Earn money with your camera

Making money with your camera isn’t as easy as it seems. If you are reading this and have just decided that you want to make some money selling your holiday photos online read through this article first as it will help point you in the right direction. There are numerous different micro stock image websites that will buy your images online, each one has different rules and regulations and offer varying levels of commission. In this article I will firstly tell you some general information you should know about micro stock photography, and then I will review two of the bigger websites Fotolia, and istockphoto.

General Information

First things first, so what are the images you sell used for? There are many different uses for your photographs but some of the most common include corporate presentations, websites and annual reports. So you might ask, why would they want my holiday pictures on a corporate presentation? Exactly, they wouldn’t, they would want smiling young men and women walking through an office wearing pristine Armani suits. The images that sell the most tend to be corporate images or those related to work or business. Your photo of the beautiful sunset might sell but it’s unlikely they’ll earn much. You need to be commercially minded if you want to make any type of real income. The important thing here is to put yourself in the buyers shoes, think creatively, for example pictures of shaking hands might sell well or an angry looking man in a suit thrashing a computer. This is what you need to aim for.

Another important point to consider is that images of recognisable faces have to have a model release form. This is for obvious reasons, no one would like a picture of them drunk on holidays been sold on the internet. Most sites also have a minimum pixel size requirement this is worth checking out before taking pictures for selling as often they are different from the default settings in your camera. It is also worth remembering that you can submit your pictures to as many sites as you want; this allows you to get your photos to a wide audience. Below I will review two of the websites I have personally dealt with.

Istockphotos

Istockphotos is the probably the biggest player in the game. The founder of istockphoto is Bruce Livingstone who is the pioneer in the field of buying and selling images online. Becoming a contributor to istockphoto isn’t easy. They are strict about who they let contribute. To become a contributor you firstly need to set up an account, you also need to upload a scanned piece of ID to prove that you are over 18 and to prove you are who you say you are. Once you have this done you need to read their rules and regulations before passing an online test. This test is fairly straight forward and if you fail the first time you can sit it again. After passing the test you have to submit three photos for review. The reviewers are strict about who they leave in, they look at the quality of your image and decide whether or not you can contribute to istockphotos. Once you have passed this you can earn anything between 20% and 40% of sale depending on whether or not your contribution is exclusive.

Fotolia

Making money with your camera is a lot more achievable with fotolia, to become part of fotolia you need to set up an account and then start contributing. However fotolia do require that your uploaded photo have an image resolution of not less than 2400 x 1600(4 million pixels). Once uploaded photos are viewed by moderators who decide whether they will be added to the database or not, they also rate them based on quality. Photos of lower quality are added to the free section. Fotolia has rating system, the more photos you sell the higher your rating and the bigger the commission you earn. Again commissions vary based on the exclusivity of the photo and your rating.

Further Information

As you may have gathered earning from selling stock images may not be as simple as you originally thought, it is certainly not a case of uploading your holiday snaps. From some one who has had moderate success with micro stock photography I would give the following advice. At the beginning choose one website, I personally recommend fotolia read up on what they are looking for and their minimum requirements for image size and format. Then take photos that are commercially minded, put a couple hours aside for it every Saturday. Once you get a few sales under your belt branch out to another website and build from there. Earning an extra income is achievable but remember like everything worthwhile in life it takes effort and time.