Hundreds of articles have been written about Microstock photography; some praising, some denouncing. All I can say is the numbers speak for themselves. If you are an amateur photographer, try using stock photography sites to create a reliable source of passive income. The most important part of generating stock photography is generating a large number of photos for these sites.
Review each sites submission guidelines, they all have different photographic standards and know what the customer will buy. Don’t be discouraged if they don’t accept some of your photos, they can be extremely picky. Review their guidelines and take note of the comments they leave for you. Also take a look at the top downloaded photos, most searched keywords, and most popular subjects.
Have a diverse photographic portfolio, create a wide range of subjects, and get as many photos up as possible. The payouts range from 25 cents to tens of dollars per download. If you have 20 photos up one a site and 5 get downloaded a day, that around $1 a day, not nearly enough to live on. But if you have 2000 photos up and 500 get downloaded a day, thats over $100 a day! And thats only from one site, you can submit the exact same portfolio of photos to many different stock photo websites. Some people have enough photos that they can live off Microstock alone.
Submit many photos, and submit them to many Microstock websites. Here is a list of the top 9 Microstock agencies out there.
- iStockPhoto.com
- Crestock.com
- Fotolia
- Shutterstock
- StockXpert
- Dreamstime
- 123RF
- BigStockPhoto
- SnapVillage
Keywords are a huge part of stock photography. Use lots of them. Fully describe every object in the photo, the emotions it evokes, the colors it uses and the themes that are present. The more keywords the more views your photos get and the more times it will be purchased.
I cannot stress this enough. Numbers. Submit many photos, different angles, different blocking of actors and of different themes and subjects. Diversify your photos and portfolio to ensure your sales.
February 25th, 2009 at 5:03 am
Hello,
Monetizing creative online content is a great way to create an income stream with almost no upfront investment, but the tradeoff (once again) is time. It takes a tremendous amount of time to create the amount of content that will eventually produce a decent stream of passive income.Passive income
Thanks
February 25th, 2009 at 5:06 am
Hello,
Monetizing creative online content is a great way to create an income stream with almost no upfront investment, but the tradeoff (once again) is time. It takes a tremendous amount of time to create the amount of content that will eventually produce a decent stream of passive income.http://passiveincomefromdomains.com/
March 11th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
I have mad quite a bit of money on Shutterstock. You dont have to be a professional photograper. It’s a great way to pay for your camera equipment. Try it out – there is nothing to lose… Shutterstock