Microstock revenue

Today is the launch of MicrostockRevenue.com! I hope this site will help a lot of talented photographers, illustrators and videographers to realise their dreams about being able to make money with their images.

Maybe you are curious about who I am? Well, my name is Sarah Holmlund and I come from Sweden. I have already started a Swedish version of this site at Bildinkomster.se. So if you are from Sweden I suggest you check it out!

In the beginning of 2007 I got an assignment to review the e-book “The Camera Dollar System”. The book contains information about different ways to make money with a camera. But I especially took a liking of the so called “Microstock Agencies”.  In my assignment to review the book it also included that I should test the concept. Therefore I sent in some of my photos, that I had taken with a digital camera, to two different microstock agencies. Back then I thought these photos where great and I got a bit disappointed when none of them where accepted. Now, a year later, when I know a little bit more about photography I can see that these pictures where really bad. But anyway, I didn’t give up, instead I sent in two other images that I had created much earlier in a 3d program. These where accepted! After doing some research about which type of pictures that sell I created a new image in a 3d program that I sent in. To my great surprise and joy the image where actually bought a couple of times. This made me want more… Imagine sitting in front of the computer all day long and spend all time just creating images. That had been fun!

Unfortunately I don’t have too much time to create pictures but this is something I would like to earn more from in the future. I realise it’s a long way before I will earn any significant money on this but I will keep trying! In the meantime I hope I can inspire other more talented people to get started with this. I know there are a lot of people out there that don’t even know themselves how talented they are. For them this is an excellent opportunity to create an extra income that in the future even may grow to a full time job.

If you enjoy taking photographs, draw, shoot video or create 3d renderings but are unsure if your pictures are good enough I recommend you to give it a try anyway. Send some of your best pictures to two or three different microstock agencies and see what they say. I especially recommend you to start with Lucky Oliver since they are the best when it comes to giving feedback. They don’t just tell you if something is wrong they usually also suggest how you can improve the picture so it will get accepted the next time. It doesn’t cost a thing to try. If the pictures don’t get approved you will learn what is wrong and you can work on improving them. I didn’t get my photos accepted the first time I tried but I never gave up. And I have learnt a lot since I took those first photos which are much thanks to the agencies that was honest and told me exactly what was wrong with them.

So even if I have started this site I’m no professional photographer or illustrator or expert of some kind. I have a small number of images in my portfolio in a number of different microstock agencies and I know that these pictures hardly are any great pictures but I hope to improve. I will try and increase my portfolio and improve the quality of my pictures. After that we will se if I can start to generate some money from all of this.

Do you have any experience from the microstock industry? Please leave your comments here in the blog. It’s always fun to read other peoples success stories but if you have bad experience it’s of course interesting to hear about too.

If you want to follow my journey in to the microstock world I suggest you come back and read my blog often and sign up for my newsletter.

Good luck with your image creations!

Best regards,
Sarah