How To Make Money With Photography
There are many ways to make money online with photography, but a popular and fairly new way is through Micro Stock Photography websites. Micro stock photography is simply stock photography that’s sold at deep discounts. Clients are able to license stock photos for just $1 or $2, and photographers earn money each time a client chooses one of their photos.
Micro stock photography is considered to be still in it’s infancy, and some people feel it’s wrong to sell photography at such low prices. Particularly since many professional photographers invest a lot of time and money on equipment, learning, and photo shoots.
For the beginning photographer though, micro stock photography agencies can be ideal places to start. Since entry requirements are not overly restrictive, many hobby photographers with inexpensive cameras have already started making a nice second income from their pictures.
How Does It Work?
The process of making money from your photography through micro stock agencies is fairly simple.
1. Research popular micro stock photography agencies online. There are quite a few of them, but you’ll want to start with just one or two until you get the hang of things.
2. Choose your absolute best pictures to submit. Some agencies require you to submit 10 pictures for review when you apply for an account with them, while others only require three the first time. Most don’t have minimum requirements though, and you can start by submitting just one.
3. Your pictures will be reviewed by humans, and accepted or rejected into the micro stock photography site. If they’re accepted, they’ll be available for clients to “buy”.
Technically they’re not fully buying your pictures though. They’re simply licensing the pictures for specific use. Usually micro stock photography is used in websites, though sometimes it’s used in advertisements, brochures and other marketing materials. The photographer always retains full copyrights to their photos though, and is normally able to sell the same photos over and over again to additional clients.
And this is the beauty of stock photography. Once you’ve taken a great picture and had it accepted into a stock photography portfolio, that one picture can continue earning you money month after month… sometimes year after year.
Most micro stock photography agencies pay $0.20 - $0.50 per picture license, or download. This may not seem like much, however a good photographer with several hundred pictures for sale could make a nice second income over time, because it all adds up!
There’s a lot more to the stock photography business, which we don’t have room to cover in just one article. You’ll find expanded details about making money with stock photography in this article though: “Can Photographers Make Money With Stock Photography?”
© 2006, Kathy Burns-Millyard. Stocktography.com is a new, free online guide to Royalty Free Stock Photography. New articles are being added frequently so please visit, bookmark and enjoy.
July 30th, 2006 at 5:41 am
I have been researching stock photography sites but they all seem to be American. I am English and I live in Spain - do you know of anything on this side of the pond?
July 30th, 2006 at 10:59 am
You asked for a comment . . .
This is an interesting article, but I can’t help but agree with the sentiment (that you danced around) that selling image licenses for $0.20 - 0.50 each is selling out. Next year it’ll be $0.02 - 0.05 each. An aspireing professional photographer needs to make _some_ effort to maintain a sutainable price structure, or soon there’ll be no point at all in trying to make money with photography. No one wins a race to the bottom.
July 30th, 2006 at 11:10 am
good
July 30th, 2006 at 11:21 pm
I think the idea is a great way for the starving photographer to get started and to get noticed. What ever a person makes on a photo is an accomplishment. I once read in one of my photo magazines how this single mother began taking photo’s of her son and would send them into istockphoto and get paid 0.20 cents per photo sold. This one particular photo of her son sold 4000 times in one month and a friend of hers’ spotted the photo on a billboard in Poland. Now maybe $80 isn’t much but ohhh the notoriety.
July 30th, 2006 at 11:27 pm
Great idea since i’ve read in photo magazines how that 20 or 50 cents adds up. It’s all about marketing, sell your photo’s to who ever wants to buy them. I’ve read of certain photographers making thousands. It just depends on how you market your work and how determined you are to work at it.
July 31st, 2006 at 12:42 am
It is good for photographers can make some sale on their photos but they should decide the cost for discount.
July 31st, 2006 at 2:01 am
Thank you for sharing your info with us. I never knew of a “micro Stock” agency since I live in the NYC area and all I have heard of were the big houses.
Here’s another area to look into. Thanks again, and all the best.
July 31st, 2006 at 9:56 am
its good to find a website on photography