Selling photos on shutterstock full#
Selling photos on shutterstock professional#

Then, you might start to feel resentful that Aisha in Kazakhstan (fictitious example), who has 2m followers is using your image on her trending blog post - reaping the full benefit - while you receive no credit and a paltry $0.17c as a reward, that you can’t even cash-in until you reach US$100! Suddenly you realise that you will only receive payment when your earnings balance reaches US$100. You discover that you’ve actually made $7.30 from the combined transactions (hypothetical figure only). Those images might have been licensed as part of a package, or for online use only, or as part of a discount day. You might discover that a couple of your images have been licensed by a few people in far-flung locations, which is exciting. Two months later you decide to check the stats. You only spend five hours on effort (post-shoot) and you successfully upload 100 images. Finally, you have to size and upload the images. Next, you have to write all the descriptors and metadata for your images, without which your images will never show up in a search. Even if you only submit images that are already edited, you still have to go through the process of signing up for the stock libraries that you would like to submit to. Initially, you will spend a large number of hours producing, editing and curating your images. This is, not unless you’re willing to put in countless hours, thousands of images and significant effort. The short (slightly cynical, but likely realistic) answer is probably not. Will you make money selling your images to stock libraries? Hot tip: selling food images that include people is slightly easier because it’s a lot more hassle shooting images that include people, so there are less of them to compete with. There are sooooo many food photographs in stock libraries.

Selling photos on shutterstock professional#

To stand out in the crowd, even as a talented and experienced professional is hard. Even a mediocre photographer will score a lucky shot on auto-mode with the right lighting, moment and filter. Everyone (and their dog) who has purchased a camera, of any description, consider themselves a breath away from being a professional photographer. There are literally billions of photographs online. If you want to make money from this, it will take strategy, time and effort (lots of effort!). Forget the idea of grabbing the dregs from your dusty hard disk at the back of a cupboard - batch uploading to a few stock sites - and watching the $s roll in. Despite what many hope, this process is not a small-effort with high-return scenario.

It takes preparation, effort, consistency and longevity to make your mark. The most important thing to comprehend is that selling stock images is like every other business venture you might set out to conquer. As a result, photographers are often looking for other revenue sources. Photography is a very competitive industry, with high overheads and inconsistent workflow. Who hasn’t thought of digging through their backup system, uploading a few images and making a bit of regular extra cash. On the surface, selling stock images seems like an attractive, quick and easy way to make an extra few bucks.