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BY SHAMIL NIZAMOV

Digital cameras have revolutionized the photo industry, and as a result more and more people are becoming amateur or semi-pro photographers. They are doing a great job, but while at worst photo shots are covered “by dust” on computers’ hard disks, at best they are uploaded to Web photo galleries for friends. At the same time, some of these pictures could serve as a residual income and cover at least photo hobby expenses.

Most beginning photographers are afraid to submit photos to stock agencies; furthermore, most of those agencies are asking for extremely high quality pictures that can be made only by professional cameras. But have you heard about microstocks that are not so hectic about RAW images?

If many people keep telling you that your photos look like postcards; images you’ve uploaded to an online gallery are getting high rankings; others frequently ask you for the original files to use your images; or some magazines are even willing to publish your shots,  then you definitely have to start thinking about the next step in your career as a photographer. And microstocks can be a good starting point!
 

Why are they so cool?

Stock agencies have three major features:

• The same picture — we are talking about a good or a high demand picture — could be sold thousand of times and therefore keeps paying you. Each payment may be too small to consider separately, but multiplied in numerous sales, they could amount to a significant income.
   
• Photos might be sold worldwide. It means you could be living in Asia, for example, but your photo bought by a Web designer in Canada. Are you proud?
   
• Microstocks are online and therefore working 24/7 — no weekends and no holidays off. The effort applied only once to take a photo and to specify good keywords (there are a lot of software applications and Web sites, like ArtHelpDesk.com, that can help with that) will be constantly working for you.

Keywords, what are they?

All photos in stocks and microstocks are categorized and could be found by keywords. For example, the good way to describe a girl reading a book in a park may be: ”blonde, girl, beautiful, long, legs, book, study, park, outdoor, reading, learning, student, library, pretty.” Some microstocks insist you specify at least a dozen keywords. Usually, the number of keywords is about 20 to 50. Some microstocks can help you by listing related keywords you can pick through for the the most relevant. Ask questions about singular and plural forms of the same keywords, as search mechanisms may differ from stock to stock.

The best way is to specify keywords within the picture file itself (for example, in PhotoShop, you can do this through the menu File | File Info | Document Title, Description, Keyword). This will save you a lot of time in the case of multiple uploads.

If you are hesitant about which keywords better describe your picture, try to search for similar photos and see what others are using as keywords. You might be surprised! Again, keywords and sometimes the sequence of keywords are very important and will allow your photo to be found among thousands of others.
 

Is it worth it?

The most interesting question: What’s the income? Well, based on my own and others’ experiences, it is possible to say that an average amateur photographer with about 100-200 photos online and about 10-20 photos added every month is able to achieve a sales level between $50-300 per month. More skilled photographers with a simple home studio, with about 200-300 photos online and 50-100 new photos every month can earn up to $1,000. Not bad for residual income at all! So keep going!

Shamil Nizamov is a freelance writer based in Vancouver, BC. His areas of interest include photography, Web development and e-commerce. He wries for ArtHelpDesk.com, a site dedicated to freelance photography.