Submitting stock photography to a stock photography
company is ultimately a numbers game. Basically, the more pictures
you have with the library, the more sales you will make. There are some
talented photographers who earn their whole income from just a handful
of stock images that they sell to stock photography companies. It's
very common for certain images in a stock catalogue to sell over 100
times over the course of two or three years and make a gross amount
of $20,000 or more. Most of the bigger stock photography libraries have
instances where an image has attracted a fee of over $30,000 for a single
sale.
However, the majority of photographers submitting work to a stock photography
library don’t make quite as much money. The occasional advertising
sale might offer a high three-figure or low four-figure sum, but average
sales to travel companies, book and magazine publishers and other mainstream
markets generally attract fees of $50-100 per image. This means that
photographers generally need to have several thousand pictures with
a stock photography
library to see high returns which can take several years to achieve.
The number of pictures you need to have on file in order to see a good
return also depends on the type of images you shoot. People and lifestyle
stock images attract relatively high fees because there are fewer photographers
shooting them. 1000-2000 good quality people and lifestyle
images could earn a lot of money. Landscapes and travel stock images
have much more competition and average fees per sale are lower. You
would probably need 10,000 pictures with a stock photography library
to make a good
amount of money. Don't expect to become an overnight millionaire
if you specialize in landscape stock photography.
No matter how many pictures you do have with a stock photography library,
the bulk of the money you earn will come from just a fraction of your
stock photos. The majority of your pictures will probably never achieve
a single sale. It can be very frustrating when the pictures you feel
will be good
sellers are the ones that remain unused, while those you submit
offhandedly are the ones that are sometimes the most successful.
Either way, the more pictures you have with a stock photography library
the better. Make full use of any spare time you have to take photographs
and work hard to produce photographers of the very highest quality.
Make submissions to your stock photography library on a regular basis
so new images are constantly being pumped into the system.
