How to sell images on photo stocks? Real practical guide

Hi,

Are you a beginner or already established photographer? Searching for new sources of income? You take a lot of images and do not know where you could use them?

Try photo shocks. You can sell you images, illustrations and videos to earn commissions from each purchase of your product.

This idea had come into my mind several years ago. But at that time I was a bit afraid to send my photos to photo banks. Because such names as Shutterstock, Fotolia, iStockPhoto or Dreamstime sound to me like something paramount and unachievable.

But recently I’ve met a Ukrainian photographer who is pretty engaged with different photo stocks platforms and he inspired me to try myself in this field.

Just a few days ago I’ve created contributor accounts in some of the major image stocks: Shutterstock, Fotolia, iStockPhoto, Dreamstime and 123rf. I’ve selected 11 of my recent nice images and sent them for approval.

And what a surprise?! All photo stocks have accepted them (obviously with some exceptions).

On some websites 1 to 3 images were rejected for different reasons, but still it is a great result for me personally. A very inspiring result.

And yes, there is one more big player on image stocks market – Depositphotos – absent in my list. They’ve rejected all my images. And this company actually has Ukrainian roots. So, I do not know the reason why all other stocks accepted 70-100% of images submitted and Deposit rejected all of them. That is why I’ve decided not to work with them, at least in the nearest future.

Finally, let’s return to the cooperation with photo stocks. I will try to contribute more and more images to the sites mentioned above and will share with you my experience of cooperation with different platforms.

For obvious reasons I will not share any sensitive information, foreseen in agreements with those companies, but I will try to describe pros and cons of contributing to different sites and also some tips on profitability.

If you still hesitate whether to sell your works at photo stocks, just stop it and send your works for assessment and start to earn some extras. While visiting those websites and looking through existing works of different authors you will see that not all of them are masterpieces. And this means that there is a place for all kinds of photographers, illustrators and video content creators.

I wish you good luck with the submission of your works to stocks!