You can't call yourself a PRO PHOTOGRAPHER until you earn some money from it, right? You can get someone to book your service for a wedding or take a picture for their drivers license.....or you can just get yourself into one of the many on-line stock photography agencies that to me is the best way to start. You can do it from home and you can use any pictures you already have in your computer ( good quality ones ).

These agencies sell thousands of pictures to companies, designers and other people for commercial or personal use, and everytime they do, they give you a commission.

Get Started!

The first you have to do is to join or sign up to the site. Some sites will ask you to upload a picture of your ID too, so do not lie when entering your personal information, I have been rejected for writing my initials intead of my full family name.

Once you have your profile, they will ask you to upload a sample of your work, some sites will tell you how many pictures they need. This is more serious than it looks, so make sure you upload nice pictures, and by nice I mean technically perfect ( no noise, no color aberration, no soft focus or soft light and contrast....). Upload simple pictures of different styles to show what you can do,  with a nice composition and minimum editing ( levels, contrast and noise reduction should be enough ).

Do not upload fancy pictures for the test such as landscapes of a sunset, blended skies, Black and White, HDR....These pictures tend to have some flaws, and they will find them and reject them. Don't upload more than 1 picture of the same subject and style and don't upload pictures of people or pictures than can see the brand or a logo if you don't have the official model or proprety release ( Permission from the model or the owner of the brand or logo to sell it ). 

When you upload the first batch there is a waiting period when the agencies will review each one of your pictures and decide if you are what they are looking for and can sell your work. This can take from 2 days to 1 week, depends on the agency and the uploads they get.

If they reject your pictures, DO NOT GIVE UP. They will comment on each picture about the reason why it was rejected so just learn and upload different and better ones. Keep in mind that these sites won't accept any snap shot you took so work a little harder to get in.

After they accept your pictures and your ID you can start uploading files. They will review every picture and reject the ones that they don't like or need so always think about quality before quantity. Titles and Kewords are very important to let people find your photo among thousands of other pictures of the same subject so think well about what in your picture is different from the others.

Don't forget to update your payment details and read the payment conditions, most sites work with credits and you can cash the credits once you reach a certain amount via PyaPal account or wahtever service you use.

and now you are ready to start earning some money from your photography!

Higher commissions.

Normally most sites offer a 25% or even 15% commissions which seems a little low at first. You need to build a wide and quality portfolio in order to earn decent money. You can earn more money if someone buys a big size file which could mean 30$ for you.

There are ways to get a higher commission, and that depends on the kind of "contrat" you have with the agency. There are 3 standard ways to work with the agencies, athough not all of them  have these options:

- Non- exclusive: This contract is the standard one. Means that you keep the rights to upload the same pictures to as many other agencies as you    want. This is nice when you start so you can see which agency works better and gets you the most eranings and also to get maximum exposure of  your work. The cons are that you get lower commissions and no special treatment such as higher ranking in the lists.

- Exclusive material: This means that you can work with different agencies, but if you choose to upload 1 photo as exclusive to  one agency, you can't upload the same photo to any other site, sometimes even to your own website or social network. That means, that only the agency to which you upload that picture will have it. With this, you get a higher commission when you sell that one picture, but depends on the "marketing" that the agency wants to give to your picture to get exposure and someone to buy it. You can just choose which photo you want to be exclusive when you upload it by checking a box.

- Exclusive photographer: Well, it's clear, with this kind of account you can only upload picture to 1 agency and you are not allowed to work with others, or use the pictures you send them to your own sites or social media. With this you get the highest commissions and the agency normally works harder to make your work stand out and get higher in the search rankings. Agencies are interested in this kind of contract because they want their content to be as exclusive as possible in order to attract more customers who also want their work to be as unique as possible.

Note: You can always end the exclusive photographer or exclusive material contract if you decide to go free! Not all sites have these options.

Some sites offer you different rates according to your accepted ratio, this means if you upload 100 pictures and only 20 are accepted, your commission will be lower than if from that 100 pictures 80 are accepted. This also works for the maximum allowed uploads per day, higher accepted ratio means that you can upload more pictures on the same day.

As a new contributor you can expect to make as little as 20-50$ the first months if you have some quality work, but it will improve.

Tips.

Always consider what the agency needs and sells best by looking at the best sellers and most viewed photos.

Upload only quality files and take a moment to give them a title, description and keywords that might make your pictures stand out. Buyers won't go as far as 5 pages to find a picture.

Start taking pictures of different styles even they are not the kind you usually would take

Think as a buyer, not as a photographer. I normally take only landscape and travel pictures, but now I'm doing some studio shots of some objects, corporate, and things that might be interesting for designers and advertisment agencies.

Best sellers normally are: corporate themes, people at work, people together doing some activity, home decoration, food and kitchen, team sports, holidays and special days ( Chistmas, Easter, Valentaine's day...) and isolated objects. This last one, designers will buy them as long as you did all the work to really isolate the object from the background so they don't have to do it themselves, so it only works if you do it perfectly.

If you are starting, do not go for exclusive contracts, instead post pictures on as many sites as you can to get maximum exposure of your work and once you have a high quality portfolio then think about working for only the agency that meant a higher commission to you over the months.

Check the agencies tutorials on keyowrding and what they need, that will save you a lot of time and you can focus on the topics in demand. Demand is mor important than what you feel like photographing when you think about sales.

Some sites offer you more commissions and extra earnings by advertising their site and get new buyers and contributors. Check them out!.

Best on-line stock photography sites to sell your work.

There are many others but these are the 6 I am on right now.

Probably one of the best and that will bring more income to you. Make sure all your personal information is correct and your ID too. The selective process is a bit strict, you have to upload your 10 best photos and wait for approval, they will check the pictures at full size and in detail and get back to you with the veredict. They reject any picture that has a little flaw but If 1 of the 10 pictures passes, congratualtions, you are in!! Upload simple pictures, very sharp, with good lighting and no noise or chromatic aberration. If they reject all of them....try again with different ones! The review period can take from 24 to 48h or a little longer. You get 0.25-30$ depending on the size of the file.

Adobe owned stock photography agency gives good commission and you can cash the credits anytime you want, there is no need to wait until you reach a minimum. The period for acceptance takes a bit long.

It has a very low commission of a 15% but the exposure and website are really nice and full of resources for you to improve and learn about this business, a good place to start. 

One of the highest commissions in the bussiness, 50% and up to 80% depending on conditions. Full of resources and useful information, one of my favourite places. Reviews for acceptance take long time, I guess due to the popuairty of this site.

Probalby the fastes and easiest way to start selling pictures. Can stock offers 25-50% commissions, perfect to start. To be accepted you have to submit your best 3 pictures first, after that you can start uploading and each picture will be reviewed, usually in less than 12h. Very good site.

Very good reviews from this site that offers 50-60% commissions and has an extent number of libraries which means a lot of competition ( of course ). The pictures you upload must be big in size, 16Mb or larger so make sure everything is perfect before you do.

Other stock photography sites to sell.