Stock Photo

Many amateur photographers sooner or later will ask themselfs: how to sell my photos online?
There are practically two answers to this question:

1. Establish your own webstie where you will offer photos on a chosen license type.

2. Begin cooperation with micro-stock photography sites and share profits with them.

As a beginner photographer you can decline the first method, unless you have top quality photos not so easy to find at stock photo sites. That is because you won’t be able to attract visitors to the site, and even if you will, there will be nothing interesting for them to see or buy. So, second method is our choice.

Micro-stock agencies offer their clients (buyers) photographs based mainly on Royalty Free license at prices starting from several cents per web resolution image. Higher resolution files cost more to download. Stock agencies have milions of photos, raster and vector graphics in their resources, divided on several categories. Currently there are two methods of payment for downloaded content:

• pay-as-you-go - client buys a package of “credits” which he can use at any time, downloading photos when needed. The Bigger the package of credits the cheaper one download is.
• subscription - client pays monthly fee that lets him download limited number of photos every day.

For a long time agencies mainly used only first method. Recenly they are launching subscription method parallel to pay-as-you-go.

What’s in it for photographer?

First of all, your works are in databases which are browsed by thousands of clients each day from all over the world, this is first step to selling photos. Taking into account that works on Royalty Free license can be sold many times to many clients, the royalties are very low - several cents to few dollars. So, producing works that are in high demand, (commercial ones mainly) to achieve high number of downloads is the key to success. Unless you decide to go for exclusivity with one of the agencies, you are free to upload content to every agency increasing your exposure.

How to start?

Each agency requires you to upload sample photos/graphics before accepting you as a submitter. Currently, as long as photos are concerned, you will be good with decent 6mpix DSLR. That, of course, doesn’t guarantee your acceptance, because proper framing, composition and commercial value of photos counts too. Typical stock photos depict items or people on white (or other) background. To create such photos you will need at least small, home studio. It’s worth to mention that not only isolated photos sell.
If you have everything needed then it is time to upload your work.

Where to upload?

Currently the iStockPhoto is a leader on the micro-stock market, which offers both methods of payment. Besides photos they offer raster and vector graphics, film and audio files. After registration you need to submit 3 test photos through the application form. If one of them (or more) won’t pass quality control, you need to upload another to be checked again. The whole pay system is described on royalties page.

To be continued…