Become a wedding photographer since 2008 make me travel a lot and get tons of files till I realize that my 1 tera hard drives is full, I don’t wanna put it all on trash bin so I spend years about how to sell photos online and make money from my old stock photos. Back in November 2017 I met a good friend who belong to magazine contributor since 2005 and he continually selling his photos online and surely make money for living, till he told me about good platform called Shutterstock.
Wedding photography is still become my primary income source for sure but, can you imagine I keep all photos in my hard drive without doing anything for years over and over again and just simply buy more 1 tera hard drives to keep it?
What I want is monetize all those photos and bring me the dollars when I don’t go for working no matter how much does it cost. If you are a photographer I know that you also feel the same problem too, you keep so many beautiful photos like flowers, cities, culture, details, or even food or people laugh. Have you ever know that those kind of ordinary photos can bring dollars for you even while you sleep?
Why You Must Starting to Sell Photos Online and Make Money Through It
This world is consist thousand of mass media agencies, blogger, or even company that need photos to complete their information page. It can be any kind of photos, culture, wedding, journalism, news, landscape, etc and if you are a photographer I know that you got those stock photos too on your computer.
If you got this potential needs than why you don’t take this as a chance to get money from it. Off course it could be better if you can earn money while you are not working and this is what some people said as a passive income. Even not 100% of passive (because you still taking photos regularly) but by selling your photos online than you just thinking about your future investment and it called as a royalty.
Having a royalty through your works is brilliant cause if you choose to not working anymore than you still can live well as same as when you still working. And this the answer of why you must know about how to sell photos online and make money through it.
What Kind of Photos That Can Be Sell Online?
ANYTHING!
Cause here in Shutterstock you can sell any kind of photos and trust me thousand of agencies in this globe need your photos for their own work. As I said before I’m a wedding photographer so what I got except my wedding photos is the travel photos (cause I travel a lot through this business), sometimes foods, culture, furniture of the hotel and so many more and I put all of them to my Shutterstock account and let them bought by anyone who need it.
If you leave in a downtown area like Hong Kong than you could sell your city scape photos like in Avenue of Starts or even the ambiance of Chun Yeung Street (Wet Market) around North Point and by the way I sell those kind of photos too even I live in Indonesia.
So what are you waiting for?
What Kind of Photo Gears That Reliable to Shoot a Great Stock Photos?
Two most importants requirements that you must remember when selling your photos on Shutterstock is make sure you got 4MP image quality and your photos must be clear which mean got NO noise, that’s it!
Due to this easy requirements so it doesn’t matter if you want to choose to shoot by smartphone, mirrorless camera, or even high end DSLR camera. Now let me give you with some reliable suggestions for it:
1 – Smartphone Under $200 That Reliable for Making Stock Photography
If you don’t want to buy an expensive camera and choosing to take a pictures with your own smartphone than you could consider some smartphone like:
- Samsung Galaxy A10, my wife use it for her own!
- Huawei Honor 8X, or you might be consider also with
- Oppo AX5s
If you don’t believe me that this kind of smartphone is reliable for making great stock photography than let me show you one humble picture below. A simple photo that you see below is shark tank silhouette photos in Sea Aquarium Singapore that I took with my old and cheap iPhone 5 which is cost less than $90 on Amazon.
See the details, it just an ordinary photos, not good enough but it sold for $0.25 on May 18, 2019. When I use my iPhone 5 than after I took the photo, I just directly upload to my account so what I’m going to tell you is, I do nothing in post production, or retouching photo in Photoshop or even using the Lightroom.
2 – Entry Level Mirrorless Camera Options for Stock Photography
I shoot with Nikon D810 for my wedding photoshoot but I only use my Canon EOS M for taking stock photography. Love to use this tiny camera cause it is small and come with great quality.
Honestly I make a great post about 5 mirrorless camera that you can buy for photography beginner. Even you’re not newbie anymore so what I’m going to say is, these 5 mirrorless camera is way more enough to make a great quality stock photography which you can sell on Shutterstock.
How Much You Could Earn From Selling Photos Online
Not much,
I earn only $0.25 at the minimum and $8.80 per download from my stock photos. It is cheap and I could say that it’s way far away from my expectation. Sometimes I could earn $2 per day but sometimes I could earn almost $10 per day. BUT, the way that my money come from is surprise me cause now I can know how to sell photos online and make money from trash image that I never realize before.
Shark tank, Hong Kong egg waffle, boat in Maldives, even just a dirty corner of my guest house in Hong Kong. Now just take a look for this screen shoots below:
In my honest opinion, back few years ago before joining as Shutterstock contributor I always take a snap photo just like this and upload it on my instagram account than I ONLY GET LIKES from my friends BUT DON’T GET ANY MONEY at all. Surely I want get likes but also I want the money too cause I’m a photographer I wondering that every single photos that come from hand will bring me money over and over again.
Look at the picture below, a tasty Hainan rice that I ate from the nearby restaurant in Tanjung Katong Rd, Singapore when I travel to this country with my kids. Now I could so grateful that I upload this image on my instagram and also upload it on my Shutterstock account and wait till somebody buy this photo.
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So how do you feel right now, are you interesting to sell your photos?
Decision is yours but I hope I could share to you about how to sell photos online and make money through it. Hell yeah! you are able to get money from your holiday photos, honeymoon photos, or even ANY KIND PHOTOS that you took from your smartphone or entry level camera….which is beautiful right!
If you are interesting to sell your photos online and get a passive income through it than you can sign up on Shutterstock and start to monetize your photos. Thank you for stumble upon at my blog and keep in touch cause I will update a new post regularly and share a lot of opinion and idea about living through photography.