Maggie Evans 
With the advent of gadgets equipped with quality cameras, crowds of photographers rushed to sell images online. How do you sell, and can you make money from large format photography for sale?
Nevertheless, photography and the sale of exclusive images is a business that can be done by anyone who has artistic taste, time, desire, and skills with specialized software.
Selling photos is one of the ways to make money online. Photographers from all over the world take amazing photos and sell them on specialized online platforms, where you can get cash for a single image.
What kind of photos is in demand?
The best photos for sale are those that have commercial value. The picture should depict the product in use, people in action, or emotions. The presence of the plot is mandatory. Photos of animals, architecture, landscapes are in much less demand.
To make a viral photo, you need to present the context of its use. It is an illustration for an article on a blog or a picture of a product for a store. Agree that an image of a body of water with a charming landscape does not always fit the context of the publication. What can’t be said, for example, about a group of people chatting at a table?
Since earnings depend on the number of photos sold, you must work on their subject matter and quality. You can take great images on a modern smartphone and a professional camera.
Basic secrets of success
To sell photos on memorable exchanges profitable, it is necessary to follow the following recommendations:
- The photographer must watch the market trends and try to match them. Only in this case will his photos be successful and will bring income – the most popular topics now: medicine, family, love, innovative technology, and so on. In the center of the plot should be the primary objects symbolizing a particular theme. This is especially true if the photo is taken against a white background or a beautiful landscape. The originality of the photo is one of the critical secrets of success.
- You should constantly improve your skills and update your technique. There are many opportunities for this: courses that can be held both offline and online. Quite a few tutorial videos can be found on the youtube platform, even for free.
- Editing photos before uploading is very important. The finished photos should be focused, taken in good light, not too dark but not too bright either, without noise, with correct color reproduction. There are many filters already applied to the photo. This is one of the fast and successful photos. To get the most successful shots is recommended to use a digital camera.
Top 5 photo stocks
Where can you sell your photos on the Internet? There are specialized exchanges/sites for this purpose – photo stocks. Some popular and reliable photo stocks:
- Shutterstock – a service that provides photographers with a stable income from photo sales. The authors get 20-30% of photos sold. To become a full-fledged seller on the site, you need to pass the exam – to download the top 10 images. If seven of them pass moderation, you are in.
- Depositphotos is a service that, unlike the previous one, has low requirements for image quality. Authors get 44-60% of the cost per download, which costs from $0.1. The site has a Ukrainian interface, so it is easy for our countrymen to deal with it. Depositphotos is recommended for beginners to get acquainted with microstock operations.
- iStock is a resource with a strict selection of authors, so it is difficult to get into it. However, iStock offers significant royalties – 20-40% for the cost per image from 1 to 40 dollars. To upload your work on the site, you need to pass a theoretical and practical exam with a photo sent for moderation.
- Adobe Stock is the successor to Adobe’s well-known Fotolia service. Deductions are 20-63%. In addition, this photo stock is a kind of “club of interest,” where you can meet other photo enthusiasts, professional photographers and find new customers.
- Getty Images is a photo agency where they sell exclusive, high-quality photos with a license. Getting into the ranks of authors is very difficult. But the reward of 20-30% of one photo worth $300-500 is very motivating to do your best for the goal.
How to understand all the intricacies and sell photos?
Thanks to the availability of powerful digital photo equipment, obtaining high-quality images is no longer the privilege of specialists. If you love photography and think you are good at it, you have a good chance of turning your hobby into a source of income.
To make money, you will have to have patience and a professional camera. If you consistently produce quality images, you can turn your delight into a source of income. The most successful, popular images sell multiple times.
If you realize that you do not have the skills and abilities of a professional photographer, this way of earning money will not suit you. You will only lose time.
