Digital cameras, once the sole domain of professional photographers, have become more affordable and advanced, so that now anyone with a digital camera can take good photographs. This means that you don’t have to be a professional photographer to make money from your photos.
Stock websites do not require you to be a professional photographer in order to submit your images, however the photos do need to be of good quality
Photos that are accepted by these sites are displayed in a gallery, and are available to the public to license or purchase for commercial or personal use.
You get paid each time your photo is licensed or purchased, and the stock website keeps a portion of the proceeds as part of their fee. The individual or company that obtains your photo could use it on their blog, website, newsletter, etc.
Top 10 Stock Photography Sites to Sell Your Photos
There are lots of stock photo sites around nowadays, but I wouldn’t waste time with all of them. I would go with a dozen or so top ones that receive the majority of traffic, thus increasing your chance of having your photos seen and bought by interested people.
Here are some of the top stock image sites you can try:
- Fotolia
- Shutterstock
- Deposit Photos
- BigStockPhoto
- 123RF
- Photos.com
- iStockPhoto
- Stockxpert
- Alamy
- Veer
Tips for Getting Started
If you’re thinking of making money by selling your photos on stock photography websites, there are a few things you’ll need to know.
1.Understand what types of photos sell
All photographs that you submit will first be checked by the stock photography websites to assess whether it meets their standards and requirements. Not only do you need to have a good quality photo, you must also have an understanding of what type of photos are in demand.
A simple way to find out what kind of photos sell best is to look at best sellers/most downloaded images on sites mentioned above.
You have a better chance of getting your photo accepted if it is in a niche area and unique, rather than the common pictures of sunsets, sunrises, puppies, kittens and flowers.
This is not to say that you won’t get a photo of a sunset accepted, but it generally has to be of a superior quality than the hundreds of sunset photos already available on that site.
2.Diversify
Just like a share portfolio, it is best if you don’t restrict your photos to just one stock website. You will have a much wider customer base if your photographs are available on as many websites as possible.
The sites mentioned above are some of the well-known stock photo sites you could start off with.
3.Don’t give up
Some or most of your photographs may initially get rejected when you submit them. While rejection is never easy, it’s important that you don’t give up. Stock websites generally give you reasons for rejecting your images.
Try and learn from these rejections and you will quickly get the hang of it. You will soon see the majority of your photos getting accepted.
Take Away
You may only earn a few bucks when you first start licensing your photos, but don’t be discouraged. The beauty of
making money with your digital camera in this way is that its sort of passive income.
You take the image and upload it once, but it can be sold hundreds of thousands of time without you doing anything else. Multiply that with hundreds of photos, and you can see how profitable selling stock photography can be.