Make Extra Money Online from Micro Stock Photography Part 1
If you love photography, and you can take photos, one of the ways to make extra money online is selling your photos to micro stock agencies. I’ve tried this and it really paid off. But before I go into that, let me tell you what micro stock photography is. According to Wikipedia
Microstock photography or Micro Stock Photography is an offshoot of traditional stock photography. What defines a company as a microstock photography company is that they (1) source their images almost exclusively via the Internet, (2) do so from a wider range of photographers than the traditional stock agencies (including a willingness to accept images from “amateurs” and hobbyists), and (3) sell their images at a very low rate (anywhere from $.20 - $10) for a royalty-free image.
A number of microstock sites also sell vector art, and some sell Flash animations and video, as well as images.
So in plain English, micro stock photography is the kind of photography in which your photos will be licensed to be used for commercial purposes such as advertisements, promotions and endorsement of products or used for editorial purposes such as those printed in newspapers and journals, basically anything newsworthy and not used for endorsing products or services. Micro stock agencies are the companies that store or stock your photos, usually online, and pay you whenever someone buys your photos from them. The difference between micro stock and stock is the amount of money the agencies pay you. For micro stock agencies, they normally pay you less than a dollar for every royalty-free image sold
So you ask, how do I make money?
The key in micro stock photography is to sell in large number. Instead of selling one or two photos with high price (stock photography), you sell lots and lots of photos with relatively cheap price (micro stock photography). There are advantages and disadvantages for both systems, but I’m currently happy with micro stock photography as I can see the result almost immediately and my photos seem to sell faster in micro stock agencies.
Procedure
Typically, this is what you have to go through before people can start downloading your photos
- Take a lot of photos using your digital camera (duh!)
- Use photoshop to edit and make your photos as saleable as possible. Give them the professional look you normally see in magazines and postcards
- Upload your photos to your micro stock agencies
- Give title to all your photos and assign keywords to each of them. The keywords are important as they will determine whether your photos will appear in the search result. So assigning keywords is much like SEO so to speak
- Submit all the photos and wait for them to be accepted or rejected
- If accepted, your photos will appear in public listing whenever somebody searches for one of the keywords that you assigned
- If rejected, don’t be discouraged. Instead, use that as a quality benchmark for your next upload batch. And don’t forget to take more photos
Payment
Micro stock agencies pay you by commision, that is for every photo sold, you’ll be paid a certain percentage from the sale. This varies from agency to agency. Fotolia for example pays you about .33 credits for every image downloaded (the percentage will increase once the number of downloaded image reaches a certain level) while Shutterstock pays you 25 cents for every image downloaded. The minimum amount before you start receiving checks also varies around the area of $75-$100. To get to that number is not a matter of 1 or 2 days. It can take a while for your images to become visible and selected for purchase. Just be patient and keep uploading your photos. A portfolio with more than 100 images will typically get you the minimum payment you long for every month.
Suggested agencies
1) Shutterstock - This gives me the most payout as of today. Partly because the system they use where subscribers must pay an amount of money upfront for a number of download per month or year. So this sort of pushing subscribers to download as much images as allowed before their subscriptions expire. Currently I only have 11 photos in my portfolio, but they’ve been downloaded every day since the 2nd day I uploaded them. My earnings for just 5 days is more than my adsense earnings for a month :D. Here’s one of the photos as an example
2) Fotolia - I’ve been with Fotolia for a year, although last year I wasn’t actively uploading to their site. Lately I’ve been receiving some clicks, but still less than Shutterstock. What I like about Fotolia is they are more lenient in their screening process, so my photos are accepted more in Fotolia than others. The screening process is fast as well, normally takes about a day for my photos to be approved while others can take about 2 or 3 days. Here’s my portfolio in Fotolia
3) Other agencies that I have registered are iStockphoto, CanStockPhoto, Dreamstime, BigStockPhoto, StockXpert, 123RF, Featurepics and Lucky Oliver. Since my portfolios there are not as big as in Shutterstock and Fotolia, the earnings are not as big as well. And I don’t think I spent enough time with these agencies to give my opinion on them. I will of course upload more images to them once I’ve got some time to spare these coming few days
The question that most people want to know the answer is : Can we make a living out of micro stock photography?
