It seems Ken Rockwell has an itch he has to scratch about Stock Photography
Call me a naysayer, but this doesn’t seem like a way to make money. I’ve always made money by differentiating myself. Stock is the antithesis of differentiation. Say “NO!” all you want to royalty-free websites like istockphoto.com and the royalty-free discs of several years ago, but so long as enough photographers say YES! to submitting to these folks that will set the market price. This is exactly why I’m too chicken to mess with stock: enough others submit their work for nothing, so no one is going to pay me any more.
When I worked for a marketing agency there were quite a few occasions where stock photography was used but that tended towards those projects where the budget was low, deadlines were tight and the picture requirement was very generic. Other than the top stock libraries like Getty that have some real top photographers on their books, I think the stock photography that Ken is so against is the domain of the “$10 template” website hack, they are not his market anyway.
It is tempting to think I could make a passive income from stock photos but I can’t see me getting up the enthusiasm to take photographs JUST to submit to a library. If someone was to come along and ask to purchase rights to use a picture that would be a completely different proposition.
Having said that, there is a lot of people making money and having fun. Don’t knock it till you have tried it, I just might give it a go.
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2 Comments
Just came accross this site.
The guy gets around $2000/month with around 500-700 photos at each microstock site. Not bad for some extra cash that can be used for new lenses or camera body..
The vast majority of those sites claiming to make money off this actually make most of their money through affiliate referrals, that is from getting other people to join rather than their photography. I know the site you mean and while the rest of the site looks cool the microstock page is FULL of CLOAKED (ie. using Javascript to alter the mouseover, etc) affiliate links which makes me a little nervous there isn’t more than a little snake oil going on. I am all for people earning money, just I am ultra-sensitive to spam …