If you’re really good with taking amazing pictures using a camera, you can get paid for letting others use your photography. After all, this is a skill that only a few people have, and so they rely on photographers like you to provide them with incredible images, such as persons, landscape, animals, and so on.
Thus, in this article, I’ll go over how you can turn your photography into a good source of income online. You’re about to see how selling photos works, what sites you can get started with, and a few tips to improve your picture-taking skill. So without further ado, let’s get into it!
So How Does It Work?
Well, obviously, it all starts with taking quality pictures. Once you have your photographs together, here are the next steps you will be taking so you can start selling them for money.
You will first need to find a site that has stock photography in it. Basically, stock photos are photos submitted by users to a certain site to be sold for use. The photo of the lady using her camera up above is a prime example of a stock photo. Now that we have the Internet, many people prefer stock photos because they are cheaper to gain access to than it is to hire a photographer. But don’t feel bad that you’ll be selling photos a little cheap. The fact that it’s cheap could get more customers to buy your photos and thus earn you more money!
You may have also heard of the term royalty-free. Well, if a stock photo is royalty-free, that means customers who buy your photo are free to use it as much as they want.
Now let’s go over how exactly selling works. When you submit a photo to one of these sites, you don’t have control over how much to sell it for. Only the site you choose to sell it on will determine the price tag of your images, equal to everyone else’s. Here’s the thing, though. The customer does not buy the photo out of his own pocket. You see, either they buy credits to spend on any photo of their choosing, or they buy a recurring plan where they are free to obtain a certain number of photos every month or every year or something like that. Anyway, every time your photo sells, you will get paid according to the site’s policies, so keep that in mind as you consider selling.
The last thing you must understand that the site that you are selling your stock photos on needs money to keep itself going. Thus, you will only obtain a fraction of the sale every time one of your photos sells, and the rest of the sale goes to that site. The exact percentage the site will keep depends on its policies, so you’ll want to read them before you get going.
Hopefully, you now understand the whole structure of selling stock photos and how much money you can earn for providing quality images to potential customers.
Now Where Can I Start?
There are many good stock photo sites out there, but I’ll recommend three to you that I think are worth trying. I’ll explain how each site compares so you know what to expect before you get started with them.
Shutterstock
This is arguably the most popular website to obtain stock photos. With literally over 260 million images and quickly counting, Shutterstock is very active in the stock photo industry. This gives you a strong potential to make numerous sales, so I would definitely make Shutterstock my number-one recommendation. And not only can you sell photos, you can sell short video clips and custom graphic illustrations as well.
With Shutterstock, how much you will make for every sale depends on the kind of plan the customer chose. You will earn more if the customer selected the shortest plan and/or a plan that allowed them only a few photos for download. According to their earnings, you will only earn around a few dollars or less for every sale you make per photo. In order to submit your photos to be sold on Shutterstock, you will need to start an account with them and conform to their submission guidelines.
Get started on Shutterstock and discover why many photographers enjoy using it to get paid.
Dreamstime
This is another great site to submit your quality photos to. It boasts the world’s largest stock photo community, with over 25 million users. Dreamstime is such a big site that it is even used by great companies like Time Magazine, Samsung, Walmart, Coca-Cola and even Google. And like Shutterstock, you can sell short video and audio clips in addition to photos.
So how much can you earn with Dreamstime? Well, it primarily depends on your content level. The more popular your photo is, the higher its content level, and the more you’ll earn every time it sells. so you’ll want to make sure your photos are really appealing to people who could use it. Of course, everyone starts small, so just be patient and, if you’re good enough, your photo will eventually be well-liked and earn more for you whenever it sells. If you’re interested, you can learn more about how selling on Dreamstime works here.
More and more stock photo searchers are turning to Dreamstime for their illustrative needs. So sign up and contribute to Dreamstime and take advantage of its awesome community!
Getty Images/iStock
If you like simple and user-friendly interfaces and less competition when selling your photos, Getty Images and its sister site iStock are the way to go! But here’s what makes the contribution process for these two sites particularly interesting. All you need is your mobile device!
That’s right. With your tablet or smartphone, simply download the Getty Images app, available for both Android and iOS users. There, you sign up to the community and, from there, you can just upload all photos that you have from your device to either Getty Images or iStock. That one app is all you really need to become a photo contributor to either of these sites.
Your earnings depend on the amount of credits the customer spent or what plan they chose. Either way, you will earn a few bucks for every sale you make. And since there’s not much competition with both of these sites, it’s a good idea to provide more quality photos that provide you a better chance of earning sales and thriving well in the community.
You can find more information over on the Getty Images contributor page, where you can learn about the benefits of becoming a Getty Images/iStock contributor and links to download the free mobile app.
Wrapping Up
Photography Tips
Before I conclude this article, I would like you to offer you a few pointers that can potentially increase your success of making good money from your photography work.
- Use a digital camera rather than a mobile device. Let’s be real: your phone’s camera is honestly not as high-quality as any digital camera out there. So use a digital camera if you have one, but if not, invest into one that offers good zoom, a lot of megapixels, and provides you with a nice photo-taking experience. If you can, you may also want to look into a tripod so you don’t face the risk of taking blurry photos.
- Learn some photography lessons on a blog or on video. We can all use room for improvement, even when it comes to things we’re already good at. Head over to Google or YouTube and search some photography tips. There are many resources out there, and one site I recommend is Improve Photography. As you get better, you’ll notice a tremendous effect on future photos you take.
- Take advantage of a photo editor. Obviously, Photoshop is at the head of the pack, but if you want a free and simple alternative, I personally recommend Paint.NET. It’s a great image editor with easy-to-use effects and filters. By applying these to your imperfect photos, you can improve them aesthetically, give them more appeal, and increase your chances of your photos being sold.
- Be natural. Just take photos as you normally would. You don’t have to use selfie sticks or add exaggeration to your photo to get your customers to buy your work. In fact, people just like photos that are genuinely taken. So take the picture, let the people in it be themselves, and that’s really all there is to it!
Conclusion
Photography is a great industry to get into when it comes to making money online. But did you know you can earn more by starting a blog and sharing your photos on it? And not only can you increase your earnings on a blog, but it can become a source of passive income. You could even create an online photography course and provide lessons to customers, that will pay you pretty well every time you sell it.
Nonetheless, I hope this article encouraged you in any way to use the photos you take to make good money online. Now start snapping pictures and get paid for sharing them to others who could certainly use them!