How to Start a Stock Photography Business
And Be Successful With It
When I was shooting film, back in the 1980s, I tried stock photography. But it didn’t take much research, which was also more difficult then, to discover that the time and cost involved made it a non-starter for me. You had to print and label hundreds of slides, mail them to various agencies, and then hope.
So, when I moved to digital photography in 2004, it was easier to find information on, and get started with stock photography. A simple search on the Internet, a few minutes signing up with agencies and I was off and running.
But times have changed again. Digital cameras continue to come down in price and up in quality. Cellphone cameras outperform my first DSLR camera.
And today, everyone’s a photographer. Not long after I started, the major stock agencies began running ads on social media claiming, “Make Money From the Pictures on Your Hard Drive.” And while that’s not necessarily true, it brought photographers from all over the world into the market.
And that kind of thinking still permeates the industry today. Shutterstock, the largest of the agencies gets 1.5 million images a week. That’s a lot of competition for me, much less someone just trying to start out. And from the questions I see on the forums, there are still a…
