Stock Photography - Waste of Time?

Is it a waste of time to take shots for stock photography websites, as a source of extra income?

Good images last forever, and so you could collect on it for your entire lifetime - as I understand.

However, do they actually sell? Is it at all worth the time invested?

Thanks.

There are some folks that make money from stock photography, but I don't know the details and the discrepencies between the "money makers" and the "time wasters"...

You might check with POTN member Tom Reichner as to his experiences and for his advice!

Somebody has to be making money on this but I just don't know how much. I thought about doing this but the market looked absolutely flooded to me. This is just me on the outside looking in but I just don't see how I would make enough money doing it to be worthwhile. I don't think anyone made a million dollars doing stock. Maybe a million people made $1.

Blaster6 wrote in post #15621894
Somebody has to be making money on this but I just don't know how much. I thought about doing this but the market looked absolutely flooded to me. This is just me on the outside looking in but I just don't see how I would make enough money doing it to be worthwhile. I don't think anyone made a million dollars doing stock. Maybe a million people made $1.

You're absolutely right when you say someone is making money. That someone is the stock agency.

Most of the ones I've seen only charge 50%..

Scatterbrained wrote in post #15621906
You're absolutely right when you say someone is making money. That someone is the stock agency.

I would not say a waste of time. I have been thinking of doing the same thing. The market is indeed flooded and there have been many battles of prices and such. But if you are taking them anyway, why not give it a shot. Nothing lost

icor1031 wrote in post #15621993
Most of the ones I've seen only charge 50%..

Ask yourself, 50% of what? Then look at what they are doing to their members. Over at Alamy for example it's not too uncommon to have photographers find out that their images were downloaded and used by a large company and they were never paid for it. Look at the recent deal between Getty and Google........
Sure money can still be made if you create compelling, useful images and get into a stock agency that pays ok, or if you just flood them with images........otherwis​e it'll just be beer money.

Please tell more.

Scatterbrained wrote in post #15622072
Over at Alamy for example it's not too uncommon to have photographers find out that their images were downloaded and used by a large company and they were never paid for it. Look at the recent deal between Getty and Google........

icor1031 wrote in post #15622094
Please tell more.

Alamy does have their own forum, feel free to spend some time perusing it. I trolled about over there for quite a while when I was trying to decide if I wanted to have a go at stock photography. One of the recurring themes was "inappropriate billing" to put it politely. Normally cases were images were significantly under-billed or not billed at all. One guy on another board recently found out his images had been used by a international corporation for their website. When he contacted Alamy he was told by the rep that they just let the company download what they wanted and then pay for what they decided to use. Think of it as a "stock photography honor system" if you will. Granted when their system works right the payouts should be acceptable, better than microstock for certain. It's still tempting, if you have images that would sell as stock. . . . .

That is just amazing...

Do you have any reason to think this also happens on other sites?

I'll chime in as someone who sells stock.......Photograph​y is my sole source of income and I use stock as something to do when I have nothing else to do. It can (and does) earn a little extra money for me......just to give you some perspective, I think I've earned about $400 over the last two months after commission fees.....not much but I'll take it. Some months I get nothing, other months I get a nice surprise. That said, IME, making any money and realizing regular sales with stock images takes a huge library of quality salable stock images that number in the thousands. It takes quite a bit of time to get things rolling.
When I shoot stock, I take the time to put together a plan to create images that I think have selling potential.....simply uploading a hard drive of all of your useless images you have no need for will rarely create sales. It takes time and commitment along with a vision for what's in demand.....and even then, the payoff is pretty small. IME, for most people, getting a part time job delivering pizza's or bagging groceries would be a better way to make a few extra bucks......at least there, you're guaranteed an hourly wage.

Consider this deal between Getty and Google: http://www.petapixel.c​om …g-deal-with-getty-images/

I would recommend doing your research and browsing any user community that might be available before you jump in with any service.

Who do you sell with?

Also, you said $400 in 2 months... about how many pictures do you have up? And when a picture is sold, that same picture may be sold again to someone else.. right?

Thank you!

jra wrote in post #15622316
I'll chime in as someone who sells stock.......Photograph​y is my sole source of income and I use stock as something to do when I have nothing else to do. It can (and does) earn a little extra money for me......just to give you some perspective, I think I've earned about $400 over the last two months after commission fees.....not much but I'll take it. Some months I get nothing, other months I get a nice surprise. That said, IME, making any money and realizing regular sales with stock images takes a huge library of quality salable stock images that number in the thousands. It takes quite a bit of time to get things rolling.
When I shoot stock, I take the time to put together a plan to create images that I think have selling potential.....simply uploading a hard drive of all of your useless images you have no need for will rarely create sales. It takes time and commitment along with a vision for what's in demand.....and even then, the payoff is pretty small. IME, for most people, getting a part time job delivering pizza's or bagging groceries would be a better way to make a few extra bucks......at least there, you're guaranteed an hourly wage.

If you want to make any kind of meaningful income, you better be a very good photographer, and shoot a lot! You need to identify what sells, and do it well, and produce a lot of it.

Think of it as a fine art print. You can sell only 2 prints for a lot of money. Or you can sell 200 prints for less money, but you'll end up making more profit because of the volume of sells.

With stock you'll need a large library of sought after material, and hope you sell a high volume, especially due to how little you'll make compared to the cut the stock agency earns from your images.

People photos sell well but you'll need model releases. Food images seem to do well too.

Nicole Young makes much of her living shooting stock. http://nicolesyblog.co​m/about/

She has a $5 PDF you can buy "microSTOCK: From Passion to Paycheck."
http://nicolesyblog.co​m/books/book-stock/

Amazon has a bunch of books, this is one of them "Taking Stock: Make money in microstock creating photos that sell [Paperback]."

She has some impressive shots, Rjx.