Nude photo submissions
(we want articles too!)
Photographers, are you looking for a way to make some money shooting or writing about a subject matter you love? If you are able to provide nude photo submissions up to the standard of what you see when you look around this site here then we may just be what each other are looking for!
FAQ:
Content
We are looking to feature high res photo shoots, HD video and articles/tutorials.
On Art of Imagery we are looking to focus more on quality than quantity. The optimal amount of photos per set would be somewhere around 15-25 though smaller, tighter sets may also be accepted. I want the feel of this site to be more like a high quality, glossy magazine full of tightly edited fresh images rather than a regualr 'adult site'. Most of which seem to be little more than internet archives containing huge sets of lightly (or un)edited similiar looking content. Sets of only a couple shots will also be considered when the work is of a particularly high artistic value. For instance complex digital manipulations/compositions etc
The best way to describe what we are after is in pictures, have a look for yourself at the work on the site and try to get a feel for the style we are after. To try to put it in words though I would have to say the foremost requirement is beauty. The model must be beautiful, the photography must be beautiful, the editing (if obvious) must be beautiful. I realise that beauty is a subjective entity however and so before you do submit your work please realise that the standards for this site are high, will stay high and are always going to be somewhat subjective.
Photos should be jpg level 8 to 10, srgb and 2000 pixels minimum on the longest side. Videos should be 720p or 1080p avi or mpg.
Yes, please supply both. It should be needless to say that all models should be over 18 at the time of shooting. Any submissions without both a signed release and valid government issued photo ID of the model will be ignored. If you don't have a model release you can download one here
Very important. This site is all about beauty, it is featuring the best of the best the digital world has to offer in both artists and models. Having said that there are no particular age(well over 18 is a given I hope)/race/look requirements but I will say that the type of models we are looking to feature here aren't your normal 'adult site' looking models. We want models that look more like they would be featured in Vogue than Juggs (I'm not even sure if there is such a magazine, quite likely there is). As such we aren't overly interested in the heavily tattood or fake tan/fake boobs type of look although what it will always come down to is the beauty of the model and how deftly the shooter works with her. If she's a great looking girl or even if it's a great looking set then it doesn't matter about specifics. Black or white, tall or short, Asian or African, blonde or brunette....beauty is beauty.
I look at it this way: philosophically I have no problem with nudity, the body is the most natural and beautiful thing in the world. EVERY part of the body. However with the caveat that the work should always still remain beautiful and respectful. The work on this site is about celebrating the beauty of women and art, so please nothing too sexual, unless it's done in a VERY artistic fashion. I'm not a big believer in rules so I can't there's no hard line of what will and wont be accepted, just a large area of grey and if you can shoot it with beauty and quality then that is all we can ask for.
Money
Art of Imagery is dedicated to giving back to submitters exactly what they are worth. Under that philosophy this site will be run as a profit share enterprise with 50% of the overall site takings each and every month going back to the artists. What do I mean by overall site takings? I mean when the monthly cheque comes from the payment processor it'll be split right down the middle. Half to you guys and half to site administration for hosting, development, maintenance costs and also the charity donations come out of this portion.
The simple answer is that the distribution of the 50% gross between the artists will be on a monthly points based system with the money being split in proportion to how much work each artist has on the site. We'll be keeping track of how much work you have via a "points" system merely so that we can weigh one type of media as more valuable than another, depending on member feedback.
Before we start talking about the modifiers I want to try to explain things clearly at the basest level. Lets say for instance there were 2 photographers on the site, Bob and Mick. Mick has 20 photo sets online, Bob has 40. Now each photo set is currently valued at 10 points and so therefore that month Bob has 400 points and Mick 200. At the end of the month the site brings in 2400$, therefore Mick and Bob will be sharing in $1200 (as that is 50% of the total site takings that month). Between the two of them they have 600 points, and so each point is worth 2$ that month ($1200 / 600). Therefore Bob gets a paypal payment of $800 (400 x $2) and Mick gets a paypal payment of $400 (200 x $2). Bob ends up getting paid exactly twice as much as Mick because Bob has exactly twice as much work up as Mick. Nice and fair.
That is assuming they were all photosets, but what abotu videos and tutorials? Well I'm going to have a sliding multiplier for media, HD Videos will start with a 1.5x, tutorials the same. Now bear in mind that these modifiers might change. Perhaps we get a flood of photo sets and almost no videos, while our members are screaming out for videos, if that's the case then the video multiplier might be raised to 2 or even 3x, until the supply and demand reach an equilibrium.
The idea always being to distribute the earnings not only fairly but in such a way that artists are encouraged to produce the type of material that the members that pay them want to see. Win/win.
The subscription price is staring off low so that we can offer our customers some amount of value. As we get more contributors and build up both the volume of content and the frequency of updates we'll be raising prices accordingly. Although I would always like to stay just a bit under the competition. I would like Art of Imagery to become known for not only its unrivaled quality of content but also it's all round fairness and great value for money.
