Sell photographs, images, pictures

Foto: Luckyoliver

Always remember that selling anything takes a lot of work. If you want to make money from your photos with stock photography, be prepared to spend time and energy looking for stock photography sites, choosing the right keywords for your images, managing you photos and promoting them. You should always be professional. Make sure every image you submit is clean, is good quality, has the right composition, etc. You have to be your own toughest critic. Photo-business experience is not a pre-requisite if you want to sell photos on stock agencies but you do need a good eye and some photographic experience.

Dealing with photo stock agencies is an alternative to dealing directly with publishers. One advantage is that the agency does the selling for you, which frees up your time to take photos! There is also a downside in selling on stock agencies. The downside is that it takes more time for your income to be generated, and the usual commission rate is about 50% of what you could negotiate directly. So you have to weigh up carefully if you prefer to do commissioned work, or if you would like to make your living as a stock photographer, or if a balance of both would suit you best. Medium and large format is usually preferred by photographic stock libraries, but very good quality 35mm is also acceptable on some sites.

Usually, becoming a contributor photographer to a royalty free stock photography site doesn't cost anything. You should avoid royalty free sites that ask you to pay for a fee to store or handle your images. Remember that the photographer will, in most instances be able to retain the copyright of his images. Should you be offered the sale of copyright of certain images, you would be well advised to look for a substantial remuneration, as an outright sale of a picture will transfer all rights to the buyer.
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Before selling your photos you have to search for a website that suites your needs. There are hundred or thousands of stock agencies but each one is different. There are agencies that sell general stock photos (this includes categories like objects, people, nature, business, lifestyle, art, abstract, background and textures, sport, travel, religion, and so on...), but you can also find dedicated stock photography sites. For example botanical agencies (like Flowers & Foliage) action and sports agencies ( Actionplus sport images), beach, sealife, surf agencies (AframePhoto), aerial photography (Aerophotostock), and many more.

There are differences between stock photography site regarding how much they pay for your pictures and how are you going to be paid. Some sites pay you smaller amount of money per picture download. This is not a problem if the pictures on that site are selling often, because this way you can still make money. Some examples of this type of stock agencies: Shutterstock pays the photographer 25 cent per download, but the pictures sell a lot, Dreamstime pays 50 cents per download, ScandinavianStockPhoto pays 1 euro per picture download. Fotolia pays the photographer beetwen 33 and 80% of the image price. They also alow the photographer to set the price for his photographs. Some stock photography agencies pay the photographer more money but they are more demanding and the pictures sell rarely. For example ImageVortex allows the photographer to set the price for his image somewhere between 20 and 300 dollars.

Regarding the way the stock site pay the photographer, you should check if the payment method is available for you. For example if the site only pays by Moneybookers and this is not available in your country, you will not be able to receive your payment. For information regarding Moneybookers and its availability visit Moneybookers website. The most common and accessible payment method is by check, and you can cash your check a your local bank. In some countries cashing a check may take some time (a few weeks).
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Finally, after you have chosen one or more stock photography sites to sell your photos you have to register. You should always read first the Terms of service of the website. You need to know how are you going to be paid for your photographs, if the site is exclusive or not, read the Photo Submission Guidelines or anything else that may interest you as a contributor photograph. The registration is free and the procedure may be slightly different for different sites. Usually it doesn't take more than a few minutes to register, some sites (like Istockphoto) may require you to carefully read some terms and instructions and that take a test based on those instructions. But this is more a formality.

After registering you may upload the first batch of photos and hope they will be accepted. Usually the review of the first submission takes a longer time than the next submissions. Submission can be reviewed on the same day (if you are lucky) or can take a few days or even week on some sites (like Gimmestock). Carefully prepare your photos before uploading them and choose the right keywords for your images. Keywords are very important because they help your photos to be found on the stock site by designers in search of an image. Each stock agencies allow you to specify a certain number of keywords (let's say 50, 70) and sometimes you can even specify phrases by putting the word between quotation marks. If you plan to upload your photos on more sites you should use a software (you can do this in Photoshop: File>File Info) to specify keywords, a description and a title for your photos. This way you don't have to take care of keywords every time you upload an image on another site because most stock photography sites can automatically extract this information.