What is microstock (or micropayment photography, stock photography)? Who needs it and how does it work?

What is this site about? A kind of Internet Job?
Hello, dear visitors of my website. If you like photography or painting and you would like to use these talents to make some money – why not, everything is possible. I’ll tell you about an interesting method of earning money in Internet,a way of creative self-realization, getting financial independence, or just a new hobby. All this is about selling your photos (photos that you took) or your pictures at microstocks.

What are microstocks?

Imagine that you are a designer, a webmaster or an author of a book. You will definitely need some illustrations or photographs for you job. The question is where to take them? You can order the needed images from a professional artist or photographer. This will be long, expensive and there is not always guarantee that you will like the final result.
You can also go to a site that sells photos and look for necessary pictures. Stock photography providers are web-sites that contain large collections of relatively high quality (approved by inspectors) images, as well as search engines and online shopping features. The authors who send their images to stock photography agencies need to sign special agreements to sell images using various licenses (which also accept buyers) and thus follow copyright laws. There are different kinds of photostock agencies. The most frequent are so-called stock photography agencies and microstocks (or micropayment photography companies). First ones mainly collaborate with professional photographers or high level illustrators. Prices for the images can reach there hundreds of dollars, but sales are relatively rare. Microstocks are special Internet sites where images are sold at rather low prices. Purchase prices can vary from 20 cents to 20-30 dollars, depending on type of license and image resolution. At most microstocks you can find so-called subscriptions. It’s kind of license when a buyer can purchase permission for 30 days (or more) to buy normally up to 25 images a day. If the quota is fully used, you get very good prices for buyers, hence the huge numbers of downloads at microstocks. The authors, in this case, of course , get/receive less than when you (they) sell the picture for the credits (the buyer purchase only a small fixed quantity of images with relatively higher prices).
In addition to photographs and vector illustrations on some run-off can be bought (and consequently, to sell) video footages and even audio recordings.
The main advantages of the stock photography agencies (especially microstocks) for buyers include:
1. Huge database of images - images can be found on almost any topic
2. Low prices on the image and ease of obtaining them, the preservation of the copyright holder.
3. Possibility to see the final result immediately (as opposed to work with professional artists or photographers), you can choose the best from several options.

Who can work on photostocks? How?

Microstocks gained great popularity due to the fact that any person who has desire and ability to create images can register and work there. Thousands people work on photo stocks. They are ordinary people who have hobbies like painting, photography, 3D modelling, video. In fact, designers often need images that are not very difficult to photograph or draw. For example, fruit and vegetables, all sorts of other objects, the city and nature landscapes, people - they are all on demand on microstocks. And naturally, the quality and creativity levels are continuously growing, even among fans. It happens that people (with professions originally far from the creative ones) try their hand at microstock photography and start to get enough money to make their creative hobbies one of the main sources of financial independence.
What does the process of work on microstocks consist of? You should only go through the simple registration at the site, some examination (you may be asked to send 3-10 images that inspectors check in order to understand if you are ready to begin to work with this company or may be you need to improve the quality of your photos or illustrations) and you can start to upload your images. Photos and illustrations must meet certain requirements like technical quality as well as the subjects of the photos. For example, to sell photos with people, people who are quite visible, you will need to get so-called model-release - an agreement where the model confirms the transfer of rights to the image to the author and agrees to exhibit his/her photos for sale and further use. In addition, each photo should be provided with a list of keywords that have a name and description. After checking the images and successful approving they go on sale and appear in your portfolio. After a while, they will be able to be found by keywords. You can significantly increase profits by gradually providing your portfolio with new images and improving their quality. Quality and quantity are quite important. You can even work with multiple photo stock agencies at the same time, what may give you additional benefits and to increase the stability and reliability of the earnings.

Why could you need it? (What are the benefits of this activity?)

