he can't). It's only available on a licensing site called iStockphoto. It's a very small version of the photo, but it's the only one he can find with enough resolution to make it useful. He doesn't want to pay $1,000 for rights to this image that he didn't even like in the first place, so he decides to buy rights to it from iStockphoto instead. He gets a few thousand dollars worth of licensing rights and then keeps the high-res version for himself.

3) Photographer B uploads other photos that he likes from his company's ad campaign at 1/2 resolution. He also includes a $1,000 check from his company as payment for the rights to this image. He asks Photographer A if he can remove the image's watermark and metadata from his photo so that it doesn't look like it's been altered.

4) Photographer A agrees to do so and replies saying that he'll delete those important things in the photo next time. He is not asked to change anything else in his photo beside that. The ad campaign goes on just like normal and gets published at 1/2 resolution everywhere as well.

5) Photographer B gets paid by his company for the rights to the photo and passes the $1,000 check over to Photographer A. Photographer A gets a nice chunk of change himself and people can see his photo in all of these places that he's been paying to get it published.

6) Photographer A is almost satisfied with this money, but then decides that he still wants to have more control over his image so that he can start making money on them as well. So he goes back to iStockphoto and decides to make small changes in the photo (like adding some text in there). He only changes a few things, though, so it doesn't affect how much licensing rights would cost him at all.

7) After a few weeks, Photographer A changes the name of the image to something longer. He takes a new photo of himself and poses in the same spot where he took his original photo in. He adds some additional text around the photo so that it's bigger and more visible. He also redoes all of his metadata from scratch so that he can add references to other photos (like where he was standing at the time, what time of day it was, etc).

8) Photographer B is still not interested in this photo after all of these changes. He is only interested in high-res versions of photos and doesn't like the changes that Photographer A has made. However, Getty and Shutterstock are still interested in smaller images like they were before so he uploads a low-res version there. Soon afterward, photographer B gets contacted by another company that wants to use his image for free (yes, you read that correctly). This new company only needs small icons from the photo and doesn't care about the large versions at all (why pay for something if you can get it for free?).

9) Photographer B ignores this company and keeps going with his ad campaign as normal. After a few more weeks pass, Photographer A decides to contact Photographer B again. He's got a $2,000 check from someone that wants to use his photo in their product packaging and he can't find any high-res versions of this image anywhere online or offline. It's time to negotiate rights again!

10) Photographer B isn't interested in the changes that Photographer A has made to this photo but he still needs the high-res version of it (if he knew where to find one without paying for it, he'd be using it himself instead). He admits that he's only interested in the high-res version of this photo and doesn't care about anything else. He says he'll pay $800 for this version and then he'll remove the watermark and metadata from the photo.

11) Photographer A agrees to these terms, gets a nice chunk of change, and republishes it as a high-res version on Getty (in addition to iStockphoto).

As you can see, this makes it harder for photographers to make money on these photos themselves if they ever change their minds about them. They're forced to use licensing sites like iStockphoto or Getty so that they can still make some money after changing their photos. The fees for these sites are expensive, and many photographers have to go through a lot of hassle to get their images online after they've changed their minds about them.