FAQ | Stock Media Artists

Our recommended stock photo sites are listed here and most of them should be considered by photographers and other stock media artists

What sells best are stock oriented images with high commercial value. Designers look for the most popular subjects, such as business people, people at work, financial concepts, lifestyle and sport concepts, food and drink, healthcare, social issues and science and technology.

It depends on a stock photo agency but your contributor compensation will vary from 15% per image purchased via credits or around $0.20 per image purchased via subscription with a minimum average price of the smallest size image at around $1. For more information see our Contributors Royalty Comparison.

Yes, the larger your camera sensor is the larger size of your image will be offered for sale, then the higher your potential royalty is. If a photo buyer is looking for an image for high resolution print, they will pick the largest size available. In this way they will get the highest possible print quality. If you think about stock photography seriously, your images should be taken with high quality SLR or DSLR. Although modern “point and shoot” cameras have large sensors (in terms of number of pixels and not their physical size), they fall behind modern DSLR in terms of image quality (especially noise issues). More information on technical requirements can be found in this article.

Popular payment forms are PayPal and Skrill (Moneybookers), but some stock photo sites still offer to send you a cheque or have their branded pre-paid cards issued to you.
You can get paid once you have reached the minimum payout limit set by a stock photo agency. It varies from $10 to $100. Always check your profile carefully to see if there is an option to set it yourself. Sometimes the agency will pay you automatically once you have surpassed the limit, sometimes the payout must be requested. If you want to buy royalty-free images from the agency you submit photos to, in most cases you can convert your earning into credits and purchase whatever stock media you need.

Yes. You submit your photos on a Royalty-Free basis, so you may submit and continue to sell your photos to as many stock photo agencies and websites (including your own) as you wish, as long as you do not enter into Exclusivity agreement with any of them or sell you images with Rights Managed license. More information on stock photo licensing can be found here.

Read our Marketing Tips For Photographers to see if this can help you promote your photography online and increase your visibility to potential customers and photo buyers.