The “Business” of Stock Photography Sometimes we associate stock photography with some negative concepts such as the photos you see in frames that are on sale at a department store or the photo that comes in a new wallet. Sure, those images did come from a stock photography library but there is so much more to stock photography than that.

You can put a lot of creative energy into building a solid stock photography library that will draw customers who need these images and like your creative eye. Really, if you think about it, stock photography is no different from doing a shoot for a customer. It’s just that you are taking the photos in advance of finding the customer and you can sell the same stock photo a multitude of times. And that last part is what makes running a stock photography service a lucrative business to operate.

The demand for stock photography is ongoing and increasing. But in the economic “model” of any marketplace, supply is as important as demand. So to compete for business you need a good, diverse supply. That means your first step in building your stock photography business is to build the “stock”. In this situation, quantity counts. When you start entertaining customers, you want to be able to show them a strong catalog not only of many genres of stock photos but of a good variety of photos for each genre. So if the buyer is looking for floral shots, you don’t just have three or four stock photos in that category. You should have dozens for them to pick from. By building a large collection, you vastly increase your chances of making a sale with each customer you entertain.

Don’t think that taking stock photos takes the creativity out of the process. In fact, the opposite is true. Really great stock photography screams personality, even if it’s just an assortment of floral scenes you are taking. The buyer is looking for a photo that seems to have a story to it, that draws the eye and makes the viewer want to ponder the meaning of that photo.

Sounds a bit like art photography, doesn’t it? Well, in a way, it is. Just because you are selling the photo as part of your stock collection, doesn’t lower the artistic value of what you are doing. And if your art is going out the door to be used by a customer, it is still being seen by people who will reflect on what you are trying to say with that photo. So to you, the photographer, your artistic calling is satisfied and you have a nice chuck of change in your pocket to boot.

Along with building a strong portfolio of quality pictures of each category, make your categories as diverse as possible. View other stock collections and gather ideas for the genres they have represented and of the diversity of shots and settings they have included in their collection. You are not plagiarizing other photographers work if you are letting them inspire you to do your best work. A good discipline to build your stock photography gallery is to take a day each week and go out and build one category of stock photos all day long. So you may do floral shots all day one week, photos of automobiles the next and pictures of college students the next.

Now don’t forget to get your releases signed if you use human subjects. Even if you just hang out on a college campus and talk students into posing for stock photos. Be sure you pay them something for their work and get a release. In that way if their picture ends up in some very public setting because of how a customer uses it, you are protected from them coming back with their palm up wanting more.

Finally, trust your instincts on what to include in your gallery. Your artistic “eye” for what you like is probably pretty reliable and will reflect what interests your customers. Once the gallery is built, then you can go about the “business” of putting together a physical catalog to sell from. And don’t forget the option of building an online gallery to sell from. You will need some technical help to get your site up and learning how to sell from it and collect money that way. But this can be a great expansion of your successful and growing stock photography business.

Sell Photos Photographers, to me, are a lot like writers. You begin doing what you do because you love it. Money is not something that comes easily, and many people never get to the level where they can make a living from photography or writing. It is often a labor of love, and if you want to do it for the rest of your life, you really have to work at it. It also seems to be a career that is either feast or famine. You may work hard and get very little for a very long time. But if you keep up this hard work, you may be able to start to sell photos for a lot of money. However, for many people, this is not easy.

There are newer ways for photographers to sell photos today, thanks to the Internet. Stock photos have always been around, and have long been a way to make money, but now you can find them more easily than every before. Many companies have stock photos online, which speeds up the process of finding and selling photos for both the consumer and the photographers.

If you take photos, but you can’t seem to figure out how to make a living doing so, you should look into stock photography. There are new Internet sites popping up every day, and many of them need quality photos. I have used many myself when I needed a good photo to go with an article. There are more and more sites popping up that sell photos, and even new photographers can get in on the act. You simply upload your photos per the sites requirements and then wait until someone buys your photo. You can sell photos in heaps this way, and you can make some decent money doing so.

Some of the stock sites will pay you revenue per download. They may sell a lot of photos, and you make a lot of money. You will have to read their terms to see how much you may get per download. Some pay more than others, and in some cases, you have to sell photos for quite a while before anything substantial comes in. Don’t let that discourage you. Keep taking good photographs and keep submitting them to these sites. The more you have, the more photos you are going to sell. You will also notice that as your work improves, you are going to sell photos faster than you can take them. Even just having your work on a site like this can lead to bigger things.