Online earning on photostocks

For professional photographers or those who simply like taking pictures and want to earn an income from their hobby, there is a way to do it. We will tell you about making money from photostocks.

Nowadays, all kinds of projects in the online sphere need high-quality visual content, for which they are willing to pay a lot of money. If there is a demand, let’s find out how to start making money from photostocks.

What are photostocks?

A photostock is an Internet platform, which contains a large number of photographs and all kinds of graphic and video content, to be used without violation of copyright and the law.  Any user can freely use the material he needs for his own blog or other resource, and the author gets a certain percentage of it for each download.

So how does this process work? Let’s consider a simple example, when you are a designer in search of a visual for an advertisement. You go to a photostock and start choosing the image you need. Once you find one, you purchase it for a nominal fee. Then you use it for your own purposes, and the author of the content gets royalties for downloads.

Advantages and disadvantages of making money from photostocks

Choosing this direction to earn money you should have a great desire to deal with photography, regularly fill up your portfolio and have patience. It should be noted, the fact that you will not get earnings from the work immediately, unfortunately, you will not be able to affect the sales of visuals.

Before you start your collaboration with photostocks, stop and think whether you are ready for it.

Types of collaboration and earning at photostocks

Did you know that there are several types of collaboration with visual content platforms?

If not, let’s look at each of them:

• Exclusive author – you are engaged in placement of your works on one site, the collaboration with which you have chosen for yourself.
• Exclusive content – posting a single piece of work that you can only buy once. Please note – this content format is valued many times over.
• Non-exclusive works – the author places his work on all kinds of photostocks and similar sites, the materials can be used repeatedly. The works in this format cost cheap, but in terms of income, they are more profitable. In order to make a profit, analyze the themes.

What are the photostocks: Overview

 Now there are a lot of photostocks and all kinds of photobanks in the network. At first glance they do not differ much from each other, but the terms of cooperation are different. Let’s look at the most popular of them:

1. The best known and most used is the world leader in photostocks – Unsplash. You can get a good profit for your works because this site has a big audience. In order to begin cooperation with photostock you have to make a scan of your passport and send it to a resource and you also have to pass an exam. You will get 25 euro-cents for each download, but as soon as your income will reach the 500 euro mark, the price will increase to 33 euro-cents per download.
2. Pexels – photo stock, where you have to pass the exam and to present the corresponding documents. Here your income will depend on the status of the author. In addition, you must upload a certain number of images to move to the next level.
3. Adobe Stock – quite loyal platform, great for beginners and artists. Co-operation begins as soon as an author has registered on the service.
4. Dreamstime is a foreign stock, where it is not necessary to register and pass an exam. You can post vector and RAW images. It is worth to say that such format is more expensive than the better quality JPG.
5. Stockvault – cooperation begins with an exam of 20 materials. It all depends on how many of them will pass moderation and will depend on the weekly limit on the sale. Accepted 90-100% will allow author to upload 100 images to the portfolio. 3 images can be uploaded if up to 60% approved. Earnings will vary: photo content from €5-3500, videos from €180 to €4500. If your material is downloaded for promotional purposes, you will earn more than for simple design use.

What to shoot to earn income from your work

To start working with any of the above platforms, analyze consumer demand, keywords, stock reports, and feedback from authors. All this information will help you decide in which direction to work.

The main thing to pay attention to is the demand and the commercial component of the material. To do this, do some research on the target audience and its queries.

Note that each site has its own set of popular topics. Let us consider the most popular ones:

• Ecology.
• 80’s prints and textures.
• Home office.
• Futurism.
• Images captured by drone.
• Objects on plain background or with contrast.
• Objects on transparent background.
• Family, relationships, romance.
• Sports.
• Icons in thematic selection.
• Business.
• Travel.
• Holidays.
• Seasons.

Please note, your work can generate a steady income if it’s interesting. For this purpose, your portfolio must contain at least 200 works, and it must be constantly updated.

How much you can earn on photostocks

Collaboration with photostocks is a passive income opportunity. You may earn money per image on permanent basis. Do not be lazy to study the market and find out which subjects are more demanded at the moment of your cooperation.

Your income will depend on how exclusive your material is, its size, what it will be used for and how often it will be used, as well as the pricing policy at the chosen site.

Earnings on photostocks are unlimited and individual for each individual author. You can start with 10 euros per month, then your income will be 1000 euros and more. A beginner most often earns up to 5 thousand EUR/month, but after 2 years if you put in a lot of work you can earn up to 40 thousand EUR/month.

In order to estimate their possible income, the author must understand that one quality image can bring about 38 EUR/month. It is impossible to guess the reaction of the users, but the income will be there.