Stock Photography

[Hookswