Making money with your photos!

The easiest way is to find people who are willing to pay you directly. You eliminate the middle man (more profit for you), and I think it's a better experience taking the photos as well. One of the most profitable things I've ever done was to take photos of an event (a beauty pagaent) for free. I showed the organisers a portfolio of my work and said I'd give them the photos if they gave me a media pass. They loved the photos I took, and it has generated so much positive word of mouth that I have to turn work down. It was 3 years ago I did that, and I've had thousands of dollars of work (and still coming) from it - the word of mouth just keeps growing, and has spread into other fields - weddings, portraits, product photography, fashion shows, concerts, and more. Last week, I got a call asking if I was available to take photos of an international soccer match. I was honest with them, saying I had almost no experience in sports photography, but they said they'd heard so many good reports about me that they hired me anyway. I sent them the photos a couple of days ago, and this morning I got an email that everyone around their office is talking about the photos and they've added me to their directory for next time they play a match in this area. So decide what area of photography you're best at, target that first and see where it takes you. Good luck!

I'm on both BigStock and Fotolia. I've made some money on there, but I've made significantly more money on Shutterstock. Shutterstock is by far my favorite microstock agency. I've earned thousands more dollars on that site than all of the other microstock sites I submit to put together! If you'd like a link to Shutterstock or if you want links to any more microstock websites, you can find them in my blog http://funonlinemoney.blogspot.com/2008/12/sell-your-photos.html If you're looking for other ways to make money with your photos besides microstock, I have some information in this blog entry http://funonlinemoney.blogspot.com/2009/03/ways-you-can-earn-with-your-photos.html And if you'd like to sell prints of your photos online to make money, I have some sites where you can do that here http://info4photographers.blogspot.com/2009/05/sell-prints-of-your-photos.html