It’s the beginning of a new year, and I’m focusing on POSSIBILITIES this month! In my journey, I’ve discovered some strong, determined women who are working very hard to make their dreams, the possibilities they see for themselves, become their reality.

Meet Carole Vandenberg.

In her own words:

As a long-time photographer who loves photographing with my husband – we have collected a lot of images. One day I wondered what to do withthem, so I looked into various ways to sell them.

The first area I tried was stock agencies. Stock used to bring in a lot of money for an image, but not anymore – now each image only brings in about a quarter on average.

A friend of ours does a lot of product photography and travel photography and has thousands of images across six or more stock agencies and makes about $1500 a month on average. You need to edit and size the images, keyword each of them, and then upload them to the stock websites and people go there to buy them. You can market them, but you don’t have to. I was on seven agencies, but not much sold, which was okay because I didn’t have the time to do the work it took. I have since left all of my stock agencies except Getty.

Next, I decided that my images would work well for corporate entities to use in their buildings, hotels, welcome centers, offices, hospitals, or restaurants. I put together a nice website to refer them to. The problem I ran into is finding the buyers. No one seems to know how to contact them. The images would have been of interest to them and I could have marketed to them, but I never found out how to contact them.

As my photoshop skills improved, I wandered into the world of graphic art, creative photography, and composites. Since I have no real-world painting skills, I was happy to stay in the digital world. I added creative software and collected some supplies to use. Sometimes I used my own photos and sometimes I used free photos from the internet along with items from scrapbooking websites. Of course, after a while, I investigated selling these. At first, I tried adding my images and my creations to a website called Fine Art America, but nothing much happened. The nice thing about FAA is that they give you a free website. I also added some of them to Red Bubble and Society 6, butnot much happened there either.

Recently, I decided to create some simple sayings to put on tee shirts. I found a few popular websites that sell apparel – TeeSpring and TeePublic – and added the designs. I also added them to Red Bubble, Society 6, and Fine Art America. The plan is to add actual designs made from my photos and other things as well as other sayings. Again, not much happening, but this is  fairly new. It is a work in progress.

I am fairly convinced that marketing is the key. There is a lot of advice available (free and paid). I need to learn more about keywords/hashtags, SEO for my website, as well as how to use IG and FB for marketing (in trying Instagram I somehow got tangled up and don’t know how to fix it LOL).

The journey has been fun and interesting. And along the way, my editing and creative skills have really improved.

You can see my work at:

Fine Art America –
https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/c-vandenberg.html

Red Bubble –
https://www.redbubble.com/people/c-vandenberg/shop

Society 6 – https://society6.com/c-vandenberg

TeeSpring – https://teez-62.creator-spring.com/

TeePublic – http://tee.pub/lic/Teez

My Website – https://goclickblog.com

Fine Art America Website – http://c-vandenberg.pixels.com/

If you want something you don’t see, please contact me. I might just have it for you. This has been a long journey, but I am not giving up on my dream. I know that possibilities can become reality if I work hard enough.

Carole Vandenberg

“IF THEY SAY IT’S IMPOSSIBLE, IT’S IMPOSSIBLE FOR THEM, NOT FOR YOU” – unk

Possibilities Word Art available at:

Karen Schulz Designs | Gingerscraps | Oscraps | MyMemories