Tips to Sell Photos at Shutterstock

In the last article about passive income for graphic designers and photographers, we have talked about Shutterstock briefly. We have mentioned as well that passive income isn’t only for professionals, it’s for whoever wants to. And here we are going to explain more. At the moment, we are going to talk about tips to sell photos at Shutterstock. It might be that this article would suit you who have no experience or newbie in this field. However, whoever you are reading this article, fix your position and enjoy reading!

Shutterstock is one of microstocks in which we can sell images, photos, videos, and music. All of them are sold in digital products, so we don’t need to print them out. Here we only focus on photos. Once we upload a photo and there is someone wants to buy it, they only need to download it without having to communicate with us. We don’t know exactly who has bought our photo, however we can find out the buyer's location. 

• Sometimes, we have cases where our photos are rejected by Shutterstock. Then, how to fix it?

Firstly, Shutterstock is a place where the contributors are selling their works and where the buyers are buying photos they need. Before you are going to sell your photos, please assume that you are a buyer. Then realize, if you are a buyer, what kind of photo that you are going to buy? Of course a buyer is going to buy a photo which has a good quality. So, it’s a must for you to pay attention when you take a photo for Shutterstock. 

• Next question might be how if we don’t have a good camera to take a good quality photo?

Do you have a phone? It can be sure you are reading this article using your computer or smartphone. You have a smartphone which its camera is more than enough to take a good quality photo. You just need to confirm other aspects such as the lighting when you take photos. Instead of buying a new camera, it might be better to buy a lamp for lighting additions. However, it’s actually enough to use the sunlight (as long as your region receives enough sunlight). Please, pay attention to your photos lighting. After you have done with the lighting, next is be sure that you take a photo from any perspective and the result is not blurred or something. Why do we need to take photos from any perspective? Once one of our photos is rejected, we still have alternatives.

Next tip is about when we upload a photo to Shutterstock. Once we upload a photo, Shutterstock requires us to make descriptions and put the keywords related to our photo. It is easy to start from keywords, usually Shutterstock has given some recommendations keywords related to our photo. However, not all of them are related. We need to choose the most relevant and related one. If the keywords we want to put are not in recommendations, we can type it ourselves. Be sure that the keywords are totally related because it would impact Shutterstock review. If the keywords are not related, therefore Shutterstock would reject our photo. The maximum keywords we can put is up to 50, the more we put the keywords the more possibilities our photo is displayed and bought.

About the descriptions, you can describe your photo maximum in 200 characters. The easy example is you can write about what actually the thing was made of, how to make it, what color it is, where the thing was from, what the functions and so on. You can use 5W+1H formula to ease. Next, don’t forget to choose the category of your photo. It’s easy because we just need to choose the categories from the options.

After all the requirements are done, we can submit our photo and wait whether Shutterstock approves or rejects our photo. Once Shutterstock accepts, we just need to wait until someone buys our photo and we receive income. By then, we earn passive income from Shutterstock. Sometimes, it’s not as easy as we imagine. However, don’t stop and improve your skill.

Finally, that’s all the tips for today. Next time, we are going to talk more about it. Don’t miss it and see you!

*Dn