How to Get Stock Photography Pictures That Sell

Photography is a great hobby that can be used to earn extra passive income through selling of pictures on online stock photography websites like Alamy, ShutterStock, Getty Images or Adobe Stock. However, not all your photographs will sell and you might get discouraged in the first few months. Fortunately, this article will teach you how to identify what types of photographs are in demand and how to make them visible to people.

What is Stock Photography?

Stock photography is basically supplying photographs (usually generic) which people or organizations can license and use. While our focus is on photographs, the stock can range from animations, videos, computer graphics, etc, giving a wide range for creatives to play with.

There are many stock photography websites, but I personally use the following because they offer payment options available to my country.

1. Alamy;
2. ShutterStock;
3. Adobe Stock, and;
4. iStock (Getty Images).

Before choosing a website to sell your stock photographs, it is a good idea to research the type of licensing options available, payment options, photograph requirements etc, before signing up.

The Basics to Sell Your Photographs

There are two basic rules or guides to selling photographs on stock websites. These are supplying the demand and getting the tagging right.

Supplying the Demand

Knowing the needs and demands of the consumer is is the first step in getting photographs that will actually selling on stock photography websites. The majority of sites have a page that tells you what kind of pictures the clients need. For example, here is a link to a page on Alamy that tells you what photographs are needed https://shorturl.at/djBIM

Each site will be different depending on their audience. For example, sites that are frequented by medical professionals etc might have a demand for medical pictures.

Again, and I cant stress this enough, do the research.

Getting the Tagging Right

The first step will get you the right photographs. However, they need to be visible to the intended audience which requires a little search engine optimization (SEO). This is done with tagging.

When a potential client puts in a description for a photograph they need, the search engine cannot view the actual image, instead it relies on the description and descriptive tags that are attached to the photograph.

This means that it is very important to put in the right keyword tags and description. It is always a good idea to put as many keywords in your tags as possible – the more, the merrier!

Summary

In summary, the two main things that you need to do to sell photographs is finding out which types of pictures are in demand and putting in the proper keywords or tags. Do these and before long you will be selling stock photographs and earning some passive income.

You can check out some of my photographs here:

• https://www.shutterstock.com/en/g/Bernard+Sinai?rid=200937964