I’ve been spending a good amount of time over on Twitter.com and have connected with tons of really talented photographers. Today I was asked by fellow Twitterer Mike Panic (www.mikepanic.com) how he could best market and present his iStockPhoto stock photography.

I do not know Mike other than a brief exchange that we had on Twitter today, so the first thing I did was jump over to his website to see what he was all about. Right of the bat I noticed is that he had no mention of his stock photography anywhere on his site, at least that I could easily find. So from there I moved on over to iStockPhoto.com and did a quick advanced search for Member Name Mike Panic and still no luck, 0 results. I’m sure Mike probably signed up under a Nickname that I am not aware of. Typically the third thing I’d do is ask Mike to send me an email, so I can see what is in his email signature if anything at all, but for the sake of time I opted to let that go.

Sorry Mike I’m not picking on you, rest assured you are not alone when it comes to overlooking the most obvious ways to not only Market your stock photos online but your entire business in general.

Below I offer these 3 very easy solutions to help you increase your online stock photo exposure.

1. Create and host an alternate gallery on your personal website with large images that link directly to the image on your stock site of choice. At the very lest have a link that takes the person directly to your stock photo gallery.
2. When signing up for an account on a stock photo site such as iStockPhoto.com don’t use a nickname such as “PhotoAce” use your real name, this will allow for people to easily find your work.
3. Get in the habit of creating an email signature and listing all the sites and places people can find you and your work. It might seem a little vain at first, but get over it. Figure out how many emails you send out each day, that’s free advertising.

I hope this advice helps Mike and all photographers out there trying to increase exposure in this ever-increasing competitive marketplace.

If you have solutions that have worked for you we’d love to hear it. Leave us a comment.

If you are a Twitter user make sure to follow me at www.twitter.com/crismitchell I reciprocate the follow for anyone follows me.