Microstock photography is a concept where photographers (mostly amateurs) can submit their images to different Microstock companies and earn money from selling of those pictures. For buyers Microstock companies also help by providing quality images at a very low price. So, by this way both the photographers and the buyers are getting rewarded. However, you should remember that in these days the market for selling photos by amateurs are getting too competitive and chances that your submitted photos get rejected, increasing day by day. But do not feel bad or discouraged because new Microstock agencies are coming in play every now and then, making your chances, to get some milk out of your photos, somehow promising enough. Still remember that making money from your photos needs some time to become successful, so be patient and continue.

Of course, you need a digital camera at first to get start. Normally you should have to have at least a 6-mega pixel digital camera and a computer where you can do editing, naming and tagging of your images. You also will have to have internet connection to upload your images to different Microstock agencies and to check your progress on their sites. Now come to the point of camera, as I said earlier that a 6-mega pixel camera could do most of the times, it can be a point and shoot or a DSLR. A DSLR camera is most preferable for you to get into this business, as they provide more professional quality photos that are more usable than a relatively noisy and blurry ‘point and shoot’. However, DSLRs are surely more expensive than ‘point and shoots’. But there are some good DSLRs, which though low priced but exceptionally well in their image production. To get a great DSLR under $600, go to the following link that will take you to another Mahalo page titled as “Best Entry Level Digital SLR”.

Link: http://www.mahalo.com/best-entry-level-digital-sl

Ok, now as you have your camera in your hand, start shooting. When you shoot, always keep in mind some points that will give you better results.

Every time you are shooting, shoot with the highest resolution your camera can handle, never shoot at lower resolutions because shooting at higher resolution give you more freedom to edit your images and also to down sample your images. If you are shooting at JPEG format, shooting at highest resolution will make your images more acceptable for editing, as JPEGs loses their quality every time after editing.

Before editing, always make sure that main/master copies of your images are saved and secured. So that if something happens wrong while editing photos, you have always a safe copy as backup. If possible, write them down on a CD.

Always submit the top quality photos of yours to the Microstock agencies. Badly composed photos, photos with noises, blurriness, washed out subjects are always rejected by the agencies and in result, these lead you to become unsuccessful and also ill reputed. Ultimately your chances of getting money drops down significantly by each bad submission. So, always be careful about your submission.

Use appropriate keywords for you images. For example, you have taken a beautiful well-focused pomegranate photo and you want to submit it. Before doing so, it is always important to choose appropriate keywords for any particular image. So for your pomegranate image appropriate keywords can be “fruit”, “pulp”, “delicious”, “ripe”, “squash”, “red”, etc. See how those words are linked to your beautiful pomegranate image? Keywords are very important to choose because buyers always search images with keywords. Therefore, if you have perfect keywords appointed with your images, the chance is very much high that buyer will find your image in their search result and which will ultimately lead your images to better selling opportunities.

Now you are almost ready to submit your images. To submit your photos, at first you have to choose a Microstock agency- that accepts photos from photographers. Hundreds of Microstock agencies are there in market now, who are interested to grow up with new photographers. But to choose right one for you is important. To choose one, remember that big agencies are not interested so much with new and amateur photographers because not only they have a gigantic stock of images on every subject but also have a large group of professional photo providers. So if you select a very high profile Stock agency the chance of your images being rejected will unfortunately increased. Therefore, it is wise to choose a comparatively new but well organized and fast growing agency.

Another important thing to keep in mind is photo- contracts. Most Microstock sites allow for two types of contracts- exclusive contracts and non-exclusive contracts. Exclusive contracts generally pay a higher payment per download, and get your images posted higher in search rankings, while non-exclusive contracts allow the freedom of selling your images on multiple Microstock agencies at once. It is a good idea that before submitting your photos to any agencies, at first make a study on that agency. That means check out the terms and condition of that sight; also check their payment system, the technical requirements of submitted photos, etc. In addition, you sometimes will find that certain Microstock agencies provide training for their new photographers, go thoroughly with that training to make sure everything is on the right way.

I hope this short introduction on money making from your photos with Microstock agencies will help you. In this page, I have added links of some good Microstock agencies from where you can start up your photo selling. There are also some other good links added in this page which will give you further information on this track of Microstock photo selling. Wish you good luck.

These are some great microstock photo agencies where you can start selling your stock photos.