Get Paid to Review & Rate Pictures for Shutterstock!

If you love photography, are skilled at photo editing, and are familiar with the commercial side of photography—such as the latest trends—you may enjoy working for Shutterstock.

And no, you’re not required to make any phone calls, although you’ll be working from home.

What Exactly is Shutterstock?

Shutterstock is a stock photography site that serves as a bank of royalty-free videos, photos, and illustrations for businesses, individuals, bloggers, and anyone else who needs royalty-free images for their projects.

Artists, photographers, and illustrators from all over the world contribute to this collection.

Some of you may remember that I previously discussed making extra money by taking photos and submitting them to stock photography sites. Well, this is the other side of that coin.

When you and thousands of other people submit your images to sites like Shutterstock, they can’t be instantly available for others to purchase. They must first be rated to ensure they meet quality and appropriateness standards.

That’s where a picture reviewer comes in.

What’s the Job of an Image Reviewer?

The task of an image reviewer is to evaluate photos based on the following criteria:

• Overall quality
• Commercial suitability
• Technical implementation
• Conformance to the company’s acceptable standards

As an image reviewer, your responsibilities include:

• Approving images that conform to the acceptable levels
• Evaluating images for inclusion in marketable image catalogs
• Ensuring that photos do not violate any trademarks or copyrights
• Ability to apply metadata principles and perform basic editing
• Ability to work swiftly and handle high volumes of work with a detail-oriented mindset
• Providing reliable, efficient, objective, concise, and truthful feedback to contributors
• Choosing keywords that help drive search engine traffic

What Kind of Skills Do I Need?

Here are the prerequisites for this job:

• Domain proficiency in photography
• At least two years of experience as a professional photographer
• Ability to devote at least 25-30 hours per week
• Willingness to spend 5-8 hours on weekends
• Excellent command of the English language
• Photo editing skills
• Awareness of ongoing and emerging commercial trends and styles
• Organizational skills, an analytical mindset, and an eye for detail
• Ability to make consistent and comprehensive judgments

Equipment Needed

You’ll need to have the following:

• Personal computer, laptop, or Mac
• High-speed Internet connection
• Adobe Photoshop
• MS Office Suite
• Google Docs

Also, keep in mind that when you offer to work as an image reviewer with Shutterstock, they will check the speed at which your computer can download. It should have a minimum download speed of 25 Mbps.

What Are the Hours?

Although you can choose your working hours, be prepared to work 25-30 hours per week, including 5-8 hours on weekends.

How Much Can I Realistically Make?

While the exact pay isn’t listed on the site, I found a forum post on Shutterstock’s forums from 2011, which mentioned that they pay 5 cents for every image you review.

Even though the post hasn’t been updated in years, I don’t think the pay has increased significantly.

How Do I Apply?

Wanna give it a go?

Simply visit Shutterstock’s job listing page and apply.

Keep in mind that in addition to your application, you will need to take a test. This test basically gauges your speed and efficiency.

Final Words

Although the pay isn’t much, I think this is a decent opportunity for anyone looking for a part-time work-from-home job.

To be honest, depending on your speed, you might even be able to make a full-time income out of it, although it would be very challenging to reach that point, especially since they pay only 5 cents per image. But hey, it’s a simple and somewhat fun way to make money.

Are you going to apply and become an image reviewer?