Member-only story
How Much Money I Make From Selling Stock Photography.
I started selling stock photography back in 2010. I had just purchased my first DSLR and a friend had told me about stock photography. Wow, easy money, I thought, so I decided to give it a go. After all, I had a fancy new camera, what could go wrong? The first sites that I uploaded to were BigStock and Fotolia (now Adobe Stock). At first, most photographs that I submitted were rejected. I did not really know what I was doing and looking back now, I was a pretty terrible photographer.
Unbeknown to me, there are all sorts of requirements that you have to meet as a photographer. Images have to be in focus at 100%, and there are differences between creative and editorial content. You also need a model or property release for recognisable people and some properties. I had a lot to learn.
For the first few years, I was uploading on a very ad-hoc basis, perhaps only a few images a year. It was not until around 2015 that I started to take selling stock a little more seriously. My photography was improving and I had upgraded my camera. I started to read articles and watch YouTube videos of what images sold, and I took the time to learn the differences between creative and editorial content and when you needed model and property releases. In my enthusiasm, I expanded to selling my images on iStock, Shutterstock, Deposit Photos, 123RF and…
