Creating stock photos profitable?

I was curious if you are photographer and wanted to take photos to list on stock photo websites... Is it pretty profitable?

I was in the air on if I should post this in this form or the graphic design Forum... But I guess photography is more close to video. I bought a camera to start doing YouTube vlogging, and my fiance takes it from time to time to take nature photos. He's always been into nature. I'm looking at these photos and they are just amazing. Im not talking about amazing because my fiance took them and I love everything he does, they are just beautiful.

I was looking up some stock footage of b-roll footage to use in transitions from when I do my Vlogs to going out on the town ( I live in a major city so there's a lot of footage of the skyline, sunset, sunrise, etc. I thought it'd be cool if I was doing a vlog talking about going to a place in Midtown, that I do my speaking introduction, cut to b-roll footage of a time-lapse of a place in the Midtown area, and then cut to me on location) and it got me thinking about websites like istock, Getty Images, Etc that have stock photos for sale.

I feel like regardless, I'm going to just put his photos on some website to see what it does. They are beautiful straight up out the camera, no retouching needed... But if there are some that need it, I can do it. So I see this as a good little team Venture that we could do. He takes the photos, I'd list them online.

I was wondering if there's anybody on here that actually does that and if they know about how profitable it can be. I'm sure there are certain types of photos that are more profitable than others, like there may be more demand for car and nature photos than abandoned warehouses... But I feel like it doesn't hurt just to put it out there looking for a bite. Definitely not trying to get rich off of this, but a little extra money here and there never hurts.

If I did want to increase the chances of someone purchasing a license to use the photos, what would be some options? I was thinking of maybe making a Blog and posting the links to the stock photo websites and doing some great SEO on the website. But I'm not sure if I really will go that in depth just to get some sales on some stock images, but it was an idea.

I actually have no idea how much traffic these stock photo websites get and how many sales it converts to. I just assumed like most marketplaces where people are already going there for a common goal that it just makes a good hub for passive income and that if you do a lot of photos, with a lot of variety, and a lot of in demand subjects... That it would eventually pool some consistent sales.

My friend who has been working as a photographer for a few years makes $50/m from Fotolia. You won't get rich selling stock photos, but you can definitely make some additional money with it.

sergey007 said:

My friend who has been working as a photographer for a few years makes $50/m from Fotolia. You won't get rich selling stock photos, but you can definitely make some additional money with it.

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Honestly like an extra $50 or so is pretty decent for me. That's gas money, going out to eat, enough to save up for a little vacation over time. Do you know if he's only listed on one site? And do you know how often he list new photos or the type of photos that he lists?

Snap 10000 photos in 2 years, for example, in nature niche, and uploaded all them to istock or shutterstock, and others, you will earn more than $1K per month, but the question is:


how you get that "10000" high quality photos?

Apparently even 10 years ago, a ton of photographer doing here and sell their photos, all niches covered and they earn a lot, travel the world while count their money in the account, but today is 2018, so be prepared you will face god damn high competition, in every niche.

Tips:

1) upload to as much platforms as possible, or only 2-3 popular platforms
2) yes you can build a blog, but how to rank this blog would be a tough task, sure, you can even build a membership site, but the users will need the top-level quality image, which I think you maybe face hard times to produce that quality.
3) arbitrage between platforms does work, but its hard.

terrycody said:

Snap 10000 photos in 2 years, for example, in nature niche, and uploaded all them to istock or shutterstock, and others, you will earn more than $1K per month, but the question is:


how you get that "10000" high quality photos?

Apparently even 10 years ago, a ton of photographer doing here and sell their photos, all niches covered and they earn a lot, travel the world while count their money in the account, but today is 2018, so be prepared you will face god damn high competition, in every niche.

Tips:

1) upload to as much platforms as possible, or only 2-3 popular platforms
2) yes you can build a blog, but how to rank this blog would be a tough task, sure, you can even build a membership site, but the users will need the top-level quality image, which I think you maybe face hard times to produce that quality.
3) arbitrage between platforms does work, but its hard.

Click to expand...

Thank you for this. This is kind of the idea i had when it came to speculating..... That if he just had damn near 10 thousand photos up on popular sites, obviously that would amount to some type of profit when it comes to playing the odds. In reality, an extra $50-$100 a month it's all cool to me. Anything more than that is just a bonus.

He already has about 100 unique photos that I could post. I say unique because they're all in different locations, not different angles of one location. If I actually include the photos of one location and different angles / shot, then that about quadruples at the least the number of usable photos I believe we could list

Right now, I'm actually trying to invest in vlogging and further my music career (I used to be signed to a major record label, I have a already decent following as independent artist... But it's not always my main income. I'm trying to fixiate myself back as that being my income), and music alone is a lot of money you have to invest. So in that sense, any other little money that can go towards gas money, food, and other real small funds, but really make or break your daily life...this would supplement that. I own my house and don't have a car note, so income like this would allow me to save my whole paycheck towards my savings/investments, because I barely spend $200 on food and stuff like that... Because I'm a very good shopper LOL. I'm very frugal and definitely an extreme couponer. Like they say, millionaires need at least 7 streams of income...So I guess this is one for me LOL