Making Money from Photography

I was recently on a trip to Alaska, and I got some great shots of eagles and other things. My friend told me, “Wow, that shot should be in National Geographic”. Well, it definitely isn’t that good, but I started looking at ways that could make some money (since you know by now that I’m always looking for ways to get some extra cash).

 

Shutterstock

I discovered this website called Shutterstock that allows you to sell your images, and still retain ownership of them. What you do is upload your image to the site, and once it is approved for use, individuals and companies can see it. If they like your image, they pay Shutterstock, and you receive a $0.25 commission for each image sold. While $0.25 isn’t much, it can add up, and it wasn’t like you were making money on those pictures to begin with. The company has also starting doing the same for video clips, for those who make movies.

The company can pay you your earnings through PayPal, or by writing you a check. Just think, if you image is bought 100 times, you could have an extra $25 in your pocket.

 

Getting Started

To help individuals starting out, they also have a cool feature on their site that allows you to see what the most popular image topics are about. For example, the top five searches in the past month are:

1.”Fake”

2. “Logo”

3. “Medical”

4. “Wedding”

5. “Heart”

By using these tools, you can submit photos that are tailored to the audience, and could potentially increase your earnings.

A great way to start is to look through your existing digital photos and see if there are any that match the top search criteria.  Then, you can clean up the photo in Photoshop, and submit them to Shutterstock.  If you’re image is approved, you can start making some money with it!

Hope this helps you dreams of making easy money!

 

Readers, have you ever used a photo service like Shutterstock?