I strongly believe we can. There are a lot of micro stock photographers I know that earn their living from selling micro stock photos. See this photographer and this for example. It’s not an easy job for sure, much like earning your living from Adsense. If you hit the right spot, you’ll be laughing all the way to the bank. Getting hundreds and even thousands of dollars per month is a perfectly realistic target. In the next part, I’ll share my experience on types of images that sell well, why they sell well, and what type of images that agencies normally avoid or reject
and by the way, if you decided to register with Shutterstock or Fotolia, can you please register using the affiliate links provided? Thanks a bunch 
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Comments
Make Extra Money with Micro Stock Photography Part 1…
If you love photography, one of the ways to make extra money online is selling your photos to micro stock agencies. Micro stock agencies are the companies that store or stock your photos and pay you whenever someone buys your photos from them. The post…
I’ve often thought about this because although I license my punk rock photos for a lot more than 33 cents, I have tons of shots that will never be licensed for major books, docs, mags, etc. I have to look into this. Right now peeps just take images from my blog/site to put on their site. I don’t mind as long at they take from me, not hot link, but save and upload, cos I watermark the images. I hate seeing my work online with no watermarks. The worst offenders are actually from online mags. Urgh.
as far as issues of who was original owner of photo rather than who submitted it first. so what. i have a few shots that others were standing next to me. in some case they published first, but that is sooo rare. WTF? I shot film, so I have hard copies to prove my ownership.
Hi Ahmad,
I love your photos!
Please teach me how you created photo with white backgrounds such as the cherries and apples?
Thank you for sharing this, I shall tell my brother about this to make his hobby even more interesting
But I have some questions related to this freelancing opportunity..
Would they accept photos taken with tourist digital camera?
Or Is the photoshop skill the one that more matter?
J.C. Carvill
Email: support@cosmosing.com
URL: http://www.cosmosing.com/jeanclaudecarvill/index.php
You have to check that with the agencies. Some agencies limit the photos you upload to a certain resolution. So some ‘tourist digital camera’ might not qualify for that. The photoshop skill is a must in my opinion. But of course, if you take excellent photos, you’ll spend less time in front of your computer. Still, some retouching skills are essential.
and you spent how much on a camera, etc. and you’ve got maybe $20 so far. where’s the return, how is this worth your time? it not worth your time. and i doubt you sell enough images to even recover the cost of your camera. seriously lame.
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Well first of all, I didn’t buy my camera just for selling photos. Photography is my hobby. I bought my camera long before I knew about microstock industry. So recovering the cost of my camera from selling photos is not an issue. It’s just another way of making money out of simple photos that I took, instead of letting them filling up my hard drive space for nothing.
If you think selling images in microstock is the same as selling images on a one-off basis, then probably it’s not worth your time. But think of it as an investment, one simple photo can probably give you $5-$10 per month every month, maybe more. I think it’s worth my time having to spend at most 30 minutes per photo from setting up, editing and finally submitting it to the agencies.
Of course if you’re exceptionally good, go for the commissioned route. You can get the ‘return’ that you wish for. But landing one offer is not an easy task for amateurs. That’s where microstock comes in handy.
Don’t forget as well as selling Stock Photography to micro stock sites you can increase awareness of your photography practice by placing them on free stock sites as primers for your paid stuff. If you’re not yet confident that your stuff will sell or you’ve got more pictures that you know aren’t necessarily up to selling standards, there are loads of places that you can upload and will receive attribution. Bloggers are always looking for images. Think of them as loss leaders.
A’kum Afzan,
I love taking pictures. Cuma, i’m just an amateur. Thought of making some extra income since the oil price in M’sia is high for an average income worker like myself. May I know, if you don’t mind telling, what type of camera do u use? Will normal compact digital cam will do or I should get myself a good DSLR like EOS 300D like the guy from photoblog ku used when he first started taking photos. Please assist….thanks.
norehan
hehe sounds like a cool idea. Not sure if they would run into issues as who was the original owner of the picture, rather than who submitted it first. If they can figure that out than this sounds like a great way to get paid for great pictures while the company makes a profit as well