In our post on 8 ways to make money online,
we discussed that you can even earn money by selling your photographs.
Photography is an expensive hobby and now you can make money from it as
well. To me it was a new concept and I felt interested in finding out
its details. Would you like to read what I have found? To begin we need
to know the proper terminologies. Stock photography is the term
referring to the photographs or images that can be licensed for specific
use. And micro stock photography means you can buy high quality and
high resolution images at specified prices.Why Micro Stock Photography?
You
must be curious to find out why we need such type of business? Actually
this is popular among designers, advertisers, marketing professionals
etc. for the use of images in their websites, advertisements, brochures
and magazines etc. Instead of hiring a professional photographer who may
be much expensive and can cost them in terms of time as well, they
prefer to select images or photographs already available, make payment
and own it.
How to make good Stock?
Of
course you need to have stock of your digital photographs which you are
willing to sell. As every other industry, it has also got competition
and you can’t sell each and every image of yours. There are some very
basic points that can help you gather a good stock; and can pay your
hard work.
1-Good quality:
Your
photographs must be clean, sharp, and free of digital noise, high
quality images with correct exposures. A recommended practice is to
shoot your images in RAW format.2-Commercial photographs:
‘Snapshots’
which are usually your family photographs or still images are not a
suitable choice. You must check what is most demanded, if you want to
earn a reasonable amount. If you are persistent to capture landscapes
and tourist type photographs, that’s fine too; they will pay you less.
Photographs or images that can be used in brochures, flyers or
advertisements can add up to your stock. For example, if you take a
still image of your school going child, it would be rejected. But, if
you show him in uniform, hanging his school bag with a brighter smile on
his face; this photo can easily be selected by any milk or butter
advertisement.
3-No trademarks:
There
should be no trademarks and no logos of the company, to whom you are
selling photos. Also, if you have an image in which a person is wearing a
shirt with its brand name; it may be rejected.
4-Signed Model release:
Each
agency has its own standard model releases. Don’t forget to ask for
it. It is a form that you fill in and send along with each image
containing identifiable person.
5-Technical details:
For technical details and copyright issues, you may like to go through this manual at www.istockphoto.com/training_manuals.php
Where to sell?
There
are many micro stock agencies; you should start from the basic step.
Your ultimate target should be doing business with the leading company;
but postpone this idea until you get some experience and understand the
tactics of photographic market. Most of the websites are not doing
exclusive business so you can sale the same image to different agencies.
We are listing a few of these agencies:
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