Probably done to death, but, stocksite users?

Prenderb

Hi all, forgive me if this is done to death - someone mentioned alamy.com on a thread elsewhere, so I went and had a look.

Seems like something that an ordinary punter could get into, if only his or her photos are any good. Now, saying that, there are plenty of very high quality imagers on this very forum, so I got to wondering how many, if any, would submit their photos to sites like alamy? And is there a few bob to be made from it, even just a small few to pay for sensor cleaning materials?

Sorry if this one's done to death - I found a few threads, but none did any more than gloss over it.

PCPhoto

you can make money from sites like that - but usually it is slow and labour intensive, and not worth the amount of time invested.

EDIT: I'm not a stock site user but can see how someone would make money from them....but cant see it being hundreds or thousands.

sasar

I used to work with 7 stock websites until recently, when I understood that it is not worth the effort uploading any images to most of the sites.
Currently I'm working as an exclusive photographer for istockphoto and sell rights managed images on Alamy.

If you want to make living out of it, it is possible, but requires a lot of work. I make around 300$ a month on istock and so far have had only two sales on alamy, each 180$. Not much, but I can buy a new lens every now and then.

PCPhoto

the problem with stock sites is that they take your image - but .... most of them do nothing to market it, they do not expect to have to work for their cut of the profits.

Alamy seem to be the one which people recommend.

Prenderb

Sasar, that's very encouraging! Obviously it's image-dependent, but you have at least shown that it can be done!

Pcphoto, I kinds figured thatd be the case, you just end up in the library and if you're found, you're found.