You could say that yes. Once you submit a piece of work to the site you will be awarded points for it each and every month thereafter unless of course you chose to remove your work. That's what makes this a powerful system for those that have a lot of work, or are very interested in shooting this style of work. The more work you submit to the site the more points you'll be earning each month and the larger your share of the signup dollars will be. Ultimately I'd love to see this site become the platform for a couple highly skilled and devoted artists to really build a career out of. It's the kind of system that will give back to you all of what you put in to it and more.
Payment will be on a monthly basis for anyone that is owed more than US$50, if your account is sitting at under $50 then the amount will be rolled over to the next month until you reach a payout figure. As soon as we receive the payment from the payment processor the payments will be sent out to artists via paypal with the minimium amount of processing time possible. In most cases it should be no longer than a week.
Paypal will be the default method of payment, however if you have some particular situation that stops you from receiving paypal payments then I'll be willing to look into other methods of payment with you. For instance I know paypal refuses to withdraw funds to accounts in some countries, so then we might be able to arrange a payoneer card or something of the like.
We strongly advise each submitter to also sign up for an affiliate account. An affiliate account means you can send traffic to Art of Imagery from your blog, facebook, folio site (or wherever!) and receive 50% of any signups you generate. You can check out the affiliate page here.
Policies
For the most part your work, once submitted, wont be removed but will stay online earning you passive income unless you specifically request it taken down.
No problem. If you want to remove some or all of you work that can be done at any time with no penalties beyond no longer earning income from that material. Please allow a reasonable amount of time for work to be removed. Most requests should take no longer than one week.
None whatsoever! Feel free to use the images you submit here absolutely anywhere else you want, hell you can give them away to a nunery if you want. I am looking to showcase the best of the world's nude and erotic digital artwork here, not control it (or you!).
Sure, we are all in this together after all and I'd like everyone to be able to get as much use out of this site as they can. I'll be happy to provide any work submitted with links back to whatever page/project of yours you'd like linked to. You can earn some money and drum up some promotion for your own site all in one go...win/win!
A few more words about photo submissions to this site
This site mainly came about because I personally had a vision for not only a proffit share site that gives back to it’s submitters exactly what they put into it. But I also wanted a high quality nude and erotic site with images of the aesthic and technical quality rivaling the highest quality of print media. I would like this site come to be seen as something along the lines of Vogue meets Playboy with a dash of Penthouse thrown in.
If you are interested in and able to provide high quality nude photo submissions then please email us a sample of the set(s) you have on offer. Images should be 1-2 thousand pixels on the longest side and I’d like to see 4 or 5 from a set. You will get a confirmation email back that you must reply to, this is a spam filtering measure that I am using to save myself some headaches. The current email addres for nude photo submissions (and articles!) is: submissions@artofimagery.com
I’m allowing comments on this page so if you have any questions, concerns, ponderings, philosophical insights to share etc then please do so. As more questions come in I’ll be adding to this FAQ so your input is appreciated. Hope to see your high quality nude photo submissions soon!
Cheers
- Ben
The type of models we are looking for in our nude photo submissions:
Your point system sounds like a good method of money distribution, but it makes no mention of treating new sets differently than old ones.
While existing work will get more members, it is newly submitted work that will keep members subscribing. Also, in a year from now, you might have 1,000 sets. What about in 5 years from now? If a photographer just found out about this site and considered contributing to it, they might be discouraged to find out their 10 sets will earn them 1%( or far less) of the months take, even if their sets made up 10% of that month’s submissions.
This might not become a problem for a few years, but it is better to solve the issue now. My suggestion is that, whenever a new member account in created, that member’s first month’s subscription cost is divided amongst all set. While any reoccurring subscriptions are divided half amongst old sets and half new sets.
Hi Micaael,
Thanks for the input and the questions. Firstly I’d like to say that the point system may well undergo some changes and evolutions as the site goes on and we get a body of submitters and members that have their opinons etc on how it works.
Right now though the system you suggest would be impossible to impliment. I just simply don’t get automated stats like that back from the payment processor…I would need at the end of every month to go through the member payments manually and seperate out the new payments from the recurring ones etc….it’s just not really feasible at this stage. Perhaps in the future if we get our own merchant account and can get everything custom programmed a somewhat similar setup might be possible.
Something else to consider is that the customer base will grow as the submissions grow, maybe not at the same rate but still that new submitters sets a year from now will be taking in 1% of a MUCH LARGER amount that what will be split up in the beginning.
However the points and the system will always be there in the spirit of both encouraging new work and rewarding submitters for work already up. It will be tweaked and modified as needed and we will ALWAYS listen to our contributors…I’m an artist myself and have contributed work to other member sites so I’ll be coming to this from the perspective of a shooter and I firmly want it to be fair for all.
I do see your point that it’s the new sets that will be driving the new and returning signups. However I see this site working along the lines of the microstock business model – ie passive income. And just like microstock those that recognise the opportunity and get in early will likely profit more than those that come later.
A solution to this may well be to flag new photosets with a 2x (or whatever) modifier for their point value in the frst x months of being on the site?
er – here in the UK we dont have photo i.d. and actually dont need release forms. the photographer has complete copyright.
