OK, say you have a picture like I mentioned in the last chapter that is selling fairly consistently on a micro stock site like Fotolia or Dreamstime, but it is only making you about a dollar a day on average, instead of $3. You can have pictures selling much better than this, but let’s just use a conservative figure for our example.

Now, let me remind you that not every picture is going to sell well, and it may take a while to learn the ropes.

About 20% of my pictures on micro stock make me 90% of my earnings. And that’s because I did not understand what kind of pictures sell and which ones don’t when I first started. Now I know how to take pictures that I know will sell like crazy. This is a topic I cover extensively in my ebook (which is coming soon by the way).
So let’s do the math to see how much you can make even selling your pictures for a dollar at a time: One picture in your portfolio makes you $1 per day on average.
Then let’s say you are able to grow your portfolio online to 100 pictures. A decent start. You can do this by just adding 10 pictures a day for 10 days.

If even 20% of your pictures are as successful as your first you will be making $20 per day.

And remember you can sell your photos on more than one micro stock photo site at a time. I am selling my pictures on about 6 micro stock websites right now and that just multiplies my income with each picture I submit.

To remind you, here are some of the best micro stock websites I recommend and make me money right now:

• Dreamstime
• Fotolia
• Istockphoto
• Shutterstock
• Bigstockphoto

Let’s say after a few months you are able to work very hard and build up your portfolio to 1,000 images on just one micro stock site. Again, assuming that only 20% of your pictures are able to sell once a day you can be making $200 every day, and even if you don’t work the next week, that money will still come in.

Now will everyone who does this make $200 a day from their pictures?
Absolutely not. But they CAN if they learn how to take pictures that people want to buy.

If you think you can just throw any old picture up on a site and see the money roll in then you will only be disappointed and give up too soon.

Here is a process that can help you make the most money for your pictures using micro stock:

• Focus on the pictures that are worth more to buyers
• Set aside a couple hours a day to start building up a stock photo portfolio
• Aim for getting 100 pictures or more every month approved by a site.
• After six months you will have 600 pictures.
• Review what pictures are selling the best.
• Keep taking pictures and submitting to micro stock sites.
• Set goals of making $500 a month, $1,000 a month, $2,000, $5,000 and
beyond.

The key to making a huge amount of money with micro stock is to submit hot selling photos often to the sites. If you do this it will be difficult NOT to make money.

Once you are making $1,000 or more a month, don’t stop. As you keep working to build your portfolio with new photos you will continue to make money with the old ones that are already approved.

And therein lies the beauty of this strategy of making money with your camera. You are building residual income. You will be able to shoot weddings, senior portraits, and birthday parties WHILE you are still making money with your stock photos.

And by the way, you can get a lot of stock photos during some of your photo sessions too.

Some of my best selling photos I have taken while shooting a wedding. I would see the brides shoes in the window with some nice light coming in, take the picture, and upload it to a micro stock photo site later on to make even more money. Keep in mind that you will need to put some language in your contracts to use some of those pictures for stock photos.

And any pictures of people will have to have a model release signed by those people. So for now, you might want to just focus on non-people photos.

In the 3rd tip for making money with photography we will look at finding those businesses that need a photographer like you.

If you want to get a jump start in micro stock photography and need some guidance, I would recommend checking out this guide called Stock Photography: Going Digital. The website is VERY cheesy and he really needs a new design going on there, but this is an ebook written by a guy who is making a KILLING in the world of micro stock, so you might as well learn from the best if you want to become the best.

Related posts:

1. Get As Many People as Possible to See Your Pictures.