lol not worth your time! Honestly the payouts are very low: I probably earn 200-300 a year from mine across 3 sites (well now only two since Fotolia got bought out and Adobe stole my balance). Over the past four to five years, it maybe paid for a camera or a lens but there is very little money in ‘the image’ – the value in photography comes from the ‘service’ i.e. weddings, corporate events, etc. A decent wedding photographer might make 800-1500 a day plus editing time. The problem with stock photography is the sheer mass of it – the industry has effectively cannibalized itself. When I first starting selling with Alamy.com, images would reach 300 dollars a hit. Now you’re lucky for 30 dollars.
So basically, don’t think those several hundred images you’ve got lying around that it’s just a case of uploading them and cashing in. They almost certainly won’t sell or there are already far better images up there that get frequent hits therefore rise to the top of the search engines. IF you do want to go ahead, the types of images that tend to sell most are ones with people and model releases – try hiring a model in the UK who’s OK with unlimited release and giving their image to potentially sell anything from car insurance to herpes treatment. You’ll be competing with photographers based in Eastern Europe where attractive young models are cheap and living costs are low, therefore they can be competitive with studio costs etc. It takes time to build up a solid portfolio that reaches buyers at the top of the search engines: companies put the best selling and therefore most expensive images at the top. Yours will be at the bottom (to begin with).
Stock Photography is also soul-destroyingly bland: Think smiling generic models in suits or with hands-free kits on their heads. If you insist on going ahead, study what kind of images sell the most, invest in some good lighting equipment and a ‘pro’ level lens kit. How your images sell is down to how smart you are with finding niche’s in markets and keywording – very important to give your images visiblity in a crowded marketplace. Lastly, you need to be good at spotting trends before they develop so if you hired models in PPE gear crying and looking sad/tired, and uploaded these in January, you’d probably do OK off them, maybe even break even after the modeling costs etc.
One last thing: Stock companies aren’t stupid. THey have minimum payouts so you need to clear 100 dollars for Dreamstime.com, this might take you years. Alamy is 50.00 quid, not sure about Adobe. Getty are hard to get with and will only take the best. Everything else is a waste of time.
Good luck:)
