Anyone Can Make Money With Stock Photography
You don’t have to be an expert photographer or graphic designer to start making money from your photos. In fact, most people who sell their photos online are not professionals and do this as a hobby.
Eventually, this hobby can be turned into a fully passive income business. Stock photography is a great way to make passive income by selling your photos online for others to buy and use.
How to Get Started In Stock Photography
The key steps to begin making money with stock photography are:
- Use your iPhone camera since most cell phone cameras take great pictures.
- Learn what good photos look like by researching stock photos already on the market.
- Join stock photography sites, create an account, and start uploading your pictures.
- Don’t get discouraged when your pictures are rejected. Learn the requirements of quality and work hard to achieve that skill level.
- Learn how to take even better pictures by learning lighting, photo structure, and how to make your images look better.
- Work your way up to taking and uploading 300 to 500 pictures a month.
- Scale your business by increasing the number of pictures each month on every site.
Your Cell Phone or Camera Is All You Need To Get Started
Most cell phones today have amazing cameras. These are actually much better than just about any camera that was made 10 years ago. You don’t need to buy a DSLR camera or any of those big fancy cameras.
The lighting controls, framing, focus, and just about every function of your cell phone camera will do the job to make you money in stock photography.
The only thing you need to do is learn your camera functions and how to take good looking pictures for stock photography.
Set Your Goals for Making Money With Stock Photography
The first step to getting started in stock photography is to decide your goals. Ask yourself if this is a side gig to make a little extra money or if it needs to replace your monthly income.
A great way to make a little extra money as a side gig is downloading stock photos to stock photography sites during your downtime in the office. Snap lots of pictures as you go about your daily routine or on a weekend excursion.
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Replacing your income takes a little more time and submitting a lot more photographs to different photography companies. You will be well on your way to success by consistently using these guidelines.
Making Money with Stock Photography Is A Learned Skill
A little homework, in the beginning, can alleviate some of your early-on photo failures. Three ways you can increase your artistic eye and perfect your skills are:
- Read photography books.
- Take online courses.
- Learn what people want to see and purchase.
There are many photography books on the market. Check out Photography Books For Beginners and 35 Best Photography Books In 2022, which is updated weekly.
Research photography types, such as abstract and architecture. Find popular genres, such as spiral light photography, high-speed photography, and water splash. The content is almost endless.
Online courses are also available. Check out Best Online Photography Courses For Beginners.
Many experts find these courses helpful in increasing their skill level and suggest enrolling if you struggle to get your photos accepted by photography companies.
Explore countless stock photography sites. See what their customers are buying.
Look for current trends and most popular niche options. They will be your targeted market, who will buy your photos.
Choose The Right Photography Companies For You
The third step to getting started in stock photography is researching and applying to online stock photography companies.
Explore and decide if you want to work with large companies or niche curators. Applying to multiple sites will provide more opportunities to see the compound effect at its best.
The more sites you upload to, the more money you can potentially make.
Photo stock photographers suggest looking at the royalty structures. These are payment methods that determine how much you are paid for each photo.
Every site is different. Some are membership sites; others only do credits. The best options are partnerships that pay a percentage of the sales price.
Large Stock Photography Companies
Examples of large stock photography companies are Shutterstock and iStock. Their variety of subjects is as large as their consumer base. The possibilities are endless!
The benefit of working with these companies is learning from their constructive criticism when your photos are rejected.
Although the barrier to entry has lowered, these sites may have some resistance and pay lower rates than niche curators.
Remember, look at royalty structures and see if you like the required content. Taking pictures of content you find appealing can make the process fun too.
Niche Curators
An example of niche creators is Lightstock. They focus on a particular topic, such as religion, nature, or travel.
They pay higher than larger stock photography companies but have smaller targeted audiences. Niche photography is also a great avenue to home in your skills for a particular type of photography medium or method.
The benefit of working with niche companies is their royalty structure. They often work in partnerships, offering sale percentage royalties instead of flat rates or credits.
You may find less resistance to entry into niche stock companies, especially if you have precisely what they’re looking for. If not, they provide feedback on your photos too.
Your Own Vs. A Company Website
You may think it is wise to start your own website since you submit hundreds of pictures monthly. The experts who have established photo stock businesses say no.
There is so much work that goes into creating and running a website. It is more beneficial to focus on the quality of your photos.
