Make Money Selling Stock Photos

Here are two ideas on earning high commissions with multiple submissions. The key is to use "exclusivity" to your advantage. Exclusivity earns you more money per sale but limits your audience for that image to one agency. So here are two techniques that can give you a little more mileage out of your submissions and possibly a few more dollars per image.

1. Submit a group of images to your top agency as "exclusive" submissions. After receiving your accept or rejection emails for the images, take your rejections and re-submit them to your second agency as "exclusive". If you make sure your images are top-notch, you should have no problem getting everything accepted as exclusive using this method.

2. Photograph several versions of every image. This way you can submit different images from the same theme to each agency and submit both as "exclusive", offering the ability to earn higher commissions. Make sure the images are different enough to be unique so you don't break the rules pertaining to "exclusivity". Just changing the aperture or shudder speed doesn't cut it - they need to be shot from different angles, introducing different elements, close-up vs. full length or panoramic, shot with different lenses, etc. As I enjoy photographing trucks, I always do a variety of views, angles and perspectives every time I have the opportunity to be around a shiny, chrome diesel.

Drawing from my own experience, I definitely make money faster with exclusive images listed with just one agency than having the same image on two different agencies, listed at a lower commission scale. I'm sure there are many microstock photographers out there who would argue with this, opting for a broader audience. You need to experiment with various submission techniques for yourself to see what works best.

Above is an example of different versions on the same theme. Same truck, same photo session - two different photos, each having lots of potential for sales. They're both available at Dreamstime.