Take photos of products and add affiliate links

You can do this with T-shirts, books, or pretty much any product you have that Amazon sells. If you sign up with the Amazon Associates program, you can get links to specific product pages, and if someone uses your link to buy any product, you get a certain percent of their purchase! Take photos of popular items from unique angles and be sure to properly tag and caption them in order to get as much traffic to your photostream as possible.

Promote your own store at Cafepress.com

Sites like Cafepress.com allow you to sell physical products like mugs, calendars, shirts and other items with your own custom designs and photos. If you have particular photos that are well suited for these kinds of products, set up an account on Cafepress and then link to the product page from your Flickr photo. If you think about it, it’s a lot more common for someone to buy a physical product like a mug rather than a digital photo file on the internet. Try taking and using photos that would make great gift ideas, and try to market particular products towards specific holidays during the calendar year.

Market your photos or service from your Flickr Profile Page

As people view your photos, they will often visit your Flickr Profile page, so be sure to include relevant info and to “sell yourself.” That means if you have a professional site for real estate/wedding/portrait photos, be sure to mention that and add a link. If you are selling prints on another site like Imagekind, then be sure to link to your portfolio there as well. If you have won any awards or prizes be sure to include that. This is almost like an online version of your photography resume, so put your best foot forward!

People like people

Other types of images that are high in demand at stock photo sites is of people. The thing to remember is that microstock sites will require you to submit a model release form for any images with people in them, so be sure to obtain a form from your models before you submit any photos of people to stock photo sites. Photos of people doing business, or dressed in corporate style clothing can be quite valuable. Whether they’re standing together and just posing (but clearly in a business environment), or in action giving presentations, running meetings, working collaboratively, etc. These photos can be highly sought after by businesses and corporate customers.

Use the seasons to you advantage

Seasonal images can also be great for stock photo sites, as business will need photos for seasonal advertisements and sales. Just think of what the stereotypical images of winter, spring, summer and fall. If you have snow in your area, take photos of people (especially kids) playing in the snow, or of just different objects in the snow – use your imagination. For spring, flowers, rainbows, plants, gardening, cleaning, etc are all types of photos you could take. In summer, the beach, barbecues, swimming, tanning, hiking, or any other summer activity would be great to photograph. And in the fall, the leaves changing colors, people raking, harvest photos of veggies, could be good candidates. Also think about holidays and structure your photos around Valentine’s Day, Labor Day, Halloweeen, Thanksgiving and Christmas – what kind of photos could businesses use for those holidays?

What sites to use

There are a variety of sites and I’ll just list a few here. I’d recommend you start with these sites, but also feel free to conduct your own searches and see what works best for you. Shutterstock.com is pretty popular, and the way it works is that people pay for subscriptions to download up to 25 photos a day. Because of the mass quantities of photos, photographers usually only make about 25 cents each time your photo is downloaded. But it is easy to use this site, and if you have lots of photos you can submit them and over time you’ll get more and more downloads! Istockphoto.com is another good site. You have a chance to earn more money per photo, in the range of $1 to $10 or more each time your image is sold. Additionally, the more photos you upload and customers download your photos, the higher % commission you will get paid per photo. Other sites include canstockphoto.com, fotolia.com, and bigstockphoto.com. Good luck submitting to microstock photo sites!

You don’t need a real fancy camera or lots of expensive gear. In fact, I’ve even sold photos on microstock sites with my little point and shoot, and even with my iPhone! What’s the secret? Well, you have to know the different types of photos that people will buy on microstock sites, and it might not be what you think. If you’re anything like me, you probably take mostly photos of yourself, your friends, maybe some landscapes or flowers. But these aren’t the types of images that people are willing to pay for on a microstock website.

If I was running a business, what photos would I PAY for?

Put yourself in the shoes of someone who is willing to BUY photos from a website and what would you get? Well, most people who will buy photos are running some kind of business and want to buy photos to make a profit. One example would be someone who is running a restaurant or food-related site. They want to post photos of specific food, say tiramisu, but they don’t have any photos handy to use. They might be able to find some free photos, but those are usually pretty low in quality. So instead, they turn to a microstock site and look for a photo of tiramisu that they think will help them make money.

Take photos of specific objects

Food is one specific example of photos that can sell, but in general, photos of products (though not with brand names) are good candidates for acceptance by microstock sites. Be sure to place the objects against a clean background and isolate them from any other objects that would disturb the image. A white background is usually preferable. Even if you don’t have your own photo studio, you might try using natural diffused light from a window, filtered with a translucent curtain, shower curtain or something else to diffuse the light. You can use a white sheet or white butcher paper in the background. Remember, you can always clean up the image some in Photoshop.

Check out part two of this series:  How to Make Money by Selling Photos on Microstock Photography Sites Part 2.