Thinking it time you started selling your images as stock photography? Stock photography is huge and everybody looks to be doing it, unfortunately though, most photographers are going about it the wrong way.
The very first thing you must do is decide where you want to end up ...
Do you want a full time business? Do you dream about throwing in the day job and becoming a full time photographer? Or do you simply need some more cash from your photography? Perhaps you'd be content to buy a new lens every now and then from your profits?
If you need the first option, you are looking at joining a particularly tough industry and that is going to take serious time, effort and you're going to have to invest real money to make it happen.
For stock photography you want to assess every element of your photography the standard of your work, the commercial potential of the subjects you shoot, how many images you have on file and how often you add to them. Quality, Content & Volume to achieve success in stock photography you need to have each of those aspects totally covered.
If you feel you could have work to do in any of those areas, I'd recommend you take some time to work on them first. Take a short course to fine-tune your technique, buy some stock photography books to find more saleable subjects, and then shoot like mad to build up your catalog.
Stock is competitive and guaranteed to suck the joy right from your photography if you attempt to start selling your photos before you are at a level where you can make it work.
If you're not out for a major life-change though, you have a few more options.
A lot of part-time photographers place their pictures with the microstock libraries and hope to make a little bit of small change each year but I truly believe this is about the very worst of your choices.
Some of these stock photo sites are selling images for a dollar or less each, royalty free, so the photographers gets a few pennies for the sale, and the purchaser gets free usage of the image, for evermore. This doesn't worry a lot of newbies, but it has a big effect on the industry. If that does not concern you, it probably should.
If things change and you decide one day to sell your photos seriously, every $1 sale you make is going to make it that much harder for you to earn a living. And to make matters worse, you won't be able to sell and of those photos to high-end photo buyers, because you will not have any idea where they have been published before or where they might turn up next.
Sometimes you will find a better option for the hobbyist is to use your imagesimages as content instead of product, and publish them on your own simple photography sites promoting affiliate products. For most photographers this will lead directly to better returns without giving your images away for peanuts, and if you one day opt to get serious about selling your photos, they're still totally yours to sell.
The very first thing you must do is decide where you want to end up ...
Do you want a full time business? Do you dream about throwing in the day job and becoming a full time photographer? Or do you simply need some more cash from your photography? Perhaps you'd be content to buy a new lens every now and then from your profits?
If you need the first option, you are looking at joining a particularly tough industry and that is going to take serious time, effort and you're going to have to invest real money to make it happen.
For stock photography you want to assess every element of your photography the standard of your work, the commercial potential of the subjects you shoot, how many images you have on file and how often you add to them. Quality, Content & Volume to achieve success in stock photography you need to have each of those aspects totally covered.
If you feel you could have work to do in any of those areas, I'd recommend you take some time to work on them first. Take a short course to fine-tune your technique, buy some stock photography books to find more saleable subjects, and then shoot like mad to build up your catalog.
Stock is competitive and guaranteed to suck the joy right from your photography if you attempt to start selling your photos before you are at a level where you can make it work.
If you're not out for a major life-change though, you have a few more options.
A lot of part-time photographers place their pictures with the microstock libraries and hope to make a little bit of small change each year but I truly believe this is about the very worst of your choices.
Some of these stock photo sites are selling images for a dollar or less each, royalty free, so the photographers gets a few pennies for the sale, and the purchaser gets free usage of the image, for evermore. This doesn't worry a lot of newbies, but it has a big effect on the industry. If that does not concern you, it probably should.
If things change and you decide one day to sell your photos seriously, every $1 sale you make is going to make it that much harder for you to earn a living. And to make matters worse, you won't be able to sell and of those photos to high-end photo buyers, because you will not have any idea where they have been published before or where they might turn up next.
Sometimes you will find a better option for the hobbyist is to use your imagesimages as content instead of product, and publish them on your own simple photography sites promoting affiliate products. For most photographers this will lead directly to better returns without giving your images away for peanuts, and if you one day opt to get serious about selling your photos, they're still totally yours to sell.
About the Author:
Brad Stephens contributes digital stock photographyto the GlobalEye library and publishes instant affiliatephotograph web sites in his spare time
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