A wide variety of micro stock photography agencies allows photographers to make some extra money from their images easier than ever. Today you can submit practically any photo to some of royalty free stock photo websites and earn money for a new fancy camera, lens, tripod and simply anything you want or need. While some stock photography companies lay down high quality requirements to the photos uploaded, others enable to submit even amateur everyday photos and sell them on an auction system.

In most cases, stock photography serves to photographers as an additional source of revenue, but if you put some effort into it selling images via online photo banks can be enough to make a living. For instance, Danish photographer Yury Arcurs is a full-time microstock photographer who earns $300/day (about $9000/month) by selling his photos on Shutterstock alone!! Not a bad perspective, huh?

In this post we overviewed 10 stock photography websites where you can submit your photographs. Some of them belong to the industry movers and shakers, others operate in the smaller, niche markets. Share your opinion on the topic and tell us about your own experience in selling images online in comments.

PhotoStockPlus.com

Photostockplus is a photography marketplace “designed to fit the needs of everyday photographers as well as those of high level pros uploading tens of thousands of images, to hundreds of events”. The main distinctive feature of this agency is that here you are in control of your own work: you decide what imagery to upload, you set the prices and you categorize the photos. You receive 85% of the markup prices you have set to your photographs. Besides, Photostockplus provides you with a nice set of photo browsing and marketing tools for better selling experience. You can withdraw your money once a month as long as your balance exceeds $100. The agency currently pays out by check, bank wire or PayPal.

Shutterstock

Shutterstock is one of the top stock agencies in the world. It works on a subscription basis (user can’t buy a single stock image) and has an enormous database with millions of photos. You get paid each time one of the photographs you’ve submitted is downloaded. There are three ways to earn money with Shutterstock:

• Earn USD 0.25 per image downloaded
• Refer stock buyers and earn 20% of their subscription price
• Refer other submitters and earn USD 0.03 for each of their downloads

Payments are sent to photographers once per month. The company’s default minimum payout is $100, but you can set it to $75 in your account options.

BigStockPhoto.com

Another photo bank BigStockPhoto.com gives you opportunity to make from 50 cents to $3.00 per image download. The agency works on a credit system: one credit costs between 90 cents and USD 3.00, depending on how many user buys at a time. Image downloads cost from 1-6 credits depending on the size of the image. Photographer’s account balance increases by 50 cents per each credit spent on their photos. This means you can earn 50 cents for the smallest downloads and $3 each whenever a person downloads a large volume of files. Besides, BigStockPhoto.com offers a Special Licensing program which enables to earn up to $60 per each photo sold. You can cash out your account via PayPal, Moneybookers or check withdrawal when the balance reaches at least $50.

Dreamstime

Dreamstime is a powerful stock imagery community which has been online since 2000. It shows impressive performance by offering photo buyers to choose from over 7 million images and submitting works of more than 80K photographers. According to a study of PDN Magazine, Dreamstime offers the highest royalties in the industry. For each transaction, the photographer receives a 30-50 percent fee. Exclusive images receive an additional 15 percent bonus, while exclusive photographers enjoy a 60 percent fee and an additional bonus of $0.20 for each approved submission. The company has a complex price plan, which you can view here http://www.dreamstime.com/sell In order to withdraw your earnings, you have to submit a payment request as soon as your account balance reaches $100. You can get your money by bank check, Paypal or Moneybookers.

Citizenside

Citizenside is a platform for sharing and selling news images. It works mainly in the French market and can’t boast of high traffic rates so far. Still, this photo website is a nice option for photographers working in reportage genre and for anyone who happened to capture an extraordinary event on a camera. Basically, Citizenside is intermediary between your photos and videos and the worldwide media. Citizenside negotiates the best sales prices for your content (files submitted have to be of good quality and news related) and gives you back up to 75% of the final price. The agency functions as a payment platform - it accepts the payments from the buyers and safeguards them for 60 days from the transaction date in the event that a legal problem should arise. After this term expires, the submitter of the content gets the payment via PayPal or bank transfer (or a check in some cases).

123RF

123RF has been in the Royalty Free industry since 2000. Choosing this stock photography website you will be paid a direct 50% of the actual price for each of your photos downloaded or $0.36 per subscription download. Besides selling your photos here you can earn money from their affiliate program. Thus, you can refer customers and get 15% of the single purchase or subscription and you can refer photographers and get 10% of the price of each of their image sold.

iStockphoto

iStockPhoto is considered to be the largest in the microstock market today. As you may understand, this involves a tough competition for you photographers. You can sell your photos for as low as $1.  iStock pays contributors a base royalty rate of 20% for each file downloaded. If you are an Exclusive contributor you can earn up to 40%. With this, the agency has rather strict requirements to the quality of the images uploaded. Lots of people complain about high rejection rates and ridiculous upload limits for non-exclusive photographers. In other words, iStockphoto is a major agency, but it’s not the best solution for non-exclusive contributors.

Fotolia

“Fotolia is the first worldwide social marketplace for royalty free stock images, allowing individuals and professionals to legally buy and share stock images and illustrations”. Fotolia offers a large photo bank which includes over 7 million photos and illustrations and over 500K vectors. Fotolia community numbers more than 1,5 million professionals within the media and communications field. Selling images with Fotolia you can get from 33% up to 60% commission, the more you sell the higher your earnings. They accepts only JPEG images the size of which should be at least 30 MB. Contributors earn credits which can be then spent on images or converted into money. When your account balance reaches at least 50 eligible credits, you can convert your commission and transfer it directly into your Paypal or Moneybookers account.

ClusterShot

ClusterShot is a place where anyone can sell or buy photos. There no limitations on the image quality, quantity or size. “You can post as many crappy photos of your dog as you like. Why wouldn’t you? Someone might buy one”. There are two ways to price your photos: set a fixed price or accept offers from potential buyers (like an auction). You can use each method separately or in conjunction. ClusterShot takes 12% commission of the sale price and transfer the remainder to your ClusterShot account. When your balance reaches $100 they will automatically pay you your account balance via Paypal. You can request an earlier payout, but a small fee for the payments less than $100 will be charged.

Stockxpert

Stockxpert is a royalty free stock photography website providing over 4.5 million images priced between $1 for smallest photos and $10 for larger 3600×2400 images. Contributors receive 50% for each download you generate, plus they offer subscription royalties as well. Payout options are quite flexible - you can request a payment via Paypal, Moneybookers or by check.

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