What is Microstock?

In a nutshell, selling your photos and images on microstock agencies is no different in principle to selling on the traditional stock agencies. Commissions range from 20% to more than 80% depending on the size of the image and which agency you sell with but there is one big difference. The cost to buyers is ridiculously low! Images are often sold for as little as $1.00 or less. In fact the name microstock refers to the micropayments made for each image sold when compared to the apparently higher commissions paid by the traditional method of selling.

Still here? Good because despite this apparent giveaway of images, it actually turns out to be a very lucrative business model for photographers and image makers. Remember I said that on average, a photographer can expect to earn around £1.00 or $2.00 per image per year and that selling through microstock agencies you could expect at least 5 time that?

I like to think of it as caviar and beans. Caviar demands a high price (despite the fact it tastes like sh***) and it sells quite rarely. Beans demand a very low price but sell on a daily basis hundreds of times over. Which company would you rather have shares in? And that's exactly the principle behind microstock.

Yes you get a bigger single payment if an image sells with the traditional high price agency but that's the drawback, if it sells. Images on microstock sites sell like beans and that's how you make regular cash and more of it on a daily basis. In fact from my own experience at least 5 times more (I've tried the traditional method). And the same images on microstock will sell over and over without adding more providing you with a regular passive income.

Who is Buying Your Images?

Well it's a completely different market, just like caviar and beans. The recent explosion of the internet, home computing, small businesses, personal and business web sites has discovered vast new market of image buyers. In line with that there has also been a gigantic increase in the number of small design companies to cater for this vast new market of potential buyers that want images to promote their business, web site, design company etc. None of the above could ever afford or justify paying hundreds or even thousands of pounds to buy images from the traditional agencies so they look for cheaper options and those options are provided by the microstock sites that sell images online allowing the buyer to download images directly to their own computer. So you don't sell 1 image per year for every hundred in your portfolio, you end up selling 10, 20, 100 and more images per day and yes it might be the same image selling 100 times. My best selling image has now sold over 1,000 times. This is the bread and butter of microstock and it works!

There are literally millions of businesses across the globe and more than 90% of those are run with less than 5 people. This is the market for your images. There has never been a greater demand for images of all kinds from photographs to illustrations and vector images and advances in technology means that the digital camera you own provides images of good enough quality to satisfy that demand. In all cases, a 4MP point and shoot camera is enough as long as you can compose and take a decent photograph with it.

	You probably already own a camera like this one and this is enough to get you started in stock photography with a microstock sites.
Photographer: Xiao Fang Hu		Photographer: Nikita Buida

What Sort of Images are Needed?

Well the easiest way to see is to check out the sites on the Where Do I Sell? link above and look at the images currently selling. You will probably be pleasantly surprised to see that you can already take photos as good as, if not better than many of those that are currently selling. All of the images on this web site come from microstock agencies. if you are hobbyist or enthusiast, you probably already have images that could sell sat on your hard drive. Better to let them sit on a microstock site and make money for you at the same time. Certain types of image outsell others by a factor of 20, in particular, lifestyle images of people, business concepts, computers and internet, food and jewelery all sell very well as do illustrations. If you want to earn more then these are the subjects to aim for. Realistically you could make a living with only 2,000 or so images of that type, especially people images.

One Final Thing! What is Your Image Worth?

Well if it's sat on your hard drive, it's not worth anything. Yes you could sell a single image for a lot more on a traditional stock web site. In fact many of the resistors use that argument to argue against the principle of the microstock business model. To succeed at microstock you have to think not what a single image is worth but rather what is your portfolio worth?

This table should put things into perspective. As you can see, don't expect to make a fortune overnight but the figures clearly show that with a bit of time and effort it is possible to make a very nice second income and with a bit more time and effort you could make a living at it. Many photographers do just that and have done it within the space of a year or two by building up their portfolio to a couple of thousand images.

Low and high estimates based on actual experience. Average earnings from an average photographer.

Maybe your next camera will look more like this one.

Photographer: Rohit Seth