My First Stock Photography Sale! May 28, 2014   1

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One of the things all aspiring photographers think about eventually is selling their images as stock photography. Just imagine visions of easy uploading, quick selling and dollar signs. About 2 years ago, I had the *brilliant* idea I would be come a stock photographer on the side.

How easily my bubble popped.

Creating a stock photography business is not an easy task. It’s not all shooting photographs and uploading. You also need a tough skin for rejection. Not to mention, your style of photography may not translate well to the needs of stock photography buyers.

At the time, it only took getting rejected by 2 of 3 major stock photography resellers to make me rethink my decision to start… there was also the amount of web development work I had at the time and what I felt was an enormous amount of time to prep an image for upload by keywording and titling each image for sale. I stopped after uploading 4 images. How pathetic, right?

Recently, I decided to go back and give stock photography a try. With several thousands of photos a year, I figured I had to have at least a few hundred photos I could immediately submit to stock agencies, starting with the one I am already a contributor to – Dreamstime.

Since it had been over 2 years since my first failed “experiment”… and I use the word experiment loosely, since I never even really gave it a good go… I decided earlier this week to really try it for a month. My plan is to upload as many images as possible. I already have 100+ set aside for uploading, with my total count today at 7. (A potty training party derailed my upload plans yesterday…)

Dinner table purple place setting - Dreamstime comp 27543394© Photographer: Ywickham | Agency: Dreamstime.com

And as if just to bolster my resolve, I was surprised to see that one of my initial images finally sold yesterday. It’s been over 2 years, but…

I finally got my first stock photography sale ever yesterday!

While it wasn’t much, as the photo has fallen into the lowest tier ever due to the length of time it’s been on the site, it was something. It was encouraging. Consider this my project for June.

What project are you starting this summer?

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Categories: Stock Photography


About the author: Yazmin

Hi! I am Yazmin, a natural light, lifestyle photographer living in the Atlanta area. I am a Christian, a mother, a wife, a daughter, a friend, a geek and coder. Thank you for stopping by my little slice of the "interwebs"!


  1. Lashawn says:

    June 2, 2014

    Congratulations! I am thinking of opening an Etsy shop to sell prints! And I've really wanted to get into stock photography too!
    Lashawn recently posted...Weekending….My Profile Reply

    • Yazmin says:

      June 10, 2014

      Thanks!

      I was thinking about doing the same - opening an Etsy shop. These days, I'm all about having my eggs in multiple baskets...

      Let me know what you decide! I'd definitely stop by to be supportive and give you a shout out on the blog... to my 3+ readers. ;) Reply

  2. Jana says:

    June 2, 2014

    Congratulations! I would love to get into stock photography, and had a bunch of images selected by getty but I procrastinated and with all the flickr/getty changes, I'm going to just hang back for a bit. Hope you sell many more <3 Reply

    • Yazmin says:

      June 10, 2014

      Thank you Jana!

      It's definitely been interesting. Last week I submitted 22 photos and 17 got accepted. Some of them, of course, were my mistakes. Others, I was just hoping I could slide them by.

      Getty is like the pipe dream, right? Wouldn't it be nice to be contacted by them... I hope they contact you again soon! Reply


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