If you’re a photographer looking to make a bit more money, you’ve probably been tempted, at least at some point, to go into stock photography.

Maybe you were hoping to be able to do something with the hundreds of unused photos lurking about on various hard drives.
Or maybe the idea of having someone else sell your photos was appealing. Or maybe you wanted to learn more about selling photos online and making money.

Well, today is your lucky day, because in this article we get to do exactly that, tell you how to make money off your photos using sites such as Alamy, iStockPhoto, and Shutterstock.

Alarmy
First, with Alamy you follow the below process:

• If you haven’t already, sign up as an Alamy contributor, it only takes a couple of minutes
• Check you understand how to prepare your images for Alamy.
• Choose how you want to send your images to Alamy– online upload or FTP.
• Once your images are uploaded, Alamy Quality Control (QC) team will check them.
• When they pass, they’ll be ready for you to add captions and tags (also known as keywords) in your account.

Once you’ve finished adding your tags, your images will be on sale the next day. Then depending on your photos quality and keywords used for your tags people are able to get your photos.

Once you’ve registered, you’ll have an account called My Alamy. With Alamy account, you can:

• Upload your images.
• See the progress of your image submissions.
• Add captions, tags, and other details.
• Track your sales.

It’s as simple as it gets; consequently, if you are a photograph enthusiast, it realistically costs you little to no time and money to make bucks off your passion and hard work.

iStock | Getty images
With iStock, which is part of the Getty images family, applications are only accepted through the Contributor by Getty Images app
Application in 3 steps:

• Download Contributor by Getty Images from the App Store or Google Play.
• Upload 3 to 6 sample images, illustrations, or videos (via YouTube links).
• Getty Images will review your samples and let you know if you’re accepted to iStock by Getty Images.

A bit of caveat here, you must be at least 18 years of age to apply.

Once your application has been accepted through the Contributor app, an invitation to join Getty Images or iStock as a contributor will be sent.

After you become a contributor, editors review the images, illustrations, or videos you submit to ensure they meet the requirements before making them available online for customers to see and license.

Shutterstock
Lastly, with Shutterstock, it is as simple as follows:

• You must be at least 18 years old to submit your work.
• Your work must be original, and you must be the work’s copyright owner.
• Submit.shutterstock.com is the site for contributing artists, and shutterstock.com is for customers who license your work.
• Work that features models or private property and is intended for commercial licensing must be accompanied by a release.

Once you have registered your contributor account on submit.shutterstock.com, you are ready to begin submitting your work!

Each time a customer downloads your work, they are purchasing the license. Easy pixie.