Can You Make a Living with Online Photography Sites?

People have been making money from taking photographs of people, objects, places and so on. These are usually full-time or freelance photographers who work for companies where photographs are an essential products in their business. These companies can be news, books and magazine publishers down to wedding planning agencies and so on.

With the creation of the digital camera and the growth of the internet photographs can be now be taken from any mobile phone and uploaded directly online for everyone to see online. There are now many photo sharing websites where one can buy and sell photographs. Many people from hobbyists to professionals have started using these sites to earn money.

There are now so many photographs being uploaded to these sites that there are people who buy or sell on these websites who concluded that these websites are oversaturated with photographs and competition is fierce although they did not specify if they are making money or not.

Based on articles and videos I saw online I found out that many make no money at all from uploading to these photo sharing websites. This is not an unusual thing. Many people get involved in all kinds of businesses and end up not making or even losing money when their business ends up as a failure.

I did see however people making on average $500.00 to $600.00 per month uploading to this websites. The bad part of this is that these people where from America where these amounts of money corresponds to being paid $20.00 and lower for several hours of work. These Americans are being paid much lower than minimum wage even if they have uploaded thousands of photographs to these websites.

The situation is different though for people living in other countries where the living standards are much lower than western countries preferably like the America. In the Philippines for example a $500.00 to $600.00 earning range per month would be much more than the minimum wage per month of the people living in this country.

But people in these countries where I mentioned should not rejoice yet. The primary buyers of the photographs from these websites are people from western countries as well like Americans. These buyers usually buy photographs related to their lives, environment, people and so on. People living outside these countries may not have access to these photography content.

This does not mean though that it is impossible for people living outside western countries to earn money from these websites. One can take for example photographs of nature like animals and plants which live in many different countries. One can also take pictures of common objects such as cars and highways which can be found all over the world.

In fact many people both from western and non-western countries can make money from these websites not from photographing the subjects they like but from photographing subjects these websites lack. If you want to seriously make money from photographs then treat it like a business and know the law of supply and demand. Preferably what photographs the buyers want.

I found an interesting Youtube channel about photography. The name of the channel is Nicole Glass. She has useful information like her Shutterstock series where she informs us of her findings and strategies on how to make money on this site like uploading photography subjects that are still unique or unsaturated yet.

She also informs us that there are people who indeed make six figures in dollars but not primarily from uploading to this websites but from having a website, blogging, teaching and other things directly related to photography.

Conclusion

It is very hard for people living in countries with high standards of living to make a full-time living by just uploading to these sites. They need to offer other photography related products and services. For countries with lower standards of living it is possible. Everyone however needs a strategy in order for their photographs to stand out from the now oversaturated market.