Selling photographs through microstock agencies

Selling Your photographs online

Engish is not my major language, so sorry for any mistakes and errors caused by that.

Firstly I want to say, that You will not become bilionire from microstock... but You will probably earn enough to buy some new photo gear from time to time for that money. It is quite cool to buy sth for that money - your hobby earns for itself. The money you earn depends on the usefulness of your photo. You can easily find microstocksellers with over 400,000 downloads in the period of 3 years.

Some proofs - you can say - yeaaa I do not believe You. And that is normal, I didn't believed also... check those profiles from below, These shows some average stock photographers (I've choosen istock agency, because It allows anonymous visitors to view photographer sales statistics):

Lisegagne Member since 2003, 5101 files, 540810 downloads (at the time of writing this article, it still grows for all of them!)
Mammamaart Member since 2003, 784 files, 137115 downloads
Duncan1890 Member since 2002, 2425 files, 130690 downloads

Those people are only examples that show it is possible to get serious amount of money in such a way. Their photos will work for them till the end of their lives... You can say it is not as big money as I You wrote. But those are their profiles from istock, they share their photos also on other sites. I got some more listed at the bottom of this page. They easily can share their photos at 10 sites more... that is dramatic change. Generaly, the more good photos You upload the more money You will get!

Choosing photos

Well not every photo will sell well. Why? The customers of microstock are looking for certain photographs, thats why an photo of isolated apple (or buisness woman) will get much more sales than photo of sunset. You have to look at your photo and think - 'what can be uses of my photo'. The target of microstock agencies are webdesigners, ad agencies, artists... so think how to take good usable photos. To make it enouth visible You need to add apropriate keywords.

Preparing the photo

Before You submit a photo You must be aware that:

The photograph should be sent with the best possible quality - do not compress it!
The photo should be in its orginal size - do not resize it because it will be rejected.
The approver is taking a look at You photos at full size, if it contains any artifacts or noise it will be rejected. So, when it is possible use low iso settings on your camera, if it still contains some noise You can use some software to remove it. Noise Ninja or Neat Image should help enough.
The photo should not contain any copyrighted things and logos. Remove them with photo editing software, eg. gimp, photoshop.
If your photograph contain people with recognizable faces, all of the people should sign model release form - do not forget to attach it to Your photo. Some sample model-release forms: shutterstock, z dreamstmie's, universal ones .

Choosing keywords

This is as much important as the usefulness and quality of your photos. If you will not add enough amount of good keywords it will be not shown to as many buyers as it could. Take some time for choosing keywords - take a cup of tea and think, family can help you with that. If you think that there could be some more, but do not have idea which ones check microstock for similar images, this sould give You some new ideas. If there aren't similar photos - be happy because unique photo with good keywords will reach amout of sales it deserves. Example keywords:

anchor, ball, bauble, blue, bulb, catch, celebration, cheat, christmas, classic, concept, corruption, danger, december, decoration, false, fishing, fraud, gift, glass, hanging, hook, lie, line, ornament, ornamental, over, pitfall, snare, swindle, swindler, theft, trap, unique, white, winter

Next example:

addict, addicted, addiction, addictive, ash, background, cancer, cigar, cigarette, close, closeup, consider, green, habit, health, macro, nicotine, problem, quit, routine, smoke, smoker, smoking, tabacco, tobacco, weed

One more:

agriculture, beautiful, beauty, bright, close-up, color, energy, farm, field, flower, formal, garden, growth, head, image, life, macro, medicine, nature, non-urban, object, outdoors, petal, plant, pollen, pollination, season, seed, shiny, spring, stem, summer, sun, sunflower, vegetable, yellow, farina, extreme, macro, extreeme, ultra, water, drop, waterdrop

The keywords can be added to photo in stockagency web form, however I think it is bad way of doing that. Far better is to add keywords in editing image software - for eg. in xnview or photoshop - by editing ITPC tags. Photoshop is the most popular software, so I'll write here how to get to the itpc editing dialog. File = File info...=keywords. Now You can send the photo to any of the stock agencies and they will read it automaticaly - you saved a lot of time making it that way!

Rejections

They usually write why it was rejected, but remember do not take it personally! It is natural... sometimes the reasons will seem weird, but they are choosing the photos they want to sell. It is nothing new that photo rejected in one agency will be accepted in the other. You will learn to cope with it after some time. The photo can be arty, it can expres something in great way - they can still reject it.

Payout

Well diffrent stock agencies have different limits and types of sending money, in most of cases You can get your money after achiewing sales of 50$, and cash it with paypal or cheque.

Recommended sites

As I said before the amount of views of Your photos, the better keywords - the more sales. There are some good, and some better agencies. I advise to send Your photo to every listed below (unless You want to send some exclusively to one of them). It will help You to show it to every person who need that. That is the way I do it. Another advice, firstly send it to canstockphoto, because it has great keywording tool which can give you idea for some more keywords, if this happen edit Your photos IPTC again and then send it to other agencies.

Good (recommended) microstock agencies (you can buy or sell photos there):

Weak microstock agencies (you can buy or sell photos there):

Some time ago I've believed into those agencies, but now I can see that those wasn't worth my hope.

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