Which should I join?
Which microstock photography site should I use to sell my photos online?

Shutterstock

You will earn the most money at shutterstock, guaranteed!

Fotolia

Good site. Good sales. Highly recommended!

Dreamstime

Regular sales, very stable, quite fussy about your images.

IStock Photo

Very fussy, small upload limit, good sales!

Bigstock Photo

Slow on sales, but high acceptance ratio. Easy to use and therefore recommended.

"If I sell my photos online, how much might I earn through microstock photography?" A good question. I'll give you an overview of how much you could earn, but first lets clarify: Microstock photography is not a get rich quick scheme. It will take dedication and a great deal of hard work and time to build up a microstock portfolio large enough to enable you to quit your day job.

By far the best aspect of microstock photography, besides the fun factor, is that you will sell photos online and earn you money every month, regardless of whether you work or not. Your best photos may continue to sell well for decades.

Photographs speak for themselves. Microstock photography is about creating interesting and salable compositions which stand out amongst the competition. If your food photos dont make people people hungry you need to work harder at preparing the food or taking better photos. The more appealing the photo, the more photos you will sell online. Even very small subtle changes can have a huge impact upon sales.

Lighting your subjects is also important. A light tent (also called a light box or an infinity tent) helps to diffuse light and provides a white background. Do a search for pets. You will notice that the most popular pet photos are often those which were shot on white, whilst general pet snapshots do not sell as well. Shooting subjects and making them "isolated" "on white" or "over white" (more keywords for your images) allows the microstock photographer to blow out the background. And blown out white backgrounds appeal to buyers because they have less processing to do, as you have isolated their subject for them! Vary your shots of course. Not every buyer wants an image on a white background.

In microstock photography it is common practise for photographers to create a composition which leaves an unused area of the photo empty, so that designers/publishers can insert text into this area. This empty area is called "copy space" and the words 'copy space' can be inserted into your keywords.