Save your money! It's not going to happen, at least not in the way the pie-in-the-sky artists would have you believe. Here's why:
- Market Saturation. This is your first and foremost impediment. By the time a trend gets noticed in the popular press and hawked on the Internet, you can be pretty sure the market is well and thoroughly saturated. You have a ton of competition out there, which is the source of most of the other hurdles you face.
- The acceptance process. The come-on artists won't tell you this, so I will: uploading photos doesn't get them into the marketplace. Submissions are reviewed by human editors. Anything that doesn't meet their technical standards, artistic standards or inventory needs, will be rejected. Usually, you must have a certain number of images accepted before they'll even begin to catalog your work; even then, subsequent submissions are still subject to acceptance.
Since reputable stock sites are free to join, you can try this yourself at no cost other than a bit of your time. Please post your results here. - Technical standards. As I mentioned above, real people review submissions to the stock agencies. To avoid wasting their time with submissions from inept amateurs with $100 digicams (the come-on artists' target demographic) the technical standards can be pretty rigorous. Their servers are programmed to reject submissions that don't meet minimum file size requirements; you'll need a professional grade or a high-end consumer grade digital SLR to make the cut (good 35mm or larger film scans easily make the grade). Exposure errors, focusing errors, sensor dust, unwanted artifacts, unintentional blur, etc., are summarily rejected by the editors. You'll need to be good with Photoshop or a similar editing program to get the best out of your photos.
- Artistic standards. Composition is critical, as are production values. Your snapshots won't do. Lighting, makeup, wardrobe, staging, etc., all need to be done to professional standards. Be prepared to spend time and money scouting locations, paying talent (models, makeup and hair artists), buying clothes, renting or purchasing equipment, and schlepping stuff back-and-forth.
- Inventory needs. The most profitable stock photos are those that can be used for a variety of purposes. You might see the same photo used to advertise mutual funds in one magazine; to sell an erectile dysfunction remedy in another magazine; and to illustrate a point about family in a sociology textbook. You might well have a killer fine-art photograph in your inventory, but if it can't be recycled this way it probably won't be accepted for stock. Buyers want photographs they can easily build advertising copy into or around.
Subject matter matters: pets, flowers, flags and sunsets have been done to death (so much for all the digicam shots). You can still submit these shots, but you really need to know what differentiates your rose photo from the billion others circulating on the Web. - Legal issues. You will be surprised at the number of things you can't use in a commercial photograph: faces; identifiable, non-public buildings; trademarks; logos; readily-identifiable products. You'll need model releases for any identifiable persons in your photos, including your own children. You'll need property releases (Good Luck!) for trademark items, logos, non-public buildings, etc. Otherwise, these photos will be relegated to "Editorial" use only. "Killer shot! Perfect, except for the Nike swoosh on his jacket, the iPhone in her hand, and the Sydney Opera House in the background."
- Volume. You'll need thousands of images online in order to see any kind of money. You'll need to continually refresh your image library as older ones get "stale," fashions change, etc.
Photoshelter seems to have the best deal going these days for stock photographers. Go to their "School of Stock" for more and better information, for free, than you'll get from the e-book hustlers.
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