Is you´r hobby taking pictures with your camera or even your phone? Maybe you would like to make money as a photographer? Well if you like to take photos and want to make money from doing it the good news is that you can. If you want to know how to sell digital photos online continue reading this text and I will explain some important and interesting things about it.
“You do not need any experience as a photographer to do this”
The absolute best and easiest way to do this online is becoming a contributor for so called “microstock” sites.
There are many such sites on the web, a few of the most popular is: Fotolia, Dreamstime, Shutterstock, istock and many many more.
It is a fact that many people around the world make a living on this and some of them are making a ton of money! (Yuri Acurs the most famous stock contributer in the world makes about 160000 euro (or about 200000 dollars) every month!!)
It works like this: You take a picture and you send it to the site/sites (all sites are free to join so you don´t have to worry about spending any money)
If your photo is of decent quality Your photo/photos ends up in a database for photos where buyers from all the world search for images that they need for some reason.
Your photos will not disapear if someone buys it. It can be sold endless amount of times! So if you want to make a decent income from this you should build up a big “portfolio”
Really the only thing you need to start as a contributer is: a camera and a internet connection
Important to know: Don´t fall for a scam! There are people that claims that they can teach you exactly what to take photos on so that you will make alot of money. This is just a scam! (trust me I have tried) The only thing that will happen is that you loose your money and the info you get (if any) is exactly the same that you can get by visiting some random homepage about the subject.
Do You need any experience as a photographer? The answer is no, but you will learn and get more and more experience as you send in more photos as you will notice what kind of photos you make most sales from.
Do you need a good camera? There is a saying that there is no bad camera only bad users of the camera… And that is true… But it will be much EASIER to get your photos accepted by the stocksites if you buy a decent camera. When I first started I used a cannon powershoot SX210 IS (and I had many many rejections) then after a couple of months I upgraded to a Canon eos 700D (and almost every photo I send in got accepted!)
So if you want to save yourself alot of work and time you should invest in a good camera if you are serious about this.
Maybe you have money to spend? If you do I would recommend the Canon eos 5d a dream camera! But of course it depends on your budget.
ANOTHER TIP
I have personaly tried to make money as a stock contributer for almost a year and I even sold some photos. Some of them many times to!
I have noticed that my sells are mainly related to some big industry such as : medicine, health, food etc… This is important to think about if you want to make many sells! Target big industries as they need many Images!
is this really something for me?
But to be honest it is alot of administration work before you have your photo up on the sites… atleast if you want to make a living on this kind of business, (because then you will need a very big collection of images up on many different sites).
The best thing to do If you want to make a living from this would be to hire people doing the administration work for you.
I don´t send in so many photos anymore mainly cause I have figured out that I was in it to make alot of money and not only for “gasoline money” and the fun of it.
But I still get one or a few sales every month :o) And sometimes if I have some photo that I “belive in” I send it in because It would be fun to make a “blockbuster” image, that gets sold many many times and generates alot of money.
Maybe it is better making your own homepage and sell your photos from there?
Yes! That is a great idea if you are very passionate about photography!
You can make your own homepage in a couple of minutes if you want and you can do it for free!
Maybe you are very intrested in cameras, lenses and other equipment… Why not make a homepage about that? you can really earn alot of money!
Really it is up to you because to be honest you can make money from anything on the web today. There is a market for everything!
The Internet has 2.8 billions of users online every day!!
If you want to learn how to make your own homepage and make money from it in a easy to understand way visit the “review” page!
That is the reason why I stopped my microstock carrer ;o)
See you there :o)
Please leave a comment below!
Sincerely
John
