If you are good at taking photos, then the chances are you can make money from them. How much will depend on how many images you have, how “commercial” they are and how much effort you put in to supporting their sales.  Here we take a quick overview of how to set yourself up selling images.

How do photographers make money?

Photographers generally get their revenue through two avenues:

1. Commissioned briefs:  From wedding photography to cover shots for magazines, a client commissions a photographer for specific shots. In this situation the client usually (though not always) retains or acquires the copyright to the material. The photographer will charge either for his/her time or an agreed amount per shot, effectively receiving a one-off fee for their work.
2. Stock photography: Where you have a shot to which you have full copyright, and which you make available for others to use under a license.

Clients buy the right to use an image under the license terms and the photographer can continue receiving Royalties from the sale of licenses over time. The main types of commercial licenses are known as Royalty free or Rights Managed, and the costs can vary from $1 to $10,000 or more depending on the license, usage and image size. They are discussed in detail in the Licenses Explained article.

News and Editorial licenses:

You may also come across News or Editorial licences.  Do not be confused however: these can still be sold either under Royalty Free or more commonly Rights Managed licenses. The difference is that their use is restricted to non-commercial or editorial-only use, generally because they do not have model or property releases (i.e. permission by the people or owners of any property - including brands - featured in the photo is not recorded in writing).

Prints and Fine Art:

Of course, you can also make money from selling fine art prints or products (like books, mugs or mouse mats) with your photos on them. For the purposes of this article, I would simply argue that this scenario falls under either of the options above: here you are acting both as the photographer (the image maker) and as the client (the product/art reseller).  

Selling stock photography

Stock photography is a good place to start generating some earnings from your images. There are thousands of stock agencies around the world, focusing on anything from general lifestyle shots to specialist nature or scientific photographs.  And many are actively seeking contributions from professional and amateur photographers , particularly so called Microstock agencies who specialise in low cost and large volume Royalty Free images.

Preparing images for stock agencies

Your first step should really be to build up and prepare a bank of image for sale.  This can be very time consuming, so be prepared to put in the effort.  To begin with you can build up a bank of your top 20 images to help with the registration process, but ultimately you will have to process all images you want to sell.

• Select only your best images (technically and aesthetically), which are of high enough resolution.  This varies from agency to agency, but assume a minimum of 6MP and 300dpi at original size.
• Review the images at 100% on a well calibrated monitor.  Clean up any minor issues such a dust spots, cropping, colour or level adjustments.  This processing should only require minimal changes, otherwise your shot is probably not good enough.
• Save the file as a high resolution jpeg (compression 12). Most agencies will want an 8bit image using the default Adobe RGB (1998) colour space.
• It is a good idea to include keywords and caption information within the image file (IPTC / Exif data) as most agencies will be able access this information.  It will save a lot of time later if you are submitting to multiple agencies. Keywording is critical to effective sales of images because this is how buyers will find your images so don’t underestimate the time you’ll need to spend getting it right.

Registering with stock agencies

Your second step is to register with an agency, or two, or three… (See a list of recommended stock agencies).  Registration should be free, but be prepared to submit some form of ID verification like a scanned copy of your driving license.  

Whichever agencies you join, take time to understand what they are looking for both technically (image sizes, formats, processing, uploading) and aesthetically (image subjects, style).  This will vary considerably from one agency to another.

Most agencies will then ask you to upload a sample of your work for review. This can be anything from 5 to 20 images and really should be your best shots showing the range of your work.  It can take anywhere from 1 day to 1 month for your submissions to be reviewed, so do be patient.

You will need to specify how you want to be paid when your images are sold. Many pay by cheque or direct bank transfer, and almost all will transfer payments to PayPall accounts.  If you don’t have one, it may be a good idea to set one up.

Depending on which country you live in and which countries your images are sold through, you may need to provide additional tax information.

Uploading your portfolio for sale

Finally, once accepted as a contributor, upload your images for sale. You will have to go through a keyword process, but if you’ve included this in the image IPTC /EXIF information this should be relatively straight forward.  Some agencies will also give you the option to select the license type (Royalty Free or Rights Managed) and the license pricing to some degree.

You should be careful to be consistent with your licenses for each image across different stock agencies. Each image should be available under the same license type at roughly the same price whichever stock agency it is with.  How much you earn will depend greatly on the demand for your type of shots, how easily buyers find your images through effective keywording, and the license costs. With microstock many people report receiving on average $1 or less per image per month from Royalty Free commission sales.  Volume and relevance really is the name of the game here if you are to many any significant income.

Each image will be reviewed and accepted or rejected on its own merits but if you have been careful to select only high quality images AND of the type the agency specifies, most of your images should be accepted.

All that’s left to do now is watch how well your images sell, and get busy creating more images to upload.

Tags: agency, microstock, photographs, royalty free, sell images, sell photos, sell your images, stock

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 at 1:02 pm and is filed under Selling, Tips and advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.