Got a cool digi cam? Obsessed with photography? Well, you may be able to earn a few dollars daily then.

Wonder how? The answer is stock photography.

Anyone who has got a quality digicam, and has a flair for photography can now start clicking photos so that potential buyers can buy them from you - this is the basic principle in the stock photo industry.

To help you out there are many stock photo agencies around who have a streamlined approach to selling images. And the interesting part is that this is catching up in India too.

All you got to have is - A Quality Digital camera. Different agencies have different opinions and standard qualities, therefore it’s good if you have a high end one (above 6 MP may be), and an unending thirst to click images, also, a little bit of industry knowledge may give you that edge.

One who submits his images to stock agencies is called a contributor.
Many stock agencies accept your photos with a subscription fee, that is they buy your collection for a nominal fee and buy the rights thereby. The agency may then sell it to their clients.You do not get profits on long term basis from these agencies/libraries. But its a sure shot income once you submit to them.

And luckily there are a few agencies that work on commission basis, that is they do not buy your photos but take them from you and keep them in their collection for Free. And whenever there’s a sale to their client - you get a commission! If your photos are tuned such as to satisfy potential clients, then there’s no stopping you.Each sale to a client is a license given to them, to use the image on one or many of their projects for a particular time period. So every time they use the image you get your money. There are other licenses too that gives the client usage rights until perpetuity where you will be earning higher commissions.

This concept is more popular in the Europe,and US and is only penetrating in India. But this could be the right time to step in.

In India the licensing idea of images is pretty new.Especially, when the law is unable to curb issues like piracy. But it soon will catch up if you ask me. As of now, there are are a few MNC companies that has stepped in, like Visageimages which is an agency of getty. And there are a few clients who has started to buy images from them like Hutch, The Week and a few other Ad Agencies.

So this is the right time to clean those lenses, buy a new tripod and get on clicking! And you have been doing that all the time - so when there’s somebody to pay you for it - what the heck?

Here are a few stock agencies that are reputed in the stock image industry.
These links will take you to their contributor pages.

Alamy.com/contributors -UK Based Stock Image Library - Pays on commission basis
Getty - US Based Stock Image Library
Corbis- US Based stock Library

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