Selling your photography or illustrations.

Making money from your photography and illustrations isn't as difficult as it used to be. Thanks to new types of online businesses, it has become much more fun and lucrative. This lens is dedicated to providing you with two ways for you to earn some money via these new online businesses.

One company that helps you earn money from your photos or illustrations is called Zazzle. Zazzle creates stamps, posters, postcards, calendars; etc with the photographs or illustrations that you provide them with.

You receive a ten percent commission if anyone buys your merchandise. Your commission can be as high as seventeen percent if you refer the buyer. I should also mention that Zazzle is free to use. As for the licensing, your photos and illustrations will be under a non-exclusive license. This means that you are free to sell your photos and illustrations on other websites.

One of Zazzle's major competitors is a company called CafePress, and they pretty much do the same thing as Zazzle. Unfortunately, Cafepress no longer offers free hosting of your images. Instead, you have to pay a fee for them to host your images; you also have to pay them a substantial percentage of your sales.

Another way to earn money from your photos or illustrations is through microstock agencies. There are a large number of companies that deal with this. I am currently using iStockphoto, BigStockPhoto, Featurepics, Stockxpert, Fotolia, and 123RF.

You can also submit images or video footage to an agency called Shutterstock. If you want to submit photos or illustrations to Shutterstock then
click here. If you want to buy images at Shutterstock then you should
click here. And finally, if you want to submit video footage to Shutterstock then please click here.

Out of all of these agencies, iStockphoto has delivered the most sales. Unfortunately iStockphoto, Dreamstime, Stockxpert, and Shutterstock are fairly picky about what they select. So if you're rejected by these four agencies you can try one of the smaller agencies like BigStockPhoto, 123RF, or Fotolia.

Don't give up on iStockphoto, Shutterstock, Stockxpert, and Dreamstime. Just keep trying and you will get there. You may also want to purchase a light tent for isolated images. Isolated images are photos of an object such as a cookie that are on a solid background color. After I purchased a light tent iStockphoto, Shutterstock, Stockxpert, and Dreamstime all started selecting more of my images. It's worth it.

Now for a review of Fotolia. Fotolia allows you to upload your images to them for evaluation. After about three days or so (sometimes a lot less), Fotolia will either reject or accept your photos or illustrations. If your photos or illustrations are accepted, you will be paid whenever someone downloads one of your images.

If you give Fotolia an exclusive license to the image then you are paid more. A non-exclusive license will earn you less. Fotolia, along with all of the other microstock agencies I have referenced above, allows you to make money by generating referrals for them through text or image links.

Don't expect to get rich quick from these businesses. I imagine that there are some people who do quite well using these businesses, but keep things in perspective. Don't be discouraged if your images don't sell right away. Just keep at it, and you will succeed. At the very least you will have some extra side money.