As a full time graphic designer, I know how great a feeling it is to find a “great” stock photo. Professional stock photo collections can cost anywhere from $200-$500 per disc, with single shots costing anywhere from $80-$200 themselves. It’s thrilling to find places online where you can purchase hi-res, professional quality images at a minute fraction of that price. Recently there has been a boom in the micropayment stock photography business. The concept for photographers is this: instead of selling one image at $80-$120 once, why not sell it for fifty cents 200 times? In the long-run, the profit margin can even be much larger than simply selling it at a larger, fixed price.

Can you really make any money off of selling images for fifty cents each? Well, if you make just five dollars a day (Sell 10 images on one site, or multiple sites) you will be raking in an extra $150 a month. That should cover a few of those bills, maybe even half or all of your car payment! This is not an impossible feat, either. My image collection on many of the sites is only around 100, and I am starting to surpass these profits. If you sell ten bucks worth of images a day on average, there’s an easy $300/month! The best part about it is, once you do the initial work of editing your images, keywording them, and uploading – you’re done. At that point you can sit on your butt and let your images work FOR you.

“But wait…” I thought. “I have a decent 2.5+ megapixel digital camera. Why can’t I sell some of my nice shots? I bet people would buy them.” Sure enough, people did. Whether it was a picture of my feet at the beach, a shot of a cool, tricked-out sports car or even a background I created using filters in Adobe Photoshop; people bought them. I’m not a professional photographer, and you don’t have to be either. It helps to some novice or amateur experience, and even more so if you know your Photoshop. If you have both graphic design and photography experience, that gives you an even bigger advantage. I have been experimenting with a lot of these types of micropayment websites lately, and I’d like to share with you my experience.

How does it work? First, you obviously need to sign up for an account at one of the sites listed below. After that, you should make sure the images you are planning on uploading are of good enough quality to get accepted by the approvers on the site. After a while, you will get the hang of knowing what they will approve, and what they won’t. Your pics should have been shot from at least a 2 megapixel camera, although some sites require 3 or higher, and should be corrected for proper color. If there is a little bit of noise in the image, try out a nice little photoshop add-on called NeatImage. It works great in cleaning up the graininess you might have in certain areas. Once you make sure everything is in tip-top shape with your image, you next need to upload it to the microstock website. Once it’s up there, you need to add keywords, so that designers can find your image through a normal search. You also have to give it a name, brief description, and a title. Each micropayment site has different image categories. After choosing the best categories for your image, your image is ready to be pushed into the site’s “approval cue”. Once accepted or denied, you receive a confirmation email. That’s it. Now you sit back, relax, and wait for the sales to fly in!

Now…what if you had your same small collection of images spread across many different stock photo websites? I thought this to myself, and decided to try it for ha-ha’s. Sure enough, my sales multiplied. Start off with one site at first. Once you get the hang of it, you can upload your titled / keyworded images to the other sites easily, then simply categorize and submit.

TIP: The key is to keyword your images with an IPTC / EXIF editor either in Adobe Photoshop, or just download what I use: the free program called IrfanView www.irfanview.com Also remember that when keywording, try using as many words as you can. That will get you the most views/sales on your image.

How do you get paid? They can either send you a paypal transfer, or even a check. I prefer check, because paypal sometimes takes their cut. Once you hit the site’s minimum payout limit (usually from $30-$100), you can get paid. Trying to see which site sells more images than the next is tricky. Here are the links to my favorite sites - sign up, and try them out. Then you can make your own conclusions.

[url=http://submit.shutterstock.com/?ref=59783][color=blue][size=20]Shutterstock:[/size][/color][/url] My number one top seller. Shutterstock offer subscriptions to its users, so people on there are looking to grab their limit of 25 images a day. If you have nice looking images, you’ll most definitely get tons of downloads. They have a very convenient ftp upload process as well, which saves a lot of time.

[url=http://www.istockphoto.com/index.php?refnum=thesupe87][color=blue][size=20]iStockPhoto:[/size][/color][/url] These guys have been the leaders at the micropayment game for years now, and I hear many photographers make the most money here. I hear they’re pretty tough on photos – it took me a few tries to get my application accepted, personally. Bring your “A” game when you sign up. I haven’t uploaded many images with them yet, but I plan to soon.