Let the content curators and website creators run their websites. Instead, create a great partnership by focusing on what you are good at and letting them focus on what they are good at doing.
Scale Your Stock Photography Business To The Next Level
Next, start submitting 300 to 500 quality pictures per month. The goal is to take a lot of pictures, listen to feedback about your photos, and improve your quality over time.
Don’t be afraid of exploring options with your photographs. Try different methods, like angles and lighting. The key is learning as you go and improving with each camera click.
Quality matters, but in the beginning, don’t spend thousands of dollars on equipment. Start by purchasing prime lenses when you can. With the right lenses, your photos will instantly improve.
Canon, Nikon, and Sony offer some of the best prime lenses for beginners. Other lenses to consider are high-quality wide-angle, telephoto, macro, and mid-range zoom lenses.
Each lens has benefits, but the 35 mm or 50mm fixed focal length prime lens produces the sharpest images possible.
Skip buying basic or mid-level quality lenses because buying cheaper quality wears out or doesn’t work as well as it should; then, you have to buy the same thing over again.
Do it right the first time, and you don’t have to repeat it, especially when making purchases. Spending more money upfront and getting better quality saves you money in the long run.
You can avoid some early-on photo failures by buying quality equipment the first time. You also want to purchase quality equipment because the curator can see all the data stored on the images.
There’s nothing more expensive than cheap. -Dustin Heiner
What To Expect In The First Year
Begin by breaking your large goals into small chunks. Hitting small goals along the way gives us the encouragement we need to keep motivated.
We all need the motivation to stick to something when we can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. The process begins small but can grow steadily over time due to the compound effect.
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Keep in mind that you are initially planting seeds and will need to be patient to see the reward harvest. Being consistent over time is key to a successful start in stock photography.
Initially, it may seem slow going, but by the end of the first year, you could see enough monthly income to pay your mortgage.
The First Month: Expect to fail hard.
Experts say not to expect success this month. This month is all about learning your craft.
Take to heart the feedback on why your photograph was denied, then try to do better on the next one.
Photography businesses can start slowly, earning less than a dollar bill in the first month.
Still, with output consistency and quality equipment, you will eventually pay your bills with stock photo royalties.
The Second Month: Start getting photos accepted.
You have listened to constructive feedback, and you’re improving your skills.
Now consistently send in photos every day. You need to send 300-500 photos this month and increase the number of photography and photo stock companies you use.
You should start to see some consistent growth.
The Third Month: Work toward your smallest payment.
This month you are getting into the flow of things. You understand how the process of submitting your photographs works. You see what creators are looking for to buy and sell to consumers.
Stay consistent in your processes. Keep sending 300-500 photos every month. You are reaching income stability.
Now is the time to reach that small goal of earning enough to start paying your lowest bill and save up to pay two payments next month.
The Fourth Month and Beyond: See the compound effect working.
Photography experts can almost guarantee you will have enough monthly income to pay your monthly mortgage payment if you will be consistent, month in and month out, for a year.
Remember to set small encouraging goals that are attainable month after month. Increase your goals as your wealth increases. You should continue to see the compound effect working.
Stock Photography Passive Income Still Needs Attention
Like most businesses, stock photography needs to be worked on often. Passive income from stock photos still needs attention.
Working for yourself is different than being employed by someone else. It is not working by the hour, but it’s working, nonetheless.
You may be receiving passive income royalties from past submitted pictures, but a stock photography business requires selling relevant images, which changes often.
You can shoot photos on your iPhone and upload them to a site in no time, but the shot has to be relevant, usable, and sellable.
Failure Is Part of The Process In Making Money With Stock Photos
Failures are common when growing a new business.
Creating great photography is no different. Remembering the small stories from each failure throughout life helps us say, “I will not do that again,” and learn from the experience. We all hate failure, but failure is our best teacher.
Remembering, “A smart person learns from his mistakes, but a truly wise person learns from the mistakes of others.” – Ken Schramm, is a great reminder to keep trying to succeed when we face adversity.
Where to Find Justin Skinner
You can find Justin on his Professional Failure website, Instagram, or on Twitter at @justincskinner.
Justin has written a book, Professional Failure: Using The Gift Of Failures To Better Yourself and Those Around You.
And last but not least, he has a podcast by no other name than The Professional Failure Podcast.