How To Make Money on Photographing Online

Now a lot of people work from home, not limited with office rules. An ideal option is when your job is your hobby. In other words, it is wonderful when your hobby brings you money. Capturing the best moments of our life is not only a great activity, but also a great way to make money. We want to figure out the main sources of earning money on the Internet as a photopgrapher. Ready?

The best ways of making money on photographing

Actually, you don’t have to do anything special. All you need is just to upload and sell, that’s it. The difference is just in the amount of the money you can get on different websites.

Image hosting websites

The first source is an image hosting website. Many people use it just to share photos, videos with their friends and family. You register, create your profile and upload any photos you like. If you want to make money on it, your works should be creative, beautiful and unusual.

You can get the money for the number of views, likes and comments, for the people who subscribe to you or buy credits of your photo, even for Google adds you place on the page with your photos. A great thing is that you are able to share files of different formats and get your revenue through various ways. Moreover, most of such image hosting sites are free.

There are lots of such websites on the internet, and they all have different features. The main disadvantage is that you won’t be able to earn a lot. It’s better to use the source as an additional one.

Here are some worthy image hosting websites:

• Shareapic.net
• 123RF
• Igougo.com
• Imgur
• 500px

Stock photobanks

A stock photobank is a storage for hundreds of the photos of hundreds of the photographers who want to present their works and sell them. It is more serious than the image hosting websites as they usually have special exams to sign up on the website and demand a high quality of the photos.

The algorithm of the photobanks looks like that: you upload a photo on a specific topic and choose the type of lycense. When a customer finds your picture and considers it as a suitable for him, he pays money for buying (together with author’s rights) or downloading it. You don’t get all the amount but you get some percent of it, which depends on a particular stock. Before you start, rememeber to check whether the rules, price policy and licensing of the particular photobank suit your needs. 

There is also such stuff as a microstock which means almost the same thing as the stock photographing, but the images are licensed many times and for a very low cost. For some aims, it is even more popular than the usual stock.

In fact, a lot of companies, big and small, use the photo stocks to find an image for their brand, product, website etc. A lot of personal users use them to find ideas for decor, posters, greeting cards, images for university and school projects. 

Have a look on the most popular stock photobanks:

• Shutterstock
• iStockphoto
• Getty images
• Unsplash
• Pixabay

Photo contests and competitions

A photo contest is a fantastic opportunity to both make good money and promote yourself as the photographer. No matter if you are a beginner or already an experienced specialst – everyone needs to keep themselves and their works recognizable in the public. Besides, taking into account the fact that such events attract a lot of journalists and sponsors, who look for new talants, you may win something even not being a winner. 

Investing a little, you may get a lot, like hundreds of thousands. Of course, it depends on the competition itself and so on, but why not give it a try? You will be able to meet colleagues, media people and get worthy awards. Anyway, the photo contest is not the chance the photographer should miss.

There are the websites, which present the nearest competitions in online calendars. For example:

• ViewBug
• Photographing contest network
• Pixoto
• Photocrowd
• Photo contest insider

Conclusion

If to range all the ways from the least profitable to the most, we will see this:

1. Image hosting websites
2. Stock photobanks
3. Photo contests and competitions

The best decision would be to use all of these three ideas together, gain experience, practice your skills, make new friends and earn big money ;)

Everything is possible, as you see. You CAN earn money on your hobby online, but… But you MUST be enthusiastic, purposeful and hard-working.

Don’t settle and don’t be afraid of challenges!