[url=http://www.bigstockphoto.com/?refid=GOUVAfUzdT][color=blue][size=20]BigStockPhoto:[/size][/color][/url] I've sold tons of images on this site; I still sell 1-3 a day at least. This is a great site if you’re a first timer, since they are very lenient. My personal approval rating (precentage of images accepted out of your total uploads) is the best on BigStock. This site is in my top three for sales. They have ftp upload as well.

[url=http://www.dreamstime.com/res66228][color=blue][size=20]Dreamstime:[/size][/color][/url] I get plenty of regular sales from DT. They now have ftp upload support - and ftp upload makes life a heck of a lot easier / much faster. The sales on this site are among my top three.

[url=http://www.fotolia.com/partner/33662][color=blue][size=20]Fotolia:[/size][/color][/url] These guys have ftp upload as well - in the month of February, 2006 every image that just gets approved gives you 20 cents. I heard that in the past it has been as high as 40 cents. They haven't had any of these promotions as of lately, but their image sales have been picking up increasingly in the recent months.

[url=http://www.canstockphoto.com?r=15019][color=blue][size=20]CanStockPhoto:[/size][/color][/url] This place has done pretty well for me also. They have a nice java applet that allows you to upload an entire folder full of images – so it’s just as good as an ftp upload option.

[url=http://www.stockxpert.com/?ref=thesupe87][color=blue][size=20]StockXpert:[/size][/color][/url]
This site has been the latest breakout hit - I have hit the payout twice in the first three months already. The good thing about StockXpert is that you can make sales ranging from .50-3.00 depending on the size of the photo that the user purchase. I'd put this site in my top 5 for sure. Whenever someone searches the free site StockXChange, many times StockXpert search results show up near the bottom of the screen. What a great way to market them. Sign up for this one for sure. They don't even require you to categorize the photos, unless you want to. They feature FTP bulk upload.

[url=http://www.featurepics.com/index022506.aspx][color=blue][size=20]Featurepics:[/size][/color][/url]
Here you set your own photo price - and when your pics sell you get 70% of that price! If you set your image at 20 bucks, you will make $14 when it sells! Not bad...beats .25-.50 cents. FTP uploading now makes it easier than ever. There is no need to categorize your images when you submit them here. You can do it if you want, but at this time that step is optional - and that alone is a huge time-saver.

[url=http://galastock.com/referal.php?id=402][color=blue][size=20]GalaStock:[/size][/color][/url]
This is a new site - I love the upload process. They have ftp upload, very easy categorizing, and super-fast approval times. Minimum payout is $100. I am waiting to see whether or not this is going to be the next big contender in the battle of the micros...I will update this section in the future on my results.

[url=http://www.luckyoliver.com/?loaf=TheSupe87][color=blue][size=20]LuckyOliver:[/size][/color][/url]
This is another new site - I'm hearing its a big hit with designers. The layout is fun, and unique. Review times are currently a bit slow, but this is normal for a newer micro site. Give it a try, and see if it makes you anything.

FTP uploading makes life so much easier, since most images are over 1 megabyte, and if you’re on a broadband connection you can upload all of your keyworded images at once. Once they’re uploaded, you complete them by categorizing them and submitting. You can use a free program on your pc called CuteFTP or if you’re on a mac with OSX you can download Fetch.

I am not a member of all of the micropayment sites, but a good place to find more help and to find more sites is www.talkmicro.com It’s a nice place to have an “unbiased” discussion about all the micro stes.

This can become very addicting, once your sales start coming in. It might be a little slow for you at first, but that will soon change. Obviously you will get more sales with both higher quality and a higher quantity of images. I spent about two to three hours a week in my spare time, to get to where I am now. It definitely pays off. If you’re a designer and want to only stick to “designing” check out those links above anyway. They all offer really great stock photos at ridiculously cheap prices. What I like about this little side venture I have going, is that I get to keep and use all of the great stock photos that I create! You can never have too many images in your collection. I lay out magazines and editorials for a living, and have even used many of my own personal images in my work.

...most importantly, have fun! If you've got any questions, feel free to shoot me an email at thesupe87@yahoo.com

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