A guide to selling photos online

Both amateur and professional photographers can make some quick and handy cash, and even easily recover equipment costs, by selling online. This article will indeed explain how to sell photos online.

Selling photographs online: FAQ

Understanding the market Stock photography caters to a huge market. Today, almost every company has an in-house creative department, that designs and creates collaterals, like newsletters, brochures, web pages, etc. Creative departments are always in need of stock photography and clip art. This need for stock photographs is amplified in advertising agencies and creative studios. These businesses buy photographs from stock photography sites. Most companies sign up with stock photo selling sites for their needs, and stock photography sites turn to amateur and professional photographers, for procuring photographs and other art. You will have to upload your pictures, based on the themes required. The site will then approve the uploaded pictures and publish them and then, they will pay you, based on the number of downloads. Factors to be aware of If you’re an amateur, then it’s time to brush up your photographic skills. If you want to make money, your photographs must be good enough to be appreciated and downloaded. Though stock photography sites don’t need very Hi-Res pictures, you must at least use a 4-megapixel camera. Your pictures must be sharp, correctly exposed and clean. Hence, you have to shoot pictures in RAW format and not as jpegs. There should be no brand names or logos on your photos. Photos of naked babies/children will be refused, because of predatory and pedophile fears. Positive pictures, that carry a message are preferred over negative photos. You must ensure that you shoot, using a white background, because your online images will be edited by users. When you shoot people, who are known to the public, you have to sign a model release form available at stock photography sites.

How to sell your pictures

You have to register with the main stock photography sites to sell photos online. They will evaluate your skills, before placing your photographs for sale. Here’s an indicative list of sites that you can work with: -Fotolia -BigStockPhoto -123rf -Stocxpert -Dreamstime -iStock -Shutterstock -MostPhotos Now, it’s time to upload/sell your pictures. You must include keywords relevant to your picture. If you do not enter sufficient or relevant keywords, your sales will suffer, because the search results depend on keywords. You will have to supply the title, description and the category. After that, you must now start checking your download reports to find out how much you have earned. Depending on the response your photos get, you must better your skills and try to shoot creative pictures, in categories featuring the highest number of downloads.