How To Make Money From The Photographs In Your Daily Life

Have you ever imagined yourself taking pictures of the world while traveling or styling out different clothes and still getting paid? Yes, that’s what we thought too. Instead of having a regular boring nine to five job, you can have the coolest job in the world.

Making memories from any event in your life, a trip, a family gathering; this is what every person gets pleasure in. And what better way to immortalize those moments than to make memorable photographs? Photography for some people is passion and for others is a way to make a living. For many, is a combination of both and if you’ve found yourself in the last group, then this is definitely an article worth reading!

First thing you need to do to make photography your profession is to have the talent and love for it. Then like any profession you need to invest in a high quality camera and most importantly your time. Make a strategy and if you need help or guidance with it, here are a few tips on how you can make money from taking photographs of your lifestyle.

Adobe Stock

Adobe Stock is a service that provides millions of high quality visuals ranging from photography as well as videos and design to templates. Adobe Stock is directly integrated within the Creative Cloud-Platform, so buyers can search and even edit and download the stock content directly without having to download any apps. Contribution to Adobe Stock is free and all you need to do is create an account for free in case you don’t already have a Creative Cloud subscription.

You can upload your relevant and authentic pictures directly from Bridge CC or Lightroom CC, or directly from Adobe Stock using a web browser. Then you need to add title, category and keywords to your picture so that it is easier for people to search you. Finally, if there are any recognizable people or locations in the image, you need to upload a property and model release. The review time after each uploaded image is around one week. For each item sold, you earn 33% commission for images and 35% for videos.

ETSY

ETSY is an ecommerce website that sells unique, custom, handcrafted, and unique things ranging from jewelry and clothes to art collectibles, craft supplies, and of course, photographs. If you want to make money out of your photographs, then opening your etsy photography shop might be the right thing to do. How do you get there?

Firstly, you need to create and name your shop, then customize your shop branding and set shop and

shipping policies. Once you are done with that, upload your images and set up listings. Lastly promote your shop. Bear in mind that Etsy charges $0.20 for each listed image and 5% of the price listed for a purchased image.

Shutterstock

One of the most popular and used platforms for selling and buying images, music tracks and videos is Shutterstock. It’s been active for 15 years and you can become a contributor there with a free registration and sell your photographs. It allows you to keep your copyrights protected and gives credit to the images’ owners which helps you market your brand.

Many people use Shutterstock to purchase stock images royalty free. If you are a photographer, you have a great chance to earn a great deal of money here and statistics show that they have paid out over $500 million to their worldwide network of contributors. All payouts are made per month and you are not obliged to sell your stock photos on Shutterstock exclusively.

Getty Images

Getty Images, a photo agency based in Seattle, nowadays serves as the one of the largest marketplace for stock images, illustrations, videos, and vector art. It is considered to have the highest quality and highest standards for their imagery so you have to be prepared to do some editing until perfection.

In order to sell your items here, you need to make sure that your pictures are authentic as well as suitable and sellable. When uploading the image, you need to add location, date as well as a brief description and up to 50 keywords that would assure your image comes in the top priority of the search. Once you excel that and your images start selling, you can start earning money, getting 20% from each sale.

Alamy

This platform is very similar to Shutterstock, however it is not that popular. It has many satisfied users, but they don’t earn that much as through Adobe Stock for example. Alamy doesn’t have that many contributors and that is the reason why it’s not that popular.

The business model is almost the same to the one of Shutterstock and as a photographer you can sign up for free and sell your copyrighted photographs. What is much better with Alamy, is that you can earn much more here – as a photographer you get 50% on each sale which is the double from Shutterstock where you

get 20 to 30% on a sale.

TourPhotos

A great place for all travel photographers is TourPhotos. This is a hub where people who travel for a living and make photographs there can use it to sell their photos. It is also used by many travel agencies or tour companies which upload their photos from the trips and tours they organize.

This means that if you are a person who loves to travel and take millions of photos on your adventure trips, you can share and sell your photos on this platform TourPhotos. This is another platform that can be used to earn money by selling photos.

Conclusion

To be a successful photographer and make money out of stock images you need to make images that sell, a combination of what’s in demand and your personal creativity. Your photos need to be relevant and authentic and most importantly they need to be “searchable”. Make sure you use all the right keywords so that it is easier for people to find you. Think you can manage that? Then hop on, find your preferable platform and start getting money!