It’s not about copyright, photographers have full copyright to their photos in most countries. It’s about knowing and being able to prove, if ever we have to, that all of our models are over 18. And the model release is more a nod of respect to the model. If a model has signed a release then there’s a much higher chance she is aware her shots may be published and has agreed to this.
Cheers,
- b
So, how do we create a submitter’s account?
Hey Aaron,
There’s no need to make any sort of account, just email me some samples @ submissions@artofimagery.com, I’ll take a look and we’ll go from there.
Cheers mate,
- b
Hi
I am professional photographer based in UK
Can I send sample of my work. I have model release and 2 model I.D’s
Regards
Allan
Of course, please do. Just send them to the address outlined in the email above: submissions@artofimagery.com
Basically are we talking the more uploads we make or are excepted rather, the more money generated? If I wanted to begin shooting for this site as a main money maker or even exclusively, in theroy would this be a possiblity? Understand we have to pay models and then risk your excepting them, although I have a good idea I know what your desired upload set is. I’m thinking this is a good thing, your site. However I’m sure you understand I can’t shoot a model for 300 an hour and then make ten cents of the set. How are other photographers doing on this site and how much do top “sellers” have to input?
P.s. if we like to send some work that have been shot pro bono, just to see if you be interested in further uploads with the required i.d. and release would you be willing to do it that way?
Hey AR,
Yes, the more that gets accepted the more you will make.
And yes, I would really like AoI to become a platform for folks to be able to submit a volume of work to and work up to making a full income from. One thing you have to realise though is that right now the site is very new, it’s only been around in it’s current form a couple months (before that it was my personal portfolio site which I just mostly ignored) and I don’t yet have enough regular submissions (or time to edit my own work) to post daily updates, which is needed to be able to attract mass subscribers. I have been working hard on the SEO angle though and in the last 6 weeks have moved the site from obscurity to page 4 on google for a couple keyword terms based around “nude photos”. Terms that generate literally millions of searches a month. Once we get into the top half of page one for a couple of these terms the traffic is going to be extraordinary, combine that traffic with daily quality updates and our subscription rates should go through the roof. Right now our photographers are earning a couple dollars per set per month, I think last month was somewhere around $4 or $5 per set or article but I’d like to get that up to $20 or $30 per set per month or more, which should be do-able once we a/ get the traffic and b/ have enough content on the site to actually snare that traffic we get and c/ have enough content/updates to raise the prices. All of which are just a matter of time, and hopefully not that much of it. Once we do achieve these things we’ll naturally start attracting the professional affiliate marketers. We will also be running monthly competitions with cash prises for the most popular new submissions each month to try to drive more traffic and get active link building efforts from our submitters. And of course more links to the site = more traffic AND higher google rankings (google rankings are mostly about the quality and quantity of sites linking to you, something we should in the longer run be able to easily dominate other “similar” sites over due to our unique structure, eventual wide submitter base and mostly non-nude tutorial section). And of course every shooter is welcome (and encouraged even) to also sign up as an affiliate, so you would get paid monthly for your sets & articles and also get 50% of any signups that you send to the site. I envision the hard workers being able to make a lot of money with this site by either shooting, writing or promoting (or preferably a combination of these) and of course once we get a few of them actively promoting the site that helps ALL the submitters.
And yeah feel free to send me some of your work and I’ll look it over.
I hope this answers your questions!
- Ben
Hi Ben,
I can’t use Paypal in my country. Which methods of payment do you use? It would be preferable to use Moneybookers, but if you are in USA you cannot transfer money throught MB.
What additional options can be used?
Hey Ar,
I’m willing to work around submitters at this stage as the site is just starting and to be honest I need submissions. I’m not based in the USA (I’m in Australia, but I’ll probably end up basing the accounts for this site in Singapore as I spend most of my life traveling around SE Asia) so that might be an option, or Payoneer?
Hi Ben,
Nice site you have, it looks like it’s getting off to a good start! One question of clarification on the payment to artists…so, 50% of gross goes to the artists…and you have a lot of sets on the site already, are you considered one of the artists, even though this is your site? Thanks!
Hey Jeff,
Thanks for the kind words. The 50% is of the gross that I receive from the payment processor, so it is after the payment processor takes their cut but before I factor in any other site costs, ie hosting, SEO, outsourcing, further design, maintenance, 25% charity contributions etc – all of those costs come purely from the 50% allocated to the site. And yes I am considered one of the artists. Hope that clarifies things.
- Ben
Hello Ben,
I’ve read your regulation of remuneration payment. But how can I know your monthly gross?
Hey Lin,
How do stock photographers know that they are being credited for every download? I guess when it comes down to it you don’t, even if I shared screens of bank transfers or back end payment processing numbers you still wouldn’t know as an unscrupulous person could easily photoshop them. However it is in my interests to get this site as big as it can with as many submitters, bringing in their own audiences of fans and friends. Put simply the more money this site makes it’s shooters the more likely they will hang around and say good things about it to others ergo the more likely it is to succeed. I want it to succeed…