Image bank: sale of photos, vectors and 3D illustrations via Internet

If you are a photographer, 3D designer or illustrator you can start making good money selling your works through Internet. Image bank serves as an intermediary between you and your potential buyers. Image banks are divided into two groups: classical ones and micro-payments. And here on this site we are going to dwell on micro-payments (or microstocks).

Image bank is a base of photographs and vectors that are used by different designers, press editors and advertising agencies. Of course they buy images at first and then use them for their own purposes. Being a stock photographer makes one be interested in sales of photos and other graphic images. After adding keywords to images, so that clients could find them without taking much effort, we can submit our works to microstocks. Buyers pay for images and photo bank takes its commission on every sold work (that is rather large). The contributor gets the percent, then transfers money to account and actually has an opportunity to spend it.

- How much do they pay for picture sales on image banks? And how much can a photographer make?

Selling images through Internet is a modern and highly profitable way to earn money online. Image prices are different and they depend on the image size in mega pixels. For instance, highly professional cameras and 3D engines produce images that are over 30 mega pixels (mega pixels or MP - width multiplied by height). It allows to change image size from very small resolution up to the biggest one. While designers not always need maximum size, they can buy images in the minimal display of 800 х 600, each of those will cost about 1-2 $. If a designer buys maximum sized image, its price can reach 42 $ (though prices vary at different microstocks). Image bank will grab its barbarous percent (also depends on image stock and varies from 50% to 80%) from the sale. Thus, we get about 20-50% from each sale. Apart from single sales microstocks offer subscription services. Subscription lets image buyer pay a certain amount of money every month and download up to 25 pics per day (as on Shutterstock). At the same time photographer gets commission for every downloading which starts from 0,25 and goes up to 0,38 $ (depends on photographer’s ranking). Sales volume is large and with a great portfolio they can reach hundreds per day. Microstocks provide customers with a convenient system of search so that looking for clip-art won’t take much time.

Image banks sell not photographs by themselves but licenses for their use. The major license is Royalty Free, which allows to sell pictures with no limits on time. 99,9% of image sales are made under that license. RF license bounds the buyer to some restrictions concerning image edition and spheres of usage. Besides RF, image stocks offer Extended Royalty Free license, which greatly expands the use spheres of the picture bought. As statistics shows extended sales make up about 1/1000 of all sales. But a contributor can get up to 100 $ for one such sale. Every microstock establishes its own limits and restrictions for licenses, but on the whole they are alike.

- How to cash out the money earned?

Every image bank has a minimal sum for cash out. Minimum cashout on iStockphoto and Dreamstime amounts 100 $, on Shutterstock it can be 75 $ and on Fotolia it’s 50 $. After accumulating minimum sum, a contributor gets a chance to cash out this money via major payment systems: PayPal or Moneybookers. Also there is an opportunity to cash out money via check.

On our site we are touching upon all these topics as well as aspects of work on image websites. There is also a special article for image buyers with detailed description of purchasing on every image stock.

To sum up

Summing up, for fruitful sales on photo stocks you will need:

• Digital camera. The better it will be, the bigger chances for high earnings you will have. You’ll only benefit from knowing Photoshop. It stands to reason, you are to have special programmes and skills to work with vectors and 3D illustrations.
• Time to take pics and perfect ready made images.
• PayPal or Moneybookers account.