[jatrax]

@jome if you want my advice based on what you have stated:

Go to Fine Art America and open an account there. It is free for the first 25 images and only costs maybe $30 per year for unlimited. Spend the time it takes to set everything up, keyword and title your images and get them uploaded. All of this will give you a very good idea of what print on demand or stock work actually consists of. The learning curve is rather steep and none of it is photography. You have to learn to keyword properly and most importantly develop a work flow that is super efficient. Remember for stock to actually work you need thousands of images and you have to be fast and efficient. Once you have an account set up there and your first 25 images uploaded now you can think about stock agencies.

There are three I would recommend.

- Shutterstock - I don't particularly like them as the fees are so low as to be insulting but the sales are there and I still derive most of my stock money from them. But it is an absolute hamster wheel
- Adobe stock - similar to Shutterstock but slightly higher fees to you. But fewer sales of course.

- Alamy - more of a "professional" agency unlike the micro-stock ones. Fees to you can be $1.00 to $200.00 per license. I'll bet you guessed the $200 ones are rare. But I really like the way they work and the average license fee to us is much higher. After a while it just isn't worth all the work to sell something for 25 cents on Shutterstock but a $20 sale on Alamy makes me happy. But on Alamy you get maybe 20 to 30 sales per year while on Shutterstock you might get 20 per day.

[RGlasel]

I have never sold a photograph, but I know a few people who have.

1. I think that I opened some kind of Pandora Box...

That depends on what kind of answer to your straightforward question you want. Could someone who does not currently make money from being a photographer, find an opportunity to make some money from photography? The answer is yes, but if you are asking if you should try to do something so you have opportunities to make some money from photography, that is a question only yourself can provide a definitive answer to.

2. I will never be a Pro and don't expect a real revenue

Based on what I have seen, this is a better approach than deciding first to be a Pro and expecting to make a living from photography, without having already made some/any money from photography.

4. I know that for sure, it is some kind of a lottery (too many talented people)

Talent, ambition, training, perseverance, hard work, intelligence, intuition and location will all get you tickets for this lottery, but you are right that you can have all of the above qualities and still not win the main prize.

If you can deal with rejection and afford to lose a bit of money if things don't work out, make high quality prints of your best work so far and look for places to display them publicly (flea markets, craft fairs, etc.). Ask strangers for their feedback and decide from that if you want to continue investing your time and money into producing images that people will pay money for. If at any point you decide you need to earn a high rate of return on that investment, you might as well give up; on a strictly monetary basis, you will never make enough selling your images to give you the same rate of return as what you are doing for your day job. That's not to say that other opportunities can't come from selling your pictures on the open market, if one stranger decides to buy one of your pictures, the odds are good that other strangers will decide to do the same in the future, if you work at it; but the real money in photography comes from taking pictures at the request of other people, not just selling pictures that you have already taken. You have to build up a substantial body of work, that you can use as a sales aid, before you can get hired to take photos for someone else,.

[Dan Rentea]

Hello dear fellow Pentaxians,

I just wandered if an amateur like me could sell some pictures and if yes, on which sites?

I have seen that it could be possible to do it with Alamy, Dreamstime, Adobe, Getty.(others?).

The idea behind this is to help me to sustain my LBA.


What are your preferred one and why?

Thank you to let me know.

Kind regards.

J.

Hello!

The short answer is yes, you can make money by uploading images to stock agencies.

The long answer is more complicated. In a recent survey it seems that more than 70% of the contributors will quit during the first year. The reason is simple, they make around 3-5% of the money they are hoping to make when they start uploading.

Stock photography has nothing to do with shooting what's in front of you and upload. If you think like this then you're going to be dissapointed. I did that for an entire year and I barely made a few $ each month. Then I changed my approach due to some discussions with some top contributors which are making 6000$+ each month. Uploading to stock means:
1. Shooting what's on demand
2. Editing based on trends
3. Finding proper keywords and description (this is a very important part)
4.Timing when comes to upload
5. Focusing on one or two categories
6. Making strategies when comes to shootings and uploading

I'm focusing on people lifestyle since February and the 301 images uploaded this year make me between 450$ and 650$ each month from all agencies. 100$ are reinvested each month in models and accessories for shootings. I ussualy split the costs with models and props with another photographer.

Another important thing to consider is that each agency has its own particularities in terms of keywords and description. iStock/Getty for example has it's own vocabulary which is completely different than the one from Shutterstock or Bigstock.

My advice is to start with Bigstock, Adobe stock and Shutterstock and after you will gain more experience go for iStock, Alamy. These are the ones I would go for and maybe for Dreamstime also.

To me, this is like a second job because I "work" 6-8 hours/week for microstock looking for trends, finding articles with my images and extract from there keywords that I consider relevant, experimenting when comes to editing, etc. and in the same time is one of the best ways to go out, meet new people, socialize and take photographs.

My initial plan when the passion for photography started to grew was to do something that will cover my expenses. Today, photography which include microstock, corporate events/corporate portraits, brunches not only that pays my expenses related to gear, models and props for shootings, but it cover also 2-3 vacations in Europe each year. I'm not living from photography because I have my own training company that provide my monthly income, but this hobby does have financial benefits.

[BROO]

The idea behind this is to help me to sustain my LBA.

I take photos for a local builder. I get paid for every house they build. It has helped promote their business and enabled me to invest in better glass.

I think if you can find local businesses (shops, restaurants, micro breweries etc) that would benefit from good photos then you can make a small profit.

Craig.

[Jome]

Excellent, thank you all for your advice!

I think that I will start with Alamy (no fees) to see how it works as soon as I have a bunch of 'good' pictures (and appealing tags).

Definitely, I have absolutely no expectations for potential income by doing this and if I could sell just one picture, I would be very fortunate (therefore happy).

Actually my LBA is feeded by my job but the WAF is difficult about it

Kind Regards.

J.

[jatrax]

I think that I will start with Alamy (no fees) to see how it works as soon as I have a bunch of 'good' pictures (and appealing tags).

Remember with Alamy I get maybe 20 to 30 sales per year with 12,000 images available for sale. I think they are a good agency to work with but don't expect quick results.