Microstock: How to make your camera pay for its self by selling your photographs over the internet

The Internet is full of images and photographs, almost every web page has some sort of graphic element, the commercial ones are full of them.

Have you ever stopped to think where it all comes from?

Well, a large proportion comes from the various Microstock Photo Agencies, and where does the majority of this agency stock come from?

Almost any one with a digital camera and an eye for saleable image.

Or to put it another way potentially YOU!

Photo Stock Agencies, with large libraries of photographs, have been around for a long time. They traditionally serviced the needs of the publishing industry and charged fairly large amounts of money per image.
Microstock is a much newer phenomena, a purely Internet based business model which offers 'Rights Free' images for a very low price, their profit comes from volume selling.

Yes I did say a low price,which of course means that the commission to be earned by you the provider of the image is even lower.

Do not despair, a single popular image can sell many times over, and as you still own the image it makes you money on every sale.

As an example the sale of a medium sized image on Fotolia will earn a new non-exclusive contributor $1.20 (All the big agencies work in US Dollars)

Taking a few extra stock oriented photos on any normal day out can soon earn enough to buy a new (better) camera that will of course then mean that you can earn even more.......

Sign up with an agency, upload your photograph and add keywords which describe the image. The agency will then inspect the image to see if it matches their acceptance rules, once accepted it will be added to their database and become searchable via your keywords. It will usually be offered at different prices depending on download size and how many times the image is going to used or viewed.

The Agencies clients type in a keyword search and view the results, obviously they will then choose your image and download it. Each time your photo is purchased you receive a percentage of the sale price. In general the more images that you have sold the greater the percentage.

The original image remains your property and you may offer it to more than one agency at a time or remove it from sale whenever you feel like it. Most agencies have an exclusive option which offers higher percentage returns and in some cases fiddles the search engine to show exclusive images first. At least one agency has a time restriction on how long an accepted image must be available before it can be removed.

The common method of payment is via Paypal, all agencies have a minimum amount that must be reached before they will issue a payment (from $30 to $75).

It should also be noted that any photos containing an image with recognisable people will require a signed 'Model Release' from each of the people in the photo. (I suggest avoiding taking photos of strangers).

The obvious starting point would be to take photographs, but you are probably doing that already.
Don't stop taking the photographs but also do a little research into what might sell well.

All of the agencies have a quality acceptance procedure that individual photos must pass and many request that an initial set of from 3 to 10 images pass this criteria before you can fully sign up as a contributor.

The first thing to do then, is sign up with some agencies as a non-contributor. There is no charge as effectively you are signing up as a buyer, once you have joined you will then be able to have a look at the images that are currently being accepted and the various FAQ's, forums and help offered by the agency for potential contributors

Many sites will point you at the most popular images and say produce more of these. This is not always the best strategy as the agency's examiners have been known to reject new photos based on the reason that they already have too many of such images!

I would recommend having a look at the latest accepted images of subjects that match the things you normally photograph . Keep in mind that the largest size you can view an online image at is probably only 1 Mega-pixels and in general, accepted images have to be a minimum of 4 Mega-pixels. In other words you can only see the general style of photograph not its quality.

Once you have got an idea of what sells, upload an initial batch and see how it goes. Do not be discouraged by any rejections, take on board the reasons and apply them to your next batch of photos. Remember the point is to sell to a stranger, if they do not like the pictures of your children, it's the image they don't like, not your kids!

A little post processing of digital photos usually helps, so if you have any image editing software, fire it up and do a bit of cropping and possibly down-sizing. Avoid up-sizing images, as this often creates 'digital artifacts' and almost always leads to rejection.

Any casual searching on Google with reference to Microstock Photography is bound to throw up a reference to the 'Big 6', these are the agencies that are the likely to provide a return. In practice there is a big 4 and three or four others that jockey for position each with it's own benefits and quirks.

A debate is currently ongoing over whether the best strategy is to be exclusive with one or to contribute to as many as possible. As a new contributor there is probably little point in starting as exclusive. I would recommend signing up to as many as will accept you and that you find that you have the time to upload to.

Please be aware that at least one agency based in the USA (Shutterstock) has decided to interpret US tax law in a way that means 30% of income earned on royalties from US sales by non US citizens will be withheld and passed on to the US tax agency.
Citizens of countries with a reciprocal tax agreement with the USA are able to avoid or reduce this by filling in a US tax form (Shutterstock provide an easily accessible online version of this).
Citizens of countries with no tax treaty with the USA will have to accept a loss of the full 30%.