How to make money with Stock Photography

What Is Stock Photography?

The wikipedia entry for Stock photography states:

          Stock photography is the supply of photographs licensed for specific uses. It is used to fulfill the needs of creative assignments instead of hiring a photographer. Today, stock images can be presented in search able online databases. They can be purchased and delivered online, by using stock photography instead of hiring a photographer to perform on location shooting, customers can save valuable time and stay on budget..

Here is how to make money with royalty stock photography.

 

•  First step is to gather your photographs to create a portfolio of impressive photos. The photos should have a commercial value which illustrates a concept or an idea that can be useful to advertisements. Most stock photography agencies would require you to submit samples of your photographs for qualification before they accept you as a photographer. It does not require you to be an expert or professional photographer to make money but you should at least know how to take decent shots and familiar with post-photography tools.

• Find a royalty stock photography site that is willing to accept your photographs. Now, there are many micro stock sites available online but not all of them are good so you have to choose wisely. Most sites do not require exclusive photos so you may want to upload your photographs to several sites and see how it goes. Some of the recommended sites are Dreams Time, Fotolia, Bigstockphoto, Shutter Stock, 123rf.com, iStockphoto, and Photostockplus. Not all sites offer the same price per download for every photo so it's up to you to choose which ones you prefer to use to sell your photos.
  

•  Index your photographs after uploading to stock photography with good keywords to help potential customers find your photos. Keep in mind that your photographs no matter how nice are useless if nobody can find it through online search. You have to understand that you are competing with hundreds of photos so having a good keyword will give you maximum downloads.

Some stock photo sites are quite picky about who they accept as contributors, and about the standards of the photos that they accept. Even once you are accepted as a contributor and are starting to build up a portfolio of images, making good sales may not happen quickly, or at all. Having said this, it is possible to make a worthwhile income though.

Almost 1.5 Billion people online imagine if you could get a single dollar off every one ;)

With so many people online line these days the internet has become a vast ocean of information and media, with nearly 1.5 billion people connected to the web its like having  1.5 billion people in your very own store. The trouble is the ocean is so big not every one can find what they want in your store  its up to you to connect the dots and by way of that I mean weather you are selling some thing or advertising or writing a blog you need to make it stand out. You need to make it popular, you need to market it.
   Money, we need it, we want it, we work all our lives to have it, unfortunately there is no easy way to get it, I mean we all wish money grew on trees, here is a few ways you can make some of your own money at home and online.

 1. Offer your professional expertise in an online   marketplace.These days, you can do more than just sell your old books via Amazon and your old Coach handbags via eBay—now you can sell your professional capabilities in a marketplace. No longer are you limited to looking for a permanent or contract job on Web 1.0 style job sites like Monster or CareerBuilder. The new breed of freelancing and project-oriented sites let companies needing help describe their projects. Then freelancers and small businesses offer bids or ideas or proposals from which those buyers can choose.
Elance covers everything from programming and writing to consulting and design, while RentACoder focuses on software, natch. If you’re a graphic designer, check out options like Design Outpost or LogoWorks–you don’t have to find the customers, they’ll come to you. Wannabe industry analysts might sign up for TechDirt’s Insight Community, a marketplace for ideas about technology marketing.

2. Sell photos on stock photography sites. If people regularly oooo and aaaaah over your Flickr pics, maybe you’re destined for photographic greatness or maybe just for a few extra dollars. It’s easier than ever to get your photos out in front of the public, which of course means a tremendous amount of competition, but also means it might be an convenient way for you to build up a secondary income stream. Where can you upload and market your photos? Try Fotolia, Dreamstime, Shutterstock, and Big Stock Photo.

3. Blog for pay. Despite the explosion of blogs, it’s hard to find good writers who can turn around a solidly-written post on an interesting topic quickly. GigaOM is always looking for bloggers with great content ideas and solid writing skills. How do you get noticed? Comment and link to blogging network sites. Write blog posts that are polished and not overly personal (although showing some personality is a plus).

4. Or start your own blog network. If you like the business side of things–selling advertising, hiring and managing employees, attracting investors–and have the stomach to go up against the likes of Weblogs, Inc., GigaOmniMedia, b5media, maybe you should make an entire business out of blogs. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you’ll get a lot of time to write yourself though.

5. Provide service and support for open source software. Just because the software is free doesn’t mean you can’t make money on it–just ask Red Hat, a well-known distributor of Linux that sports a market cap of more than four billion dollars. As a solo web worker, you might not want to jump in and compete with big companies offering Linux support, but how about offering support for web content management systems like WordPress or Drupal? After getting comfortable with your own installation, you can pretty easily jump into helping other people set them up and configure them.

6. Online life coaching. Who has time to go meet a personal coach at an office? And don’t the new generation of web workers need to be met by their coaches in the same way that they work: via email, IM, and VoIP? You could, of course, go through some life coaching certification program, but on the web, reputation is more important than credentials. I bet Tony Robbins isn’t certified as a life coach–and no one can argue with his success. For an example of someone building up their profile and business online as a coach, check out Pamela Slim of Ganas Consulting and the Escape from Cubicle Nation blog.

7. Virtually assist other web workers. Freelancers and small businesses desperately need help running their businesses, but they’re not about to hire a secretary to come sit in the family room and answer phone calls. As a virtual assistant, you might do anything from making travel reservations to handling expense reimbursements to paying bills to arranging for a dog sitter. And you do it all from your own home office, interacting with your clients online and by phone. You can make $20 and up an hour doing this sort of work, depending on your expertise.

8. Build services atop Amazon Web Services. Elastic computing on AWS is so cool… and so incredibly primitive right now. Did you know that you can’t even count on your virtual hard drive on EC2 to store your data permanently? That’s why people are making money right now by offering services on top of AWS. Make it easier for people to use Amazon’s scalability web infrastructure like Enomaly has with elasticlive, a scalable web hosting platform built on AWS.

9. Write reviews for pay or perks. If you blog for any length of time on a particular topic–parenting, mobile phones, or PCs, for example–you will likely be approached to do book or product reviews. You can get free stuff this way, but are you selling your soul? Is there any such thing as a free laptop? These are decisions you’ll have to make for yourself, because no one agrees upon what ethical rules apply to bloggers. Even less do people agree on services like PayPerPost that pay you to write reviews on your blog. Check out disclosure rules closely and see whether such a gig would meet your own personal standards or not.

10. Become a virtual gold farmer. A half million Chinese now earn income by acquiring and selling World of Warcraft gold to gamers in other countries. If you’re not a young person living in China, this probably isn’t a viable option for you. But what’s intriguing about it is the opportunity to make real money working in a virtual economy. People are making real-world money in Second Life too.

For more great ways to to manage finances and generate an income why dont you check out some of these titles.