How To Sell Your Images Through A Stock Agency You have folder after folder of travel images or other images and you want to make money with them. Or you need a little extra income and you have some camera skills. Thinkstock agencies. It’s a great venue for a “sort of “ passive income. I say “sort of” because really you do have to tend to it a little once you get going, more if you want to really make more money. “That sounds wonderful.” you say? It is. However, it is also a lot of up front work to get started and some maintenance.
Photography writing experts working with Psychology homework help, java assignment help and pay for research paper says stock photography is different from fine art gallery photography and snapshots, or travel photography, although sometimes they do crossover well. Especially travel photography. The purpose of stock photography is to provide images to designers so they can build ads to sell things. Sometimes they use an image as is, but most often they hack them apart to build a new image that they need (this is part of their license agreement.) You have to be thinking, how can someone use this to sell something? When you supply images you want to be aware of negative space available for ad wording to go into and the like. There are some fundamentals
1.Your image should have commercial appeal.
2. Your image should be sharp. (But not over sharpened.)
3. Your image should be lit properly.
4. Your images should have good composition My favorite stock agency is Dreamstime.
They are the third largest stock agency online. I have a large portfolio there and I sell well. I tried the big ones first and got fairly discouraged as they just rejected and rejected with no information as to what I was doing that was not acceptable.
It was totally frustrating and demoralizing. Dreamstime reviewers gave me very clear direction and I just got better and better. I also like that they do not require that you upload images and all of them be accepted before you can be a contributor.
You upload 20 images and they take what they want and you are in! At first, unless you are fantastic at editing and knowing the minds of the reviewers (and no one knows that yet), you will get a fair amount of rejections. Do NOT take that personally. Often times your images are fine but there are so many similar ones in the database that they just do not need any more.
They are in it to satisfy customers and they know what they need. Much less work on your part if you spend some time doing a bit of homework checking out what is hot and what is NOT, and what is completely saturated. NEVER EVER discuss/complain about rejections in the forums. Take that to staff in an email. They are good about responding and occasionally even change their minds if it is not a rejection for technical problems. There are lots of forums and blogs to read and tons of support from other members and staff. Each agency like assignment help melbourne , research paper writing service and assignment writing service uk has guidelines as to what they will accept in the areas of size and quality in there various assignment.
Read those carefully as images that are too small will not even upload. For Dreamstime it is 3MP (Megapixels). DO not confuse MEGABYTES with MEGAPIXELS. An image with a totally white background might show itself to be low in megabytes because the solid color registers as one, but as long as it’s megapixel length times its width is over 3,000,000 pixels…you are fine. I also use Fotolia and they require a minimum of 4MP. My portfolio on Fotolia is smaller and therefore sales are slower.
They also are vague about why they reject an image. It takes a few months of religious practice and patience uploading to get 100 or more images accepted in your portfolio (which is kind of a landmark goal everyone aspires to first) and you need to be thinking several seasons ahead, but then the sales start to roll in.
My first sale came when I had under 12 images in my portfolio. The money is in the numbers. Many of your sales are subscription sales. Designers pay a flat fee to belong and can download a certain amount of images a month.
Those sales are around .35, which is awfully low you say? Yes, but when you have 10,000 images in your portfolio….that adds up quickly. Many of your images are sitting on your hard drive not making you any money.
Larger sales can be $1-$2 per image and occasionally you will get an exclusive or extended license sale for BIG bucks. If you are not an exclusive contributor to a site you can upload the same images on many sites. There are some big benefits to being an exclusive contributor but you get to find that out for yourself.
Many of my Dreamstime images are on Fotolia. So they are making me money in several venues.. If you get other photographer friends, or designer friends to contribute photographs or purchase from there you get a percentage of the sales.
