Make Money Online Selling Photos

About two years ago, I discovered Shutterbox. It’s suppose to sell your photos for you at $0.20PHP 12INR 17EUR 0.19CNY 1 per download and the idea is great. However, my photos then weren’t at par with the quality they want.

I thought only a few people could pass their standards and one can’t make enough money off of a $0.20PHP 12INR 17EUR 0.19CNY 1 download. I guess I was wrong — check out Lise Gagne and her collection from iStockPhoto, another online photo marketplace.

Lise Gagne

Her collection has already surpassed 500,000 downloads — yup, half a million sold photos since she started back in 2003. That’s from a collection of just 5,002 photos — wow, as in wow. If problogging is getting its groove, I’m sure prophotoblogging (that’s a mouthful) should be the next best thing.

Ok, so let’s just say she gets $0.20PHP 12INR 17EUR 0.19CNY 1 for each paid download, the same rates as Shutterbox so we’re a little conservative there. We multiply 512,669 and $0.20PHP 12INR 17EUR 0.19CNY 1 and we get $102,533.8PHP 6,017,247INR 8,689,719EUR 97,643CNY 746,272 in total. However, I’m sure she’s getting way more than $0.20PHP 12INR 17EUR 0.19CNY 1 per download. Make it $2PHP 117INR 169EUR 2CNY 15 and she takes home a million big bucks.

Time to get back and sort that photo archive.

Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

https://www.yugatech.com

7 Comments

Manuel V says:

18 years ago

Not just sort, but also photoshop…

Some of the photos I saw in Lise’s site look photoshopped. If that’s the case, then those half a million downloads is proof of this marketing principle:

“Make it easy for your customers.”
- Reply
Jeffrey Wong says:

18 years ago

I have a portfolio at istockphoto: http://www.istockphoto.com/jeffreyw – most of them are illustrations or vectors.

I’ve earned 800 dollars in 3 years, it’s getting slower now, maybe because of internal competition good artists/photographers growing and proliferation of similar photo sites.
- Reply
Jun of ZeroGravity says:

17 years ago

Shutterbox just dumped my ten photos the other day! Sniff! Sniff!
- Reply
Jordan McClements says:

17 years ago

The lisegagne site is very impressive. But you would need a very large investment of money and time (and a bit of luck) to achieve something similar.

I am also trying to make money from photos online, but approaching it from a different angle, by making my images freely available, and mainly using adsense to monetise my web site.

I have started a Make Money From Photos Online Blog if anyone wants to follow my progress!
- Reply
Enea says:

17 years ago

That’s a lot of money….
- Reply
Marc says:

15 years ago

Hi,
If you try to sell, you dont get any money.
Get an account from adsense, put the ID on http://www.isphotobomb.com with your photos.
Share the links and win money.
- Reply
Nilesh says:

11 years ago

Its becoming almost too competitive now.
- Reply