In the age of Instagram and Pinterest, pictures are big business!
And literally anyone can make money selling pictures!
You don’t have to be a professional photographer anymore to turn your pictures into cash.
With smartphones and their amazing camera, anybody can take quality photos.
Of course, a digital camera is still much better for taking quality shots at the hands of those who know how to use it.
And with stock photography sites, it’s easier than ever to earn money from your shots. What makes making money with stock photography sites great is that you don’t have to be a professional photographer who makes a living snapping pictures to sell pictures to them.
Of course, they don’t just accept any picture. You have to submit quality pictures.
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How Stock Photo Sites Work
It’s simple really. You sign up for free, submit your pictures and once they go through the approval process and are accepted, they are added to their gallery where bloggers, online businesses, publishers and anyone else who needs quality pictures, can buy them.
The best part about it is that one single picture can be sold over and over and over again. Buyers basically buy the right to use that picture not to own it. This is what makes it a lucrative business for good photographers. Imagine having 100’s of quality pictures that sell over and over again.
Sure, a single purchase doesn’t pay much, but when you multiply the sales and dollar amounts by hundreds and even thousands of times, you can see how much money you can potentially make.
What’s the Best Stock Photo Sites to Make Money with?
Now, the important question is, which stock photo sites are worth it?
Obviously, you want to work with as many sites as you can. But one having your pictures for sale on one good site with hundreds of thousands of daily potential buyers outweighs the benefits of having your pictures on dozens of smaller sites that only get a few hundred potential daily buyers.
To make money with your digital camera, the smart way, choose the top sites. The ones that have a lot of traffic. Going with high traffic sites means you increase your chances of having your photos seen and bought by interested people.
Top 10 Sites for Selling Stock Pictures
So what are the best stock photo sites for a photographer to make the most money with?
Here are some of the top stock image sites where you can sell your pictures on:
- Fotolia
- Shutterstock
- Deposit Photos
- BigStockPhoto
- 123RF
- Photos.com
- iStockPhoto
- Stockxpert
- Alamy
- Veer
Tips for Getting Started
If you’re thinking of making money by selling your photos on stock photography websites, there are a few things you’ll need to know.
1. Understand what types of photos sell
All photographs that you submit will first be checked by the stock photography websites to assess whether it meets their standards and requirements.
Not only do you need to have a good quality photo, but you must also have an understanding of what types of photos are in demand.
A simple way to find out what kind of photos sell more is to look at the best sellers/most downloaded images on the sites mentioned above.
You have a better chance of getting your photo accepted if it is in a niche area and unique, rather than the common pictures of sunsets, sunrises, puppies, kittens, and flowers.
This is not to say that you won’t get a photo of a sunset accepted, but it generally has to be of superior quality than the hundreds of sunset photos already available on that site.
2. Diversify
Just like a share portfolio, it is best if you don’t restrict your photos to just one stock website.
You will have a much wider customer base if your photographs are available on as many websites as possible.
The sites mentioned above are some of the well-known stock photo sites you could start off with.
3. Don’t give up
Some or most of your photographs may initially get rejected when you submit them.
While rejection is never easy, it’s important that you don’t give up.
Stock websites generally give you reasons for rejecting your images.
Try and learn from these rejections and you will quickly get the hang of it. You will soon see the majority of your photos getting accepted.
Takeaway
You may only earn a few bucks when you first start licensing your photos but don’t be discouraged.
The beauty of making money with your digital camera in this way is that it’s sort of passive income.
You take the image and upload it once, but it can be sold hundreds of thousands of time without you doing anything else.
Multiply that with hundreds of photos, and you can see how profitable selling stock photography can be.
