Selling your photography or illustrations.

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Earning Cash from Your Photos 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 minimum commission if anyone buys your merchandise, and you can raise your commission to whatever you like. The higher the price, the greater the expectations from the buyer. For most people, twenty-five to thirty-five percent seems like a good number. But ultimately, the choice is yours. Zazzle makes their money exclusively from the specified commission that you selected for your images. As for the licensing, your photos and illustrations will be sold 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 basically 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 such as: iStockphoto, BigStockPhoto, Featurepics, and 123RF.

Out of all of these agencies, iStockphoto usually delivers the most sales. Unfortunately iStockphoto, Dreamstime, 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 CanStockPhoto.

Don't give up on iStockphoto, Shutterstock, 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 on a solid background color. Purchasing a light tent may help to improve your sales.

Keep your expectations in check when you start selling your images; there is a lot of competition to deal with. Some people may become quite wealthy from these agencies, but not everyone will. Do not be discouraged if your images fail to sell right away. Just keep at it, and you will succeed. At the very least you will have some extra side money.

Lesser Known Microstock Agencies

Don't expect to have as many sales as you would with stock agencies like iStockphoto or Shutterstock. However, these smaller stock agencies are less picky about their images. So if you're just starting out in stock photography, you may want to give these companies a try. Especially if the larger stock agencies reject your images.
Stock Photography Images at Can Stock Photo
Affordable Royalty Free Stock Photography. Downloads for just $1.00, with thousands of images added weekly. Subscriptions available for just $35.95.
BigStockPhoto - Stock Image and Photo Subscription
BigStockPhoto - Stock Image and Photo Subscription
123 Royalty Free - Stock Image and Photo Subscription
123 Royalty Free - Stock Image and Photo Subscription
Featurepics
Another site for high quality royalty free stock photos or illustrations is called Featurepics. Featurepics is a little different however. This company allows the seller to set their own price for each image. Set the image price at ten dollars or just one; the choice is yours.

Blogs About Selling Your Images

Microstock's stock is rising: $265 million for Shutterstock, Fotolia
16, 2012, 7:45am No Comments Six years after Getty bought iStockPhoto for $50 million, it looks like the microstock photography sector, in which pro-amateur photographers sell their pictures on commission through online marketplaces, ...
Analyst Alerts: RF Micro Devices, PMFG, Splunk, Joy Global
By Derek Hoffman RF Micro Devices Inc. (NASDAQ:RFMD): After RF Micro's stock tumbled 33% following the results of its March quarter, Cantor expects the company to generate good growth and higher margins during the rest of its fiscal year.
Ervin Scores Second MOM Win at Wall
by Tom Ervin WALL TOWNSHIP, NJ -- Sunday the Modified Outlaw Micro Stocks returned to Wall Stadium with heat race winner John Kazmierski leading the field to the green, edging out the previous race winner Tom Ervin as the field entered turn one.
Digital Photography: Global Markets
Even fewer would have predicted the rise of the microstock photography market and the proliferation and growth in Internet photo sharing sites. While the impact on the photo processing market could have been predicted, most were surprised by how ...

Helpful Book Topics

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Microstock Forums

Learn about microstock photography, equipment, the future of microstock, macrostock; etc. And the people are friendly too.
Microstock Group - A meeting place for microstock photographers
Microstock Group - A meeting place for microstock photographers.
Talkmicro
The Original Independent Microstock Forums.

Cameras and Accessories

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Jrtmedia Print Store

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What Microstock Agencies Want and Don't Need

What Agencies Want:

1.) Isolated object (s) over a solid color.
2.) Business imagery.
3.) People (with a model release form).
4.) Illustrations.
5.) Animation or videos.
6.) Music.

What The Agencies Don't Need:

1.) Flower pictures.
2.) Photos of your pets.
3.) Images taken with a one mega-pixel camera.
4.) Pictures taken with poor lighting.
5.) Photos of people without model releases.

What is a model release form, you ask? A model release form is basically a piece of paper that a model signs, which then gives you permission to make money from the photo. Without a model release form, no microstock agency will take your photo. And if you do manage to somehow have the image accepted without a model release form then you can be sued by the people in the photo. So be careful.

And as for what microstock agencies want and don't want, keep in mind that there are always allowances. When an agency says they don't want pictures of flowers, they're referring to normal flowers. If you find some type of bizarre flower in Tanzania or somewhere, then it may be accepted. A rose isolated on a white background might be accepted as well. Basically, the picture of the flower has to be both perfect and unique. Good luck.

