How to start making money with photography online...
By volschenkh
@volschenkh (1043)
South Africa
January 10, 2007 2:50pm CST
Whether you are a amateur or professional photographer, or whether you have a SLR or "aim-and-snap" camera, you can make some money by showcasing your photographs online.
There are mainly TWO categories for making money.
CATEGORY 1:
The highest-income generating option is to upload your really excellent photographs to photo stick sites, which displays your photo's in specific categories and if someone downloads your photo, you can get paid anything from $2 -$ 50 per download. Each of these online stock photography sites have different royalties or licensing options and it would be in your best interest to familiarize yourself with these in advance. Also have a critical look at the type of photo's that sell, some of these sites specialise in highly stylised photography, while others offer the you the opportunity to put grandma's bithday photo's online for people to buy. All of these factors of course influence the success of your online photography campaign.
Lets look at some examples for these:
BigStockPhoto http://www.bigstockphoto.com/?refid=ILURWaoYyN/
You will need an sign-up for an Account. Read the Photographer Tutorial pages (just a few of them) carefully and completely... there is a lot of legality surrounding sale of photos and you must understand the rules, as well as the quality requirements. Take the Photographer Test after studying the Tutorial pages... if you pass you'll be able to upload photos, which will be reviewed by our editors.
Make 50 cents to $1.00 for regular downloads and up to $60.00 each for Special Licensing downloads! If approved, your photos are added to BigStockPhoto.com ...when users download them, you earn fifty cents each time (or up to $60 for some downloads if you have elected to also sell photos under our Special Licensing agreements). They mail checks or make payment to you via Paypal or MoneyBookers. That's it!Upload a few hundred popular photos and you could find you have a nice recurring monthly income on your hands.
PhotoStockPlus http://www.photostockplus.com/red.php?adid=10917&creativeID=2/
Sign-up to become a PRO member (its a small investment to make). Upload your pictures and start marketing your albums using various customized marketing tools, including a fully commercial-ready website (store front), business cards, flyers, press pass, e-cards and coupons etc.
ShutterStock http://submit.shutterstock.com/?ref=85223/
Sign-up for an account and submit your photos to ShutterStock and get paid every time one of your photos is downloaded. Web designers, magazine editors, and other graphic artists purchase monthly subscriptions to Shutterstock to download photos from this site.
Shutterstock is different than other stock models. Buyers subscribe on a monthly basis and can download up to 750 images over the course of 30 days. Your cut? Shutterstock will pay you 25 cents every time one of your images is downloaded. Our subscription model encourages buyers to download a greater volume of images than they would at most other agencies.
Current Payout $0.25 (US) per download. That means that at just 2000 downloads/month, you can earn $500 (US) per month! Many of our photographers earn this and more every month. There are three ways to make money with this program: refer photographers, refer Stock Buyers (make 20% off their subscriptions), and submit photos for sale!
CATEGORY 2:
And then there is the low-income potential options. With these you also sign-up for membership, upload your pictures and you get paid when people view you images. No licencing is required, because your photo's cannot be downloaded. However, you need about 2500 image views to earn about $1, so this option is specifically valuable if you upload literally 1000's of photo's.
Some examples of this type of websites are:
1. Scipym http://www.scipym.com/index.php?ref=2552/
2. Sharepic http://www.shareapic.net/ref.php?owner=volschenkh/
So start registering, uploading and marketing your digital photography. For more information also read some of the blog sites by other people, telling you more about making money with your photo's online, for example: http://www.moneyonline.co.nr/
3 people like this
12 responses
@linzmcwilliams (1552)
•
10 Jan 07
Aww you promoted my site! Thank you! I wish you all the luck in the world with your photography.
1 person likes this
@volschenkh (1043)
• South Africa
18 Jan 07
Based on the responses to my post, I does not look like any people on MyLot are interested to make money online with their digital photography. Are there really so few of us here on MyLot?
@volschenkh (1043)
• South Africa
25 Jan 07
Just to let you know that my photoblog has now been updated with some videos of photography!!!
@bobmnu (8157)
• United States
26 Jan 07
This is a great psoting. I have some photos that I feel are worth selling so I am going to look at the sites you suggest.
@volschenkh (1043)
• South Africa
26 Jan 07
Glad you feel this is a great post! Hope you get it right with my suggested sites!
@volschenkh (1043)
• South Africa
18 Jan 07
Its a pleasure, enjoy the photography and making money with it!
@smacksman (6053)
•
25 Jan 07
Most interesting. Thanks for the links.
One question. What size 'negative' do they want, i.e. pixel size?
1 person likes this
@volschenkh (1043)
• South Africa
26 Jan 07
All of these sites have different requirements, but the bigger the photos, i.e. the more pixels, the better chance you have to be accepted and your photo's displayed!
