Introduction
If you’re looking for a side hustle that you can get started with fairly quickly and at a very low cost, then selling your photos as stock images might be a really good option.
This is a side hustle I had never heard of until a few weeks ago when I started to do some further research into side hustle options that you can do from anywhere.
What I discovered is that there are many websites out there where you can list photos you have taken to be sold as stock images for people to buy and use for a variety of uses. This might be for websites, blogs or advertising. They way that you make money is that you receive royalties on the sales of your photos by the platform(s) that you list them on.
I found this blog post very useful to provide you with some of the ins and outs of the different platforms that are available: https://www.shopify.com/nz/blog/how-to-sell-photos-online
Rules and requirements
There are requirements around the settings your photos need to have to meet the criteria to be sold, so make sure you do some research into what is required before you go taking lots of photos. The requirements vary between different providers, so make sure that you find one that suits your needs. For example, some websites require that you sell your photos exclusively to them. So, if you want to post your photos to lots of sites then this might not be the right site for you.
One important thing to note is that you need to have permission to use photographs with people or recognisable property. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t have people in the photos. However, you will need to include release forms with your submission to show that you have permission to use the image.
However, if you have photos that meet the criteria then you are able to get those photos loaded up fairly quickly and start earning fairly quickly.
Where I’m at with this side hustle
My approach to this so far has been to use photos that I have already taken that meet the criteria. What is means is that it has literally cost me nothing more than the time it has taken me to look over our photos and load them to a website where your images can be found.
I’ve signed up for a Shutterstock account and have loaded some of our travel photos there to see how it goes there. I also intend to sign up for some of the other sites and try those out too. I have chosen sites that don’t require exclusive use of the photos so that I am able to test out more sites and have a wider reach.
I’ll keep working through photos that I have already taken before I go out and start taking anymore. At least now when we are travelling I can think about it and try and take some shots that are suitable.
What I’ve learned so far
Some of the reasons why my photos were rejected were that they included recognisable logos or branding, they were repetitive (e.g. I had already loaded a very similar shot), or because of quality issues such as focus issues, too much noise, and over or under exposure.
A lot of my photos were of wildlife or nature, so didn’t have any issues with needing permissions. The one photo that was rejected for branding was a landscape photo with boats in the image, so there must have been a logo on one of the boats that was picked up.
Payments
The royalties you can get vary depending on the site you list on, and whether your photos are exclusive to that site or not.
Through Shutterstock you can receive payment through Paypal, so I have signed up to receive payments that way. You are paid out each time you reach $35 USD.
So far I’ve not received any royalties on my photos, but I now have 65 photos approved on Shutterstock. Hopefully these will be available for sale in the next few days so I will let you know how it goes with sales.
