30 http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk
Technique MAKING MONEYIs it still possible
to make money
from stock
photography?
The golden age of stock photography may be over but
JamesAbbott investigates some alternative approaches
to the traditional stock model that can be profitable
S
tock photography has long played
an important role in photographers’
revenue streams thanks to its ability
to generate passive income from
images. But where the stock industry was
once lucrative to the point where some
photographers could make a comfortable
living from stock photography alone, this is
unfortunately no longer the case.
Digital photography and the ability for
almost anyone to sign-up to some stock
libraries have flooded the market with images,
which has in part driven down the royalties
photographers receive; it’s a simple case of
supply and demand. But that’s not to say
that the larger libraries such as Adobe Stock,
Alamy, iStock, Getty, Shutterstock and many
more are redundant since they can all provide
that all-important passive income, albeit a
modest one.So, while you may not make a fortune from
using one or more of these larger libraries to
license your images, it’s still worth considering
them because they can provide an additional
revenue stream regardless of how profitable.
You just have to consider the amount of work
involved in preparing, uploading and
keywording images against the potential
income their sales will generate.
There are also other ways to license and sell
your images, and that’s what we’re going to
concentrate on here with four approaches to
licensing and selling images in both digital
and physical formats using alternative
approaches to the traditional stock model.
The advantage of these is that you have
control over pricing and the images you can
sell, not to mention the opportunity to
generate a much higher level of income from
your photography.