Can photographers make money with royalty-free stock photography?
Few days ago, one of my friends, who is from Canada asked me “Can photographers make money with royalty-free stock photography?” In short, my answer was “YES”, but it’s not as simple as I replayed him. Because now the competition level is too high, so if someone wants to make money from royalty free stock photography, he/she must need to emphasize on quality works, otherwise, not
a single cent will come from the investment. A story can be best fit for this, when I first started photography few years ago, I submitted some of my baby clicks at some micro-stock sites, but pathetically,
nothing came from those photographs. But the days have gone away, now I sell at least two photographs per day, which values are much smart for me.
So what’s the secret that helps me to earn money from royalty-free stock photography?
It’s very simple. Actually, now days I have focused on high quality works, when I felt that the photography stock market has been changed with the touch of new technologies, where digital camera users have covered the market over-night stocking millions of digital images in various stock agencies. However, I still hope the new comers in this arena have a wide scope to earn a smart amount of money from royalty-free stock markets. Today, you will find lots of image stock agencies, which seek for photographers to stock images in royalty free agreements. It’s not the all; you will also get a number of buyers, who want to collect images for their books, websites, organizations etc. But as there are millions of images, how will your work be notified among them.How do the buyers recognize you?
You know, this is the biggest problem that always bothers photographers to move forward, and many of them, I see, leave this profession after a certain period. But what I say, you need not to be worried about this, just concentrate on your quality works, because buyers know how to value a creative work. However, one more challenging part in this platform that I faced at the very beginning. Here, you are to invest a high amount of money at a time to buy professional camera, lances, light-box etc. But no worry, it’s not a big problem at all, as you can also use some common accessories to make your ideas alive. So as a photographer and marketer, my suggestion is to figure out a still focus on a subject and keep working on that, as once it will value you time and your works.Where can i start from ?
Although there are a lot of stock photography web site, my suggestions and simple reasons will be like that:- Best HD Wallpaper : This community gave up to %60 of their revenue to contributor.
Shutterstock : Shutter stock paid over $350 million to contributers and have customers from 150+ countries. - Photodune : Envato's top authors make over $20,000 per month selling digital products and stock to a thriving community of over 7 million users across eight marketplaces.
- Depositphotos : This guys are have over 50 million high-quality royalty-free stock images and sales amounts are good.
- 123RF : One of the most visited web site and have high sales amounts.
- Dreamstime : Photographers have the option to either escalate the file to level 5 pricing, or sell the rights of the image for an instant bonus.