You can make money by selling photos, because there is a huge demand for quality these days. The times when a website was “text only” faded away. Now, webmasters as well as any website visitors will look for appealing design elements and to archive great results we all need stylish logos, icons, menus and, of course, photos.In this blog post I will cover two aspects: what you need to take great photos and how to make money out of them.
It’s easy to take a photo…
… You may say. But the truth is that, in order to take photos which are good enough to meet a potential customer’s expectations, you need some good stuff to work with:
A good camera
Nowadays there is a huge range of cameras to choose from (SLR, DSLR), different lenses for different shooting conditions, lighting devices, backgrounds and so on. Remember, you can’t make money online by selling poor quality photos. However, with a quality camera you can take quality images, thus exponentially increasing your chances of monetizing your work.
Some knowledge
Taking quality shots is not as simple as pressing one button when having your camera on automatic settings. Maybe the knowledge you need to take quality photos is more important than the knowledge needed to make money by selling photos online. Many people say that photography is an art and somehow they are right. You have to be familiar with some simple concepts like: shutter speed, exposure, ISO values, light angles, complementary colors. But of course, among all these you’ll need to have that artistic style that designers have. You’ll have to see the beauty in front of your eyes and you also have to know how to immortalize that image.
Making money by selling photos online implies post-processing software
Our life is more and more driven by technology and the photography industry makes no exception. Sometimes it is necessary to add a shade, crop, scale, modify the size of an image, rotate and blur your photo before selling it. Usually software can enhance the raw material in order to be more appealing to the eye. And, you have guessed, the more appealing a photo is, the more views it will attract, the more money you can make by selling it online. One of the best software is the well known Photoshop (maybe too good :) ). Do you think that the skin of those models on Vogue’s front cover is naturally… perfect? Nope, but Photoshop can make miracles with a photo.There are also other image processing software possibilities, but if you master Photoshop I think it’s enough.
Ok, I’m ready. Where do I sell my images?
So, are you ready to make money by selling your art work? Awesome! There are a lot of stock image portals/vendors you can use. Some of the most popular are iStockPhoto, Fotolia and Photos.com.Upon registering with them, you will become instantly a seller. Their editors will review your images and will ask you to agree with their terms and conditions as well as their fees. Yeah, they also have fees: usually they’ll take some percentage of a successful sale.
Conclusion
Making money online by selling photos is a great way to monetize your hobby. We all know how important it is to combine business with fun. So, if you’re one of those curly hair guys, always with a photo camera in his hands, don’t be hesitating, just take the next step and earn some cash out of your skill.