MicroStock Photography

September 20, 2007

There are numerous ways to make money as a photographer. If the New York Times or National Geographic or the trashy supermarket tabloids aren’t paying you for what you snap, there are other ways. The simplest, and possibly easiest, is microstock photography.

Essentially, you take a picture (with certain guidelines concerning composition, sharpness, etc.), upload it to a site, give it some keywords and put it in certain categories, and then people buy them. Cheaply. Well, at least with some sites.

I have now sold the photo shown here twice. I’ve made about $1.50 all told. Who knows…it might be some blogger writing about coffee and wanted an image to go along with his post. He paid the site a buck to download it and use it. Or, maybe someone was printing a brochure or flyer for a new coffee shop in town. They downloaded a larger version, and paid $3. It’s all good. Obviously, I’m not going to pay the mortgage doing this, but maybe after a few months I could buy a new lens, or put the proceeds in a travel fund account.

If you’ve got a camera that’s capable of taking high-resolution images, you can compose a shot well, and are willing to shoot boring things like coffee beans, you might be able to make a few bucks on the side doing micro stock photography.

And, truth be told, there’s something a little exciting about getting an email that says, “Photo Sold.” It means someone was poring over the hundreds of images of coffee beans, or whatever they were looking for, saw yours and said, “Yeah, that’s worth a dollar!”

Head over to fotolia.com or istockphoto to check it out and give it a shot…

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