Purchase Lighting Equipment

Light tents create the perfect amount of light for your photos, and they're especially useful for creating pure white backgrounds.
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Build Your Own Light Tent

If you want to save some money, you can build your own light tent. You will, however, need to purchase some supplies to make your light tent. Here is a list of websites that discuss what you will need to construct your light tent.
Tutorial: Building Your Own Cheap Light Tent - EyeFetch.com
EyeFetch.com: Tutorial for building a cheap home-made light tent for photography.
Light Box / Light Tent Photo Gallery by Bill Huber at pbase.com
Pbase.com: Bill Huber's website on how to build a light tent.
Cheap 1$ Light tent / Light box : SoDoItYourself.com
Sodoityourself.com: Ever wanted to do product shots but don't have the bucks to spend on a proper light tent? Why not build one yourself.

My Take on The Xsi

Canon Xsi Review
Photography enthusiasts are always looking for a great deal when it comes to digital single-lens reflex cameras. And the new Canon Xsi should impress just about everyone. Even the professionals may be surprised at how powerful this so-called "entry-level camera" really is.

The Canon 5D Mark II

Canon EOS 5D Mark II 21.1MP Full Frame CMOS Digital SLR Camera (Body Only)

Amazon Price: $2,198.00 (as of 06/02/2012)Buy Now

While the Canon 5d Mark II is much more expensive than lower end dslrs, the improvement in optics more than makes up for the hefty price tag. With a larger sensor size, more megapixels, improved iso, video, and better weather proofing this camera is simply a must. Especially if you're a die-hard Canon user.

Software for Illustrations and Photography

Adobe Photoshop CS3

Adobe Photoshop CS3

Adobe PhotoShop CS3 for Windows. Does NOT include more...0 points

Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0

Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0

Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 software combines pow more...0 points

Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2

Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2

New Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 is the ideal cho more...0 points

Adobe Illustrator CS3

Adobe Illustrator CS3

Illustrator CS30 points

Newer is not Always Better

Adobe Illustrator 9.0 [Old Version]

Amazon Price: $119.97 (as of 06/02/2012)Buy Now

You might think that the newest version of Illustrator is the best version. However, in the case of microstock illustrations, you would be mistaken. Almost all of the microstock agencies require you to make your eps or ai files compatible with Illustrator 8.

So keep this in mind if you buy Illustrator. Personally, I bought Illustrator 9 for my vector images. It's all you really need, and it can be upgraded to Illustrator CS2. So remember newer is not always better. It's also a lot cheaper.

Keywords

If you want people to find your images online, then you are going to have to learn about keywording. Basically, a keyword is a description of the image you are attempting to sell. So if you have a green apple you could use keywords like apple, green, fruit, healthy; etc.

It's important that you use as many quality keywords as possible. But don't spam your keywords. In other words, make sure each keyword is relevant to the image. If you spam your keywords, then you may be banned. More than likely though, your image will simply be difficult to find. I usually try to use between fifteen and thirty keywords, which is a fairly good number. Keywords don't guarantee a sale, but they may help. Use them wisely.

Interesting Fact

Source.
The pioneer of microstock photography was Bruce Livingstone when he created iStockPhoto, originally a free stock photo site that quickly became an industry phenomenon.
An iStockphoto Super Star.
This person has sold over three hundred thousand images on iStockphoto alone. It's a very impressive achievement, and it proves that you can make a living at microstock photography. But it will require a lot of hard work. As for the money, in four years this woman has made at least seventy five thousand dollars.

That's at twenty five cents each. However, more than likely she has sold many images for much more than that. So this individual has probably made more than a hundred thousand dollars in a span of four years with over eight thousand photos.

Other Work I've Done

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Feel Free to Leave Feedback

  • wayfarer May 25, 2009 @ 10:18 am | delete
    Very informative lens from one who knows the biz. The software info and the wants/don't want info is especially helpful for a beginner. Well done!
  • May 19, 2009 @ 5:41 pm | delete
    nice lens
  • pchanger May 16, 2009 @ 10:03 am | delete
    Thanks for the insight
  • Magins May 16, 2009 @ 7:44 am | delete
    thanks for this lens, Very helpful
  • morris27 May 16, 2009 @ 2:04 am | delete
    Very Nice Lens..., 5*, Morris
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Jrtmedia

I'm a freelancer who sells photography and illustrations, writes articles; etc. With time, who knows what else I'll do. Business Website: Microstock... more »

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