Freelance For Money

Make Money with Microstock

Posted on 18. Oct, 2009 by Chris Green in Passive Income

If you are looking for ways of supplementing your freelance income, you may want to check out Microstock.

Microwhat?

Microstock companies are essentially stock photography and illustration agencies. Photographers and designers resell their images as royalty free for a small commission. Microstock sites sell images at a much lower price than the traditional photo agencies. The idea is that because the prices are more affordable, you will have a lot more sales from a lot more people. Sounds good so far.

Tell me more…

Microstock sites such as iStockphoto are free to join. You need to submit various samples of your work for initial approval as a contributor. The process can be quite strict depending on the Microstock agency. iStockphoto is one of the most difficult to get onto because the standard is very high.

When you are approved, you can upload files for sale. You’ll own all the rights to your work. The best sites will have a royalty free license that prevents your work from being resold or used for logos or branding.

From then on it’s pretty straight forward. You upload your best work, people download your best work. You get some nice royalty for each downloaded. Commissions vary from site to site.

Can I Earn Much?

Here’s the killer question, and your probably wondering whether it’s worth investing your time to make it work for you.

Well, many people get some quick results. They usually earn their first dollar within days or weeks of uploading their first files.

After a bit of investigation, i’ve found that there are a few ‘Microstock Celebrities’ emerging such as Lise Gagne and Yuri Arcurs. They make a full time income from Microstock sales.

Part of Your Plan

Overall, I think Microstock should be part of your plan and income strategy. It will be more work at the start, but you will reap the rewards from this further down the line.

Tags: Lise Gagne, Microstock, Yuri Arcurs