@kris182_2000 (5453)
• Canada
26 Jan 07
Just came across your discussion and wanted to share my sucess story.
I am working on a photography project that's bringing me $150. I get paid on saturday when I receive the rest of the product to photograph.
Here's what I've done so far: http://s166.photobucket.com/albums/u86/kris182_2000/
I can't get access to shutterstock, some claim that I don't have cookies enabled, which I do.
I'm on one of the other sites you listed, but it's not really worth it.
This photography is going to turn into an ongoing business so I'm pleased.
Just thought I'd share this. And by the way, I'm an amateur.
1 person likes this
@TheNightingale (17)
• United States
26 Jan 07
Thanks for this, I for one really appreciate it! I love taking pictures, and might as well make a few pennies off the fun. :)
1 person likes this
@volschenkh (1043)
• South Africa
26 Jan 07
You go nightingale!!! Hope you have buckets of success!!!
@magnet (2087)
• United States
16 Jun 07
Thanks for sharing this information. I will look more into doing something like this.
@volschenkh (1043)
• South Africa
16 Jun 07
Hi I would like to add one more photo stock site that really has been working extremely well for me: iStockphoto (http://istockphoto.com/index.php?refnum=volschenkh).
They are more strict in accepting photo's, but their photo's sell well!!!
@Pigglies (9329)
• United States
16 Feb 07
I've made over $100 on BigStock.
I've been rejected 4 times now on ShutterStock. A lot of their photos have horrible quality and I don't like the site overall, but I hear you make the most money on that one. The first 3 times they gave me technical reasons. The last time they just said that my photos weren't commercially useful. But the photos in those categories that were currently offered weren't very good, so I had figured mine would be accepted. I'm getting rather frustrated with them, but I might give it a try again a 5th time just because I need the money.
@volschenkh (1043)
• South Africa
16 Feb 07
I think one has to keep on trying, some of these have very specific types or styles of photographs.
Good luck!
@volschenkh (1043)
• South Africa
10 Jun 07
Hi and update on this post!
Are you taking photographs that are of good quality and could poosible be sold?
Well I have started uploading my photographs to a stock photography website (Istockphoto) and the money is rolling in...almost $50 in just over a month and it is still growing! Its really working!
iStockphoto is the internet’s premier royalty-free stock photography community, where designers can search and download over 1,000,000 images, starting as low as a $1.00 each. Their international community of photographers and administrators work tirelessly to bring over 14,000 new images each week! They are extremely professional and the standard of photographs are extremely high, but once your pics have been approved you can be assured that they will sell.
If you are interested, join by using my referral link: http://istockphoto.com/in...
@rabi9634 (419)
• United States
2 Apr 07
I got accepted on Shutterstock. They're really picky about noise and lighting. I was up to about 1000 images on there, but have recently cut back to about 200. I'm switching over to a better stock model.
Give the traditional sites a go if you have the equipment for it. 6MP and up can be upsized correctly to the standards of most macrostock sites (as opposed to microstocks like Shutterstock, Dreamstime, Fotolia, etc).
A 'bad' sale on a macrostock site is the equivalent of about 400 sales at Shutterstock. A good sale, and you're looking at thousands of sales. And the bonus, you only had to sell the image once! It keeps its value longer that way.
Give the traditional agencies a shot. A lot will accept the same quality work that the micro sites will. Alamy, MyLoupe, Photographers Direct, IfImages are several more traditional stock sites.
@dragonstar13 (1465)
• United States
16 Feb 07
I signed up at one of the sites you recommended and uploaded a few pictures. Its been almost a week and they are still sitting in the que awaiting approval. I know their FAQs say this happens sometimes but I am wondering if you know if it is a common occurrence.
@volschenkh (1043)
• South Africa
16 Feb 07
Hi, please indicate which site you are referring to? Ill maybe be able to tell if I know which site you are talking about. I have not yet experienced any delays, my photo's got approved or rejected within 24 hours...so far!
@blue_star8 (37)
• Philippines
18 Jan 07
Thank you, volschenkh. This is a very useful information. Many hobbyists/photographers in my country (Philippines) are not familiar with opportunities such as those you mentioned. I am glad I registered with MyLot and came across your posting. I'd surely share this info to my contacts/friends. Goodluck and thank you again!
1 person likes this
@volschenkh (1043)
• South Africa
18 Jan 07
Great you could find the info useful, hope that you enjoy making money with your photo's online!
@silverglint (2000)
• Philippines
17 Apr 09
Hi, I am just new in mylot and I came across this discussion of yours. I came across your post 2 years ago about istockphoto. Is it still active? Do you really get paid? My husband loves photography and photo editing, it would be great for him to be able to earn a little from this hobby of his. I hope you don't mind me confirming if you really did get paid, I don't want to waste my husband's efforts, there are so many scam sites out there so I would like to be more careful
