How to Make Passive Income With Stock Photography
Making passive income through your photography skills is a satisfying experience. Not only is it fun to take the pictures, getting paid for doing so makes it particularly enjoyable. Clients purchase stock photography for a variety of reasons. Restaurants, for example, often want unique pictures to create a certain atmosphere.
Items Needed:
- Quality digital camera
- Unique location
- Photoshop software
- Decide what type of stock you are interested in shooting. You might search a few stock agency sites to see what others are doing. However, you should strive to shoot something different from everyone else. Unexpected beauty can be found in shooting subjects that others might ignore such as old, rundown houses or farm equipment. The idea is to make it unique, interesting and salable.
- Most stock agencies allow you to post your image on multiple sites. To do so, you must take care not to post it as an "exclusive image" for a specific agency. If you do list it as an "exclusive image" for one site, you will be paid more, but cannot list it elsewhere. Posting on multiple sites will get you more exposure and downloads. A couple of good sites are shutterstock.com and bigstockphoto.com
- Set up an account with a few stock agencies, and print out their guidelines. Use a highlighting marker to focus on essential requirements, such as what format they prefer and the maximum size they will allow uploading.
- Shoot many photos so you can later choose the angle or perspective that best portrays a particular scene. If you are shooting an old mill, for example, shoot from multiple angles, high and low, near and far, to obtain the best photograph. Avoid cluttered backgrounds that draw attention away from the primary image.
- Download the images from your camera to your computer. Go through the group and select a handful of the best shots.
- Photoshop your images lightly, removing any obvious flaws, before uploading them to the locations of choice.
- Save the photos in the format (.jpg or .tiff), required by the stock agency. Upload the image to the agency. If the agency of your choice allows it, then upload them to several sites.
- Start a blog about your stock photography to help advertise the work. List your blog with Google so the search engines will pick it up.
- Check the site every couple of weeks to see whether any photos have been purchased. Do not get discouraged if the work does not sell right away. The more images you can upload, the better your chances for income. Set a goal and stick to it. Try to upload at least six images every week to maximize your exposure.
- Do not watermark your stock photography because the locations photographed are trademarked images. If you put your logo on the image, owners of the property could file a lawsuit against you. You will not be sued if you do not place your trademark on the image.