Selling and buying images online

Have you ever been seduced by the idea of getting paid for your photos? If yes, there are some good news for you. It's now easier than ever to earn extra money from your photographs by selling them online.

On the other hand, designers now have a possibility to buy high-quality images through online image banks without spending much money.

Internet is redefining the traditional stock photo market, when photographers had to negotiate with stock photo agencies and send negatives through the mail to sell their work. These days most images are sold online and downloaded by buyers instantly. Whether you want to buy or sell images online, this site will provide you with useful tips on your way to becoming a "Stock Photo Expert".

What Is Stock Photography?

Stock photography is photography of sights, ideas, and events that can be used for marketable design purpose. A customer who uses stock photography instead of hiring a photographer can save time and money. Publishers, advertising agencies, graphic artists, web designers, interior decor firms, corporate creative groups, and others use stock photography to fulfill the needs of their creative assignments. Stock photos can be licensed for specific uses. The same image can be sold many times, because buyers usually don't get exclusive rights. Stock photography includes images of people, animals, objects, landscapes, buildings, concepts, and events that can be sold to and used by a wide variety of media outlets.

Unfortunately, in the world of Art, the artistic value of stock photography has often been considered low and associated with "consumption", as stock photos are shot to be sold. But stock photography is and Art and its creator is an Artist. Stock photography can come from your spirit and reflect your vision of the world. And although a large part of stock photography is more useful than creative, the best examples of it combine usefulness and artistic value, functionality and aesthetics.

Online Stock Photo Agencies

Stock photo agencies are sometimes referred to as photo archives, picture libraries, or image banks. As modern stock photography distributors often carry vector illustrations and video, none of the existing terminology provides a perfect match.

A few years ago a new type of stock photo agencies has emerged. These new image banks, known as 'microstock' sites, have allowed anyone from the amateur to the professional photographer to sell images easily. These sites take images from individual contributors, and photographer gets a commission for each image sold. The microstock photography market was pioneered by iStockPhoto and followed by Dreamstime, Shutterstock, Fotolia, BigStockPhoto, and many others.

Microstock agencies sell royalty-free images starting at as low as $1, and while the fees on each image are low - typically less than a dollar on each sale - the companies sell large volumes of images. The mindset of micro stock is that quantity will prevail and the photographers will end up making as much from many small sales as they would from a few large sales on a traditional stock photography site. Quality and quantity of images will determine how much an artist will earn. Each site employs a team of reviewers who check every picture submitted for technical quality, as well as artistic and commercial merit.

These sites are appealing to beginning photographers providing a great way to get exposure of their work, to improve their skills, and to get to the professional level of selling photographs. Microstock sites typically offer message boards, peer feedback, and charts of which images are selling best. All these sites are free to sign up and don't charge anything for hosting images. Some of these sites accept and sell only photographs, while some offer vector illustrations and video as well.