Lately, I’ve been watching YouTube videos about selling photos to stock websites like Adobe and Shutterfly. There are several platforms in this space to choose from. The guy I am watching is trying to hit $100k in earning this year. This got me interested in uploading my own photos.
I do have a large collection of travel photos from the past 20 years. Unfortunately, my camera from much of my travel was only taking images at 480p and so the images from my trips to New York, England, France, and Spain, will not be accepted. I am able to upload images from my trip to the Caribbean and my most recent trip to New York and Washington state.
I am looking for someway to supplement my income. Currently, I earn money be reselling goods on eBay, but I am limited by the amount I can spend on product to resell and not everything I buy will necessarily be sold.
https://www.ebay.com/usr/fatwalletrefugee
I initially signed up for Adobe Stock and Shutterstock Contributor. I selected a set of 8 images that covered a range of subject matter and styles and then uploaded them to each site. Adobe rejected all of the images, mostly for quality reasons, but two images were rejects for being similar to images already in the system. Shutterstock however, accepted all 8 images although several were listed as Editorial use only and I had to make adjustments to the listings.
I continued to upload images to Adobe hoping to get one through but got similar results each time I put up a photo. I have now completely given up on Adobe Stock.
Currently, I have 28 images and 3 videos accepted into Shutterstock’s Contributor program. I know from the videos I’ve been watching that Adobe has a better pay grade than Shutterstock, but I clearly can’t anything accepted by Adobe, so I’m sticking with Shutterstock.
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Kasanje+Travel’s/about
Mostly I am uploading Editorial images, those that can’t be used for commercial purposes. This includes images with logos or brands present, anything newsworthy, or things where I don’t have the right to sell it. Think of the last time you watched the news, maybe they talked about a business or an event, other than times when they have a reporter present at a site, most images and video they display came from microstock sites.
I have some photos of wildlife and gardening that I can list as Commercial. There are also pictures from traveling that don’t fall into the Editorial category. More and more as I go out to explore new areas, I am thinking about what can and cannot be sold when taking photos.
There is also a market for videos, especially vertical videos. I have begun using my Osmo Pocket to film when I am out and about. Just yesterday, I recorded a walking video going through the North Hills shopping center. There will be some short clips I can take from that video to upload as stock video.
I just need to get into the habit of recording more frequently.
