I sold 29 pictures on Shutterstock in April and made....

[Fezant Pluckah]

$8.88!

Very soon I shall be a millionaire!

[CDP]

Does the dollar price mean you now have to fill in a US tax form?

[Fezant Pluckah]

God knows. I have to earn $100 before they pay me, so I reckon by Xmas 2027 I'll have accumulated enough loot to worry about that!

[GetCarter]

iTunes really helps my finances:

[Davel]

Would you say that it's changed your lifestyle?

[Fezant Pluckah]

GetCarter said:

iTunes really helps my finances:

I'm clearly a much more successful photographer than you are musician, Steve!

Davel said:

Would you say that it's changed your lifestyle?

Fundamentally. By the time they've converted my dollars into sterling and sent it to me, I'll probably have £2, so can go and splash out on a Happy Meal.

[Simpo Two]

Fezant Pluckah said:

God knows. I have to earn $100 before they pay me, so I reckon by Xmas 2027 I'll have accumulated enough loot to worry about that!

That's very clever. Most people will never get to $100 so Shutterstock get to keep it all and the contributors have worked for X hours for precisely nothing.

[itsnotarace]

Fezant Pluckah said:

$8.88!

Very soon I shall be a millionaire!

It's a game of numbers. How many photos do you have on there?

[Fezant Pluckah]

Simpo Two said:

That's very clever. Most people will never get to $100 so Shutterstock get to keep it all and the contributors have worked for X hours for precisely nothing.

Oh ye of little faith!

I've accumulated the massive sum of $25 in 4 months. So in theory I should only take a year to earn myself $100.

Interestingly, I've not even had a zoom on any of my pictures on Alamy.

Clearly there's money to be made in all of this!

[baz7175]

For all that Getty may be somewhat of a pain to deal with, I've made several hundred from only a few photographs.

[Fezant Pluckah]

itsnotarace said:

It's a game of numbers. How many photos do you have on there?

About 120 at present.

[RobDickinson]

baz7175 said:

For all that Getty may be somewhat of a pain to deal with, I've made several hundred from only a few photographs.

Yeah, I've not long been with getty and slowly building up my files but have made a decent amount from sale son there already.

[binliner]

Fezant Pluckah said:

Oh ye of little faith!

I've accumulated the massive sum of $25 in 4 months. So in theory I should only take a year to earn myself $100.

Interestingly, I've not even had a zoom on any of my pictures on Alamy.

But when you do make a sale at Alamy your cut won't begin with $0. When I started dabbling with stock I used istockphoto and alamy for a year, I made 10 times more sales on istock but ten times more money on alamy.

[Robbie B]

RobDickinson said:

baz7175 said:

For all that Getty may be somewhat of a pain to deal with, I've made several hundred from only a few photographs.

Yeah, I've not long been with getty and slowly building up my files but have made a decent amount from sale son there already.

Not that I'm of the standard of you two, but how did you go about doing that? I've Googled it and there isn't much helpful information. Do you have to email them or is their a form to fill in or something?

[RobDickinson]

They asked me to join, dont know how.

Theres a flickr group you can join and submit 5 images so they can judge and add you to their list, but its not open for submission all the time.

Looks like I'm also getting some pics up on a local stock site, http://www.hedgehoghouse.com/ , this seems non exclusive and a much better deal for me (than getty) from a % take, but it does depend on if anything sells!

[Oakey]

I uploaded 3-4 photos to istockpohot back in 2006. There's $40 sitting in there at the moment. I keep meaning to take more photos and upload them but never get round to it.

Photos of New York or iced beverages seem to sell

[Ed_P]

The secret is to undertstand what's "stock-worthy", and whenever an opportunity arises, take some shots and upload them. Gradually, the images numbers (and the income) rises. I've got around 300-500 images on a selection of sites and reckon to clear $1,000 - $1,500 a year. It's peanuts per sale, but that's how I funded most of my equipment initially. Since I started with micro-stock (in 2007), I've had 13,500+ sales.