1. Financial freedom and independence (if you decide to make microstocks your main job you will not depend on the employer). Ideal job for «downshifting».
2. Stability – nobody and never will be able to fire you out, no humiliations or exploitation from any kind of bosses; it will be possible to «put eggs in different baskets» - there are a lot of different microstocks, so if one of them disappears or something bad happens (the chance of that is minimal), the rest will continue to work for you. Images for advertising, books, magazines and websites are always needed, even in the face of a global financial crisis.
3. Stock photography companies can give you good and stable income, even in countries with relatively poor economy systems and regions with high unemployment rates.
4. Work From Home on the Internet, with your own schedule.

The advantages of a free schedule and work at home
• You can plan your day as you want. Get up as late as you want for doing during the day what you want and when you want.
• You do not need to waste your time, money, nerves and energy on the way to office (in public transport or road traffic)
• No need to get on with your colleagues and superiors at work (sometimes there can be «complex» people).
• During work you can do what you want, not what other people want (it can be especially valuable for some creative professions)
• You can have a whole day free - you can go to shops, cinemas, museums, libraries, visit doctors, go to the gym, pool, etc. at any time, not just early in the morning or late after work when there are crowds of other people.
• In good weather you can not only look sadly through the office window but take a walk, enjoy your life.
• In case of bad weather - no need to leave the house
• If you fall ill, it is possible to devote time and attention to your body, relax a bit, rather than forcing yourself to go to work sick (potential complications).
• Work only when you have appropriate mood and inspiration, not when the customer would want. If you don’t want to work you can spend your time for reading , improve your or do other things.
• You can always have spare time for hobbies, sports, meeting with friends, trips and traveling, watching movies, reading books, etc.

5. Сreative self-realization (your work will be needed and used by somebody).

Your work will bring you not only money and pleasure, but also the benefit for other people (as opposed to certain types of network marketing and trading at the stock exchange)
6. Additional earnings (if there is a main job). Even if generally you are a manager or a computer programmer or may be designer, you can always spend 1-2 hours per day for making, preparing and sending images to photo stocks and have additional income (which could become your main source of income later).
7. Excellent earning opportunity for the students (and even schoolchildren), retirees, homemakers.
8. For photographers and designers freelancers it can be a great way to increase their income, not depending on customers or bosses.
9. Less stress at work means better health and happier life
10. You can determine the level of income and aims, which you would like to achieve - and realize them as soon as you want.
11. There is no any risk and you will need minimum to none initial investments compared to other types of business. If you are fond of photography or painting, there is no anything which will require any expenses - registration is free. There isn’t any brainwashing which can happen in MLM-business. You do not need to resign from your current work, you do not have to go to job interviews. Registration for the majority of photo stock agencies takes a few minutes. Personal information will not be spread.
12. If you like to travel – working with photo stock agencies will be ideal! There is no reference to any particular place, you can work from anywhere in the world where there is Internet access. For example, if you don’t like winter time in your country because of cold weather you can spend it in any warm country and continue working there.
13. If you want to emigrate to another country you will always have a source of money. Full freedom in this regard.
14. Even if you would take a pause and rest for some time, your images will continue to be sold automatically. The more images you have, the more income will be.
15. You will Improve your knowledge about creating nice images. There is an interesting Community (including the national community, speaking different languages). And finally, work with photo stocks will help you to meet interesting people from different countries.

How much can you earn?

It depends on the quality and quantity of your images and frequency of uploads. There is a rough estimation that if you upload new images quite often, 1 good image in the portfolio can give you in average $1 per 1 month. It means that 1000 good images will bring $1000 per month, 2000 images could give you about $1500-1700 and so on (the average income per one image may slightly decrease when you increase the quantity of the images in your portfolio). If you improve the efficiency of work and upload more images per week you’ll get more. For vector images this ratio can be slightly higher (up to 2$ per image per month, or even more), but this is offset by the fact that it can be more difficult to make a good vector image than a photo. Ordinary amateur images can sell a little bit less, but very high quality images can bring hundreds dollars per month each.
You should also remember that different photo stock agencies have different income, different attitudes, especially at first. For example, microstocks like Fotolia and Dreamstime have a tendency to long start, the first sale can happen only after some days or even weeks after upload. Shutterstock may start to sell within 1-2 days after approving images. Many beginners make a mistake expecting big sales with small portfolios. For more or less stable income you should upload more than 200 (or even 600 or 1000) images.
It is possible to earn $ 30000-50000 a month (up to 1.000.000$ per year), but only few people reach this level.

