Earn Money Online With Stock Photo

Images

Introduction

Anyone can earn money online with photographs and stock photo images especially as digital cameras make taking and uploading pictures and images so simple. There is a huge demand for quality stock photos and images at affordable prices and the explosion of online bloggers has only increased the need for this further. Your pictures could end up in the written press or on blogs, business websites or e-zines (online magazines).

Whether you are a seasoned professional photographer or just enjoy taking photographs and earning a second income from your passion, then the internet offers some great ways to earn money online from your creations.

Stock Photo Image Sites

Sites like Free Range Stock and A4 Stock Photos offer a huge range of photographs and stock photo images for electronic or print purposes. These are referred to as stock photo images because of the volume of images available and because the same picture is usually made available to many different paying clients, which is good because it increases your revenue earning possibilities. Members can view the extensive database and download suitable stock photo images for a small fee. In essence members get quality stock photos and images at affordable prices. The stock photo image site then keeps a portion of the fee but pays the person who owns the image rights, namely you the photographer, a royalty fee. This can range from anywhere between 50 to 80%. This may not seem a huge amount but stock photo image sites receive many thousands of visitors each day and have an established mailing list of clients and they can also offer you a quick way to sell your photographs and stock photo images to customers, with minimum hassle. What is also important is that many of these sites will have built up a loyal customer base over many years and can offer you quick access to members who are ready to purchase your stock photo images.

Stock photo Image sites usually prefer images that are creative or unusual, so it is worth planning your shots rather than just snapping anything. Our advice is to browse the site for stock photo images yourself and get a feel for the types of images that are popular and use this information to influence the type of photographs that you create.

Using a search trends tool, which is a popular piece of software that provides a breakdown of the types of searches that are conducted each day, the following stock photo images regularly receive a steady flow of searches each and every day;

  • Fashion Stock Images currently receives around 20 searches in Google each day.
  • Stock Images Handicapped currently receives around 15 searches in Google each day.
  • Conceptual Stock Images currently receives around 14 searches in Google each day.
  • Stock Photos of pet images receives around 8 searches in Google each day.

It is important to know your market before you start being creative and clearly there is a demand for these types of stock photo images and producing images around these search terms is likely to ensure that you develop a good stream of income because your stock photo images are likely to be more regularly viewed. Anything over 5 searches a day is good.

Image sharing sites

If you feel that your images or photographs are not quite suitable for professional purposes then a fast and simple way to earn money from your passion is to upload them onto social networking sites that specialise in image or video sharing. These differ from stock photo image sites because they offer you a share in the advertising earned from adverts which are placed next to your images rather than a fee for members who download them.

There are hundreds of sites like these who are desperate for you to share your images and photographs as it helps their sites to grow. It usually takes a few minutes to register an account and you get to maintain the image rights to any pictures you upload. The image sharing site earns advertising revenue from relevant advertising displayed alongside your images and pays you a percentage of that revenue which usually ranges from between 50-90%. Sites like Flixya actually pay you 100%!

There are no restrictions about uploading your images to multiple image sharing sites and targeting 10-15 of these sites with 100+ images per site can really start to help you generate a lucrative second income.

For more information read our tutorial and guide to revenue sharing sites, to find out how they work and how much you can earn through this approach. Read our tutorial Earn Money Online With Revenue Sharing Sites

Self Promotion

Perhaps the most lucrative way to earn money online with your photographs and images is to set up your own website or blog dedicated to your work, in essence an online portfolio of your stock photo images. There are millions of people looking for quality stock photos and images at affordable prices, and these include bloggers looking to spice up their individual blog posts, website owners, magazines or e-zines - their online equivalent, as well as businesses.

Many web hosting companies now offer free standardised website templates so you can have your own site up and running in a matter of minutes. This option is more time consuming as you need to invest time and effort into writing content for your site as well as promoting your stock photo images. However with 12-18 months of hard work you may find that you can earn more money online through this method than stock photo image sites or image sharing sites, as you have more control over how much you charge and you get to keep all the revenue you generate. To find out how to create and promote you own blog or website read our tutorial Earn Money Online From Blogging

Check out some of our other user friendy tutorials and guides to help you earn money online with integrity;