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Stock photography is used by companies and media agencies every day. It appears in advertising, news stories, product packaging, and websites as a simple, low-cost alternative to original photography. The growth of the internet, from less than quarter of a billion websites in 2010 to over 1.88 billion today, means there are now more organizations than ever licensing and using the same stock photos. That creates a gap in the market for high-quality, low-competition stock photos, which makes them a great potential source of passive income for a budding photographer.
Read on to find out more about stock photography, what types of photographs to take, and what you could earn by selling photos.
What is stock photography?
Stock photography is a type of photography that’s licensed from a library of pre-existing images, generally for commercial use. In news stories on TV or on a website, you may see that photography accompanying the story is credited to a company, rather than to an individual. In those cases, that’s because the owner of the photograph is a stock photo library, not the photographer themselves. The photographer has sold the rights to their photo to the stock library, who now owns the image and is free to license it to anyone.
It's not just news organizations who use stock photos, though. Marketing companies, product designers, bloggers, web designers, and pretty much anyone else who regularly uses photography in their work will license photos from stock agencies. It’s quicker, more predictable, and more cost-effective than hiring a photographer to go out and get a specific shot, and it ensures usage falls within the limits of copyright restrictions.
For instance, a blogger might look for a shot of a coconut farmer for an article about the difference between organic and inorganic coconut milk varieties. Blogging is a great way to make passive income, but it doesn’t make financial sense to spend money on sending a photographer to take that photo themself. So, rather than finding a shot online and reposting it without the owner’s permission, the blogger could license a stock photo. This way they can legally use the image indefinitely within one specific article.
Today, the internet has massively increased the channels through which the world accesses information. As a result, stock photography is more in-demand than ever. Yet, the more organizations that are using stock photography, the more obvious it is that it’s not original content, so it’s harder than ever to stand out from the crowd with stock photos.
That’s why organizations are now looking to alternative sources of photography who can offer something different from the big, long-established stock libraries. Fortunately for photographers, with the right tools and marketing, it’s now easier than ever to run your own stock library, rather than selling photos to the established giants of the industry. All you need is an ecommerce website that lets you display your photography within a beautiful template, take virtual payments for it, and allow users to search by category and title.
What types of stock photos should you take?
The great thing about stock photography is that people want to license images for a huge variety of uses. Everything from a snapshot of a family holiday to a still life of a vase of flowers on a table could be useful for an organization, depending on their needs at a specific time.
To get your stock photography website off to the best possible start, think about including the types of photos most searched for by organizations.
Popular stock photography categories include:
Lifestyle photos
Images with negative space (i.e., blank space where text can be overlaid)
Examples of cultural diversity (e.g., same-sex parents, multi-ethnic families)
Everyday activities (e.g., shopping, socializing, and working)
Drone photography
Home office settings
Sustainability and environmentalism
When planning which types of photography to focus on, think about what you can achieve with the minimum effort and financial outlay, but also consider the types of photography that companies are looking to license and what you’d enjoy working on. For inspiration, browse the bigger stock libraries for popular categories and look at the different types of commercial photography used around you every day.
How much can you earn from selling stock photography?
The amount you earn from selling stock photos depends on the size of your stock library, the quality of the photos, and how easy it is for customers to discover your site. The world’s biggest stock libraries are used by major organizations everywhere. However, don’t expect to compete with agencies with libraries filled with millions of photos. If your online stock library features only your own photographs, it’s going to take some time to take the photos, edit and upload them, and start marketing them.
One way to increase your income from stock photography is to buy the rights to other people’s photographs so that you have more photos to license. The bigger and more varied your photo library, the more chance there is that someone will want to use one of your stock shots. However, this takes some financial investment on your part, and you may prefer to grow your stock library slowly and steadily as a side project to earn extra passive income. Every time you license a photo to a customer, you will make money, so even with a small library, it’s possible to make a significant amount over time.
Another possible income stream from your stock library would be to sell custom products featuring images or prints of your photography. A third-party supplier can print your photography onto shirts, hats, posters, and other items. With a web builder like Squarespace, you can easily connect your store to on-demand printers that will not only manufacture your merch, but also ship it directly to your customers.
Uploading stock photography to an ecommerce site isn’t a guaranteed route to overnight success. You have to have a good eye for composition, an understanding of the kinds of photos organizations want, an easily accessible site from which to license your work, and a plan to market your stock library. However, if you have all that, and if you build up an ongoing bank of high-quality photography, you could find yourself making a healthy passive income in a relatively short time.