Quick Guide to Selling Images Online

Why get involved with microstock photography.

Getting started selling your images online is very simple and in the long run, can be quite profitable.  Microstock websites don't have any minimum amount of photos you need to upload so you can suite yourself in regards to how much you want to work.  Sales are directly related to the amount of images you have online and the quality of your photos.  If you have good quality photos you can expect to earn $12.00/picture/year.  This may not sound like a lot but if you have 100 images online that is an extra $1200/year that you didn't have before.  Upload 1000 pictures and your earnings are $12,000 / year ..... $1,200/month.  With that amount you could buy some pretty nice equipment or use it as a serious side income.

Where to submit your images

There are hundreds of microstock sites with new ones appearing every day.  Only a hand full of these sites actually give you any sales. There are 6 major sites that produce good income (Often referred to as the 'Big 6') and ~10 more sites that have lesser earnings and may or may not be worth your time uploading your images to.  Other sites are simply not worth the effort of uploading.  I have arranged the sites from most to least profitable according to the polls at microstockgroup.com

The Big 6 agencies are:

Shutterstock
Istockphoto
Dreamstime
Fotolia
StockXpert
123RF

The remaining agencies are:

Bigstockphoto
Crestock
SnapVillage
Zymmetrical
Yaymicro
Panthermedia
ScanstockPhoto
MostPhotos
CanstockPhoto
FeaturePics

 I would suggest signing up with the Big 6 and see how you like it.  Once you have all your images online with these agencies you can consider if you want to add more agencies to represent your work of if you would rather use that time to create more photos.

 For more information on getting started with microstock photography be sure to get out the more in depth section

Getting Started