Welcome to this third article giving you tips and tricks to making it with Stock Photography. To get you started on the right foot, this article will focus on choosing stock photography agencies.
One or many agencies?
Many new stock photographers often wonder if they should join just one online stock photography website, or many. Some sites actually offer an incentive to be exclusive with them. In other words, they'll offer you more money per download, more promotion of your pictures, and other benefits if you agree to sell your pictures to their site only. The problem with this, is that you lock yourself into working with just one company. And sometimes, you're not even allowed to sell your pictures on your own website if you have an exclusive agreement with a stock photography agency.
It can also be a problem when you're new, because you don't have enough high-quality pictures to make a steady livable income from just one site. My recommendation is to sell your photos through as many stock photography agencies as you can. This maximizes the exposure your pictures get, and increases the chances of the pictures selling more regularly. I've personally had one picture sell on multiple sites almost simultaneously. So you don't normally have to worry about each site having the same customers.
In fact, many stock photography sites have different customer bases. One for instance, seems to have primarily customers from the United States. Another sells mostly to European countries. While yet a third seems to sell mostly to web-based clients, and others may sell primarily to print-based clients. So you can maximize your earnings and profits from your stock photo portfolio simply by adding your pictures to as many stock photo sites as you can. Here is a list of my personal favorites:
The Agencies
Shutter stock - For some photographers, this site is the best earner for them. It's a subscription only offer, and photographers get paid a set amount each time one of their photos is downloaded. As you earn more money with SS, your payment per download increases. Shutter Stock pays photographer earnings once each month, if they're at or above the minimum payment amount. Payments are available via PayPal, Moneybookers, and Paper checks.
Dreamstime - This is an excellent photography site which is growing very fast. It offers customers the ability to pay per download, or buy a subscription. Photographers are paid varying amounts based on the type of download and how large the photo resolution is. Dreamstime allows you to request your earnings anytime they're at $100 or more. Payments are available via PayPal, and paper checks.
Fotolia - This site has primarily been a per download model only, and photographers were paid a percentage of the price customers paid for the download. Recently Fotolia has also added a subscription offer for high volume photo buyers. This site has a strong European buyer base. Fotolia allows photographers to request their earnings once they've reached $50 or more, and they too offer a variety of online and standard payment methods.
Big stock - Big stock seems to attract more web-based stock photo buyers, and they pay photographers a percentage of each sale made for their photos. Earnings vary based on the size of the photo that's downloaded, and payment can be requested anytime your earnings are at least $30 or higher.
IStock - IStock is one of the largest and most popular stock photo agencies online. They sell stock photos on a per download basis, and recently added a subscription option as well. They are the most difficult to submit photos to unfortunately, because they limit the number of submissions you can add each week, and they do not allow you to upload all of your submissions at once. So the submission process is a bit tedious, time consuming, and frustrating. IStock allows you to request payment once your balance is at least $100.
There are several other good stock photo agencies online, but these tend to be much slower earners for most photographers. 123RF, Lucky Oliver, and StockXPert are three of the most popular of those smaller agencies.
Each of these agencies have slight differences in the terms of service they offer customers, and the types of rights they'll make available for sale. Some allow you to opt into or out of certain types of rights and payment systems too. For example, some stock photographers do not like selling their photos through a subscription based model, because they earn less per download. And some of the agencies allow photographers to opt out of selling via that method. Other photographers feel that any sale is a good thing, and they've often learned that the subscription sales model works well because customers tend to download frequently, so they feel the volume of sales make up for the lower payouts.
What you choose to do with your own stock photography business is completely up to you of course. So be sure to read the terms and agreements at each agency, then make your own decision as to which ones you'd like to sell your own photos through. Enjoy the fun, and GOOD LUCK.
Posts
Wordless Wednesday: Sunset in Fairfax
4 hours ago
