Photography

If you are a professional photographer, or a decent photographer, with a love of pictures, you can make some money by sharing your pictures online.

Stock photography

Stock photography is photography of people, places, sights, ideas and events that can be used in marketing and design. A customer who uses a stock photo rather than hiring a photographer, saves time and money. The users of stock photography are publishers, advertising agencies, graphic artists, web designers, interior decor firms, corporate creative groups,

Stock photos can be licensed for specific uses. The same image can be sold many times, because buyers usually don't get exclusive rights. Stock photography includes images of people, animals, objects, landscapes, buildings, concepts, and events that can be sold to and used by a wide variety of media outlets.

A few years ago a new type of stock photo agencies has emerged. These new image banks, known as 'microstock' sites, have allowed anyone from the amateur to the professional photographer to sell images easily. These sites take images from individual contributors, and photographer gets a commission for each image sold. The microstock photography market was pioneered by iStockPhoto and followed by Dreamstime, Shutterstock, Fotolia, BigStockPhoto, and many others.

With microstock photography, the photographer loads up photos for free, and receives a commission each time their photo is downloaded. Earnings are obviously based on the popularity of your photos.

My view is that if you are a keen photographer and you are taking photos anyway, you may aswell give this a go, as the photos could be earning you ongoing money without any additonal effort.