Make Money Selling Stock Photos

Do you have other talents besides photography? Did you know that microstock agencies also accept graphics? If you enjoy drawing, painting or computer illustration in addition to photography, you might have another stream of income you can take advantage of.

I dabble with children's graphics and sometimes product illustration when I have some spare time. What about you? Do you doodle, create computer icons or draw maps? Think about what interesting artistic endeavors might be a part of your repertoire. Upload a few and see what happens.

Here's one of my illustrations from a children's book I've worked on for several years. Check out my portfolio on Dreamstime to see a few more.

Another great piece of equipment that I highly recommend is a Wacom Tablet. Got no idea what I'm talking about? Well a Wacom is kind of a digital sketch pad. You use a stylus to direct your screen curser to do very accurate, detailed work in Photoshop (or other graphic programs). I use my Wacom to do retouching and most importantly, to isolate objects.

Dropping the background out from a photo, isolating the object on a white background is a great advantage in microstock photograpy. Many webdesigners opt for a "clean" look. This technique is ideal for that.

The before and after photos in this post show a pretty bland image on the left. Using my Wacom Tablet and stylus, I isolated my pile of stones and dropped out the background. I then added a gray background with a center backlight. (Other Photoshop touches to this image include flipping the photo and using an omni light on the stones themselve.)

If you take a look at Tip #10 (the previous post), you can see a Christmas image that shows the same technique of isolating an object, keeping the background white.

I also use my Wacom to do graphic images (illustrations) which I sell at Dreamstime. I've been using a Wacom Tablet for about eight years and can't imagine doing photographs without it.