It may have crossed your mind at some point that you would like to sell your images with some of
photographic stock agencies online. You may have then visited their sites only to be put off by costs involved with regard to equipment needed to "produce goods". Many of larger agencies need file sizes of 50MB which require professional or semi-professional equipment and for which costs run into thousands. What a lot of people don't understand is that there are "micro stock" agencies that cater for a different market altogether! You see, huge image files required by larger agencies are what are needed for large advertising or marketing companies that need to either show off exceptional quality or reproduce images in print, at greatly enlarged proportions. But what about rest of world?
What about small companies that cannot afford rates offered by large stock agencies? What about sole trader or self employed that simply needs a few decent images for his/her website or small marketing campaign? What about colleges or faculties that have a strict budget but still need good images for their workshops or tuition? This is where you come in!
The agencies I am talking about, only need good, nice clean images of 2.5 megabytes or above which can be produced by cameras of around 3 mega pixels or higher. This would include your everyday advanced digital compact like a Canon Sureshot for example.
The cost of buying images is kept very low for consumer as file sizes restrict applications for which they can be used, but are perfect for type of outlets I have just described. Therefore payout is less to photographer but sales happen a lot more frequently and you can earn yourself a nice residual income for as long as your images are online. Obviously more you have more you earn.
It doesn't mean that you can send any old tat in; images must be clean (in all respects), interesting, well taken and well exposed. The agencies normally have a "wants" list which is excellent as it lets you know exactly what you have to do to earn money! Apart from anything, it also gives you more of a reason to go out and make use of your camera in a more exciting way.