What are image quality requirements?

The photos must meet certain requirements for quality.
1. Resolution no less than 4 Mp (approximately 2500h1700 pixels at 3:2 aspect ratio). Although some microstocks allow less than 4 Mp, it will be more effective to prepare images only once for all stock agencies.
2. The lack of visible noise using 100% scale.
3. Good clarity (sharpness) using 100% scale.
4. Normal white balance.
5. Wise use of filters (for example, there shouldn’t be any over sharpening or excessive noise reduction or other image artifacts)
6. The subject of the photographs must be commercially usable, nobody needs images which are too banal. Using the search engines and sorting images by popularity you can easily see the level of stock photos and compare with yours.
7. Photos must not contain recognizable people without signed model releases. If for example your photo contain some pedestrians, but they are too small to recognize them because of the distance, it can be approved without model release.
8. There shouldn’t be any trademarks, logos or objects protected by copyright in your images.
Vector images, 3D and video also have their own requirements (as part of the plot and save the copyrights they coincide).

How to begin?

If you are interested in microstocks and would like to try, then you can act in the following way (on the following schedule):
1. If you don’t have any photo or drawing experience, firstly it will be useful to read some articles about photography or vector images. You will possibly need to buy necessary equipment and software . If you already have some initial knowledge, or even a small portfolio of images that meet the requirements of microstocks, then you can proceed to Step 1.
2. Register a separate email account specifically for use with effluents (recommended gmail.com). You can obtain passport, if you already have one. Read the article about the registration process.
3. Sign up on photo stock agencies which don’t require exams, for example, Fotolia and Dreamstime.
4. Upload several dozens of images. Analyze the causes of rejects.
5. Continue to upload images, at the same time preparing for the examinations at other important stock photo agencies that require exams (Shutterstock, iStock, Stockxpert, 123rf). Choose 3 (5, 10 -, depending on the stock) best images. For examination at Shutterstock you will need ten images with good quality. The subject can be objects (isolated on white), portraits (with signed releases!), bright interesting landscapes. Especially I recommend you to look carefully at the level of noise and sharpness. It would be useful to reduce photo resolution to 4 MP in order to improve 100% scale quality. Add about 10 keywords that suit better for each photo. For the iStock exam you will need 3 photos from 2Mp that have some artistic quality.
6. If you doubt which photos will be the best for sending to exams you can consult with the Community in forums or with me personally (see my contacts, I speak English, French, Spanish, some Italian and Russian).
7. Submit images for the exam.
8. If then you don’t pass exam from the first attempt – don’t (give up) despair. You will have from 3 to 30 days for choosing better images or improving the quality of existing ones. In this time you can learn something new, correct errors, sharpen skills, build up the portfolio to gain experience on the microstock agencies without examination. Then repeat steps 5-7.
9. If the test is passed successfully – congratulations! You can start to upload images, try to do it every day, at least at first time.
10. If you feel that you like this business, images sell well and you would like to receive real money you can register in Moneybookers or Paypal for getting your income.

What microstocks are better to start with? What are the most popular, most profitable?

There are a lot of photo stock agencies. How to choose the best for a beginner?
As I wrote earlier - the best is to start with the photo stocks that don’t have exams, such as Fotolia and Dreamstime. But do not just dwell on them because at first they could not impress you with the level of sales. After a week of work on Fotolia and Dreamstime you can try to pass exams at Shutterstock, iStock, Stockxpert, 123rf. Simultaneously, you can register for a smaller and less profitable runoff - Bigstock, Canstockphoto, Crestock. After accumulating experience and portfolio, you can try yourself in the other photo stock agencies.
On the top positions of some photo stock agencies there is always one microstock Shutterstock - one of the biggest stocks that will give you more profit than others. In order to get to it you must pass the exam by sending 10 images. I recommend just to try to pass on this photo stock as soon as possible because it starts to sell your photos almost immediately and amounts of downloaded photos can easily reach thousands per month.

This is followed by a group of good stable microstock photo agencies: