Microstock

The Easiest Way To Make Money

Upload your digital stock photos

to a micropayment stock agency,

and get money each month.

Perfect for casual stock sales.

By Andrew Hudson

The fastest way to start earning money is with microstock. Just sign up for a free account and upload some photos -- that's it. Your work is immediately available for licensing worldwide and money should come rolling in.

	Shooting stock since 1992, Ron Chapple has a client list that includes AT&T, Visa, United Airlines and Kodak. Ron submits his photos to five microstock agencies: Dreamstime, Fotolia, LuckyOliver, Shutterstock and StockXpert. Read more here.

Microstock

Microstock is the low-cost segment of stock photography. Whereas the major, traditional stock agencies charge clients high prices for "rights-managed" images, microstock agencies charge only a few dollars for "royalty-free" images. More importantly to us, whereas the major agencies accept work from only select photographers, microstock agencies actively seek images from anyone, even "amateurs" and hobbyists.

Some microstock sites are "by subscription" (the client pays once a month and can download many photos), but that doesn't affect us as the agency still pays photographers by the download.

iStockPhoto was the first microstock agency, started all the way back in 2000 by Bruce Livingstone. He sold the site for $50 million. See, microstock does pay.

A great advantage of most microstock agencies is that they're "non-exclusive." That means they don't have a lock on your photos -- you are free to submit the same shots to other agencies and clients. Since the sign-up is free, you can upload your images to a bunch of microstock sites and learn which ones pay best for you.

123RF

Big Stock Photo

Dreamstime

Fotolia

GalaStock

ImageVortex

iStockPhoto (Getty)

LuckyOliver

Shutterstock

StockXpert (Jupiter)

How To Sign Up

Look for a link such as "sell images" or "photographers." There'll be a contract with policies and terms, and you may have to submit photos for review, to see if your work is of high enough quality. Once approved, you have to "tag" your images with keywords (for searching) and upload them for inspection. Some sites allow you to have your own page, so you can refer friends and clients direct to your photos.

How Much Does Microstock Pay?

One source quotes an average of about $10 per photo per year. That's not much, but if you have 100 or 1,000 pictures ($1,000 or $10,000), that's useful money. The key is volume: submit many photos and hope they each get licensed many times.

It's true, microstock doesn't pay a lot. The term "micropayment" is used both as a description and a criticism. But it doesn't take much cash to feel rich. As Dickens observed: "Annual income, twenty pounds; annual expenditure, nineteen pounds; result, happiness."

But I Want More!

Perhaps you want to set the sales price yourself, and remove the competition by having a stock site just to yourself. In that case, you probably want a "photo storefront."

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