Stock Photo Agencies: Make Money From Your Photos
Last updated on 01/18/2013
Have great pictures laying around? You can make a few dollars from your photos
By posting your photos with a stock agency. We've rounded up a few of the best -- and best-paying -- below. By Emily Raymond
Want to make money off those vacation photos? Put your photos up in a stock agency, where images are showcased and sold to web sites, magazines, and other publications. As long as you don’t mind your vacation photos appearing in advertisements for prescription drugs or on cereal boxes, selling photos to a stock agency is a great way to make a few extra bucks.
Don’t quit your day job yet: Most agencies pay photographers every time one of their images is downloaded and some even offer additional royalties, but unless your work is highly popular, you’ll have to keep commuting to your cubicle in the mornings.
Stock agencies want a wide variety of images – people, places, art, animals, landscapes, action – to cater to a variety of clients. The chances are good that you already have photos that someone else wants. Time to upload! As long as you are 18 years old, are the sole photographer of the images, and obtain written permission from any people seen in the images, then you are eligible to sell your photos. Here are a few agencies that accept new contributors at any time:
Can Stock Photo – This agency allows you to retain all rights to your images, and pays a quarter per sale to subscribers of its service, and a 50 percent commission of sales to guests and members.
Deposit Photos – This agency has different packages for guests and subscribing customers, and photographers’ payment is dependent on the type of customer purchasing their photos as well. Pay ranges from a quarter to $5.40 per download, depending on type of customer, seniority status, and the size of the image. You can also rake in 50-60 percent of the royalties.
Getty Images / Flickr – In 2008, stock-photo powerhouse Getty Images struck a deal with photo-sharing service Flickr that allows Getty’s seasoned photo editors to pick budding photographers among the millions of Flickr users. Photographers who want their images to be seen can apply on Flickr’s web site, and can make enough money to order a pizza every couple of weeks.
iStockphoto – Whereas most agencies require a few submitted images before signing you on as a regular contributor, iStockphoto has an additional requirement: passing a quiz on copyright issues and image requirements. This agency pays 20-40 percent of royalties to photographers, or about $0.30-7.50 per download, and pays more if you deal exclusively with them.
Veer – This agency doesn’t require a quiz, but pays slightly less with going rates of $0.35-7.00 per download. If your photo is picked for an “extended license” to be sold commercially, you can make $43. They offer tips, feedback, and forums.
As always, be sure to read the fine print on copyrights and royalties before registering and downloading your photos. You will also want to familiarize yourself with the agency’s payment schedule; each has its own, but it is common for stock agencies to pay via PayPal or Moneybookers once a certain dollar amount is reached. Happy uploading!
Stock Photo Agencies: Make Money From Your Photos Comments & Questions (write your own!)
I would like to add another agency review to the ones here.
The agency is called Age FOTOSTOCK, they are based in Spain with offices in NY, and they have been in the industry for years (it is at least what they say).
My past experience with them compared to other agencies like Corbis, Fotolia, Getty or Alamy stands as follow:
Firstly, they don’t show any prices online. As a buyer or photographer, you have to fill a painful form on their website waiting to be contacted back, while all other agencies micro or macro like Dreamstime, Fotoli, Getty, Corbis and Alamy give the price directly online in seconds through a smart interface.
My first question was: Why do they hide their prices ? Why do you have to fill a forml losing much time and effort while their competitors offer clear pricing transparence ? Does it make sens in term of gaining and retaining customers and photographers ?
The question got answered when I, nevertheless, started to contribute to Age. I’ve never seen a stock business running as slow as they do.
- Submitting images is only possible by FTP and take ages (maybe their name come from that) even with large bandwidth connections.
- Reviewing times are the slowest in the industry (up to 30 days),
- Processes to keyword, amend, and manage pictures is made on a rigid, inflexible, unfriendly interface that you just want to run from as soon as you use it. In the keywording process, it also use a Google based kind of translator that obliges you to accept the frequent translation mistakes and re-translate good English phrases into incorrect ones.
- The contracting process is one of the last century: You have first to submit images, then send the signed contract by good old postal services to Spain (if you live in South Africa, too bad for you). Then It take ages for them to sign the contract. And guess what: They send their signed version to you by electronic format in an email. So if they can send to the contributor the contract by email, I guess they could also allow the contributor to sign it electronically and send it as well by email instead of postal services (that you have to pay for with a delivery receipt).
When you arrive at this stage it’s because they consider your work as worthwhile and accept you as a contributor. It also gives a good indication that we are not in a win-win relationship from the start.
You have to bear in mind that between their acceptance of the first images submission, the exchange of contracts, weeks and month have quietly passed (during which you had time to sign with any other stock agency and start to sell).
Then comes the true relationship issues: They have obviously very poor or no communication skills.
While the rules and T&C on their website are difficult to find and contain many contradictions with their current practices, they also fail to answer any request or question in a timely manner while ignoring totally what you might have asked if they do.
And it’s at this stage that you start to regret to have signed with them. You just realize after a while and some submission that their organization skills are close to zero,
- A number of pictures you submitted with keywords by FTP end-up lost somewhere between their FTP folder and their desktop (scary).
- The fully keyworded pictures (10 keyword minimum mandatory), suddenly end up with insufficient keywords and therefore have to be amended again and again (while having the originals at home, I checked and nothing was missing).
And last but not least, the pictures selection is either irrelevant, highly biased or totally subjective, while the same pictures sell very well on other stock agencies, they accept ones that were rejected by others and reject ones that were sold by others.
And of course, they belong to this category of stock agencies that doesn’t give any reason for rejection (how convenient…).
Finally, I really wonder why I applied there and I regret to have sent my pictures there and the time lost with such an amateur, inefficient, incompetent, slow and lax company.
In conclusion, they pretend they are in this business since 30 years. I wonder how they could survive for 30 year with that kind of business attitude. But they certainly use methods, processes and interfaces of 30 years ago, there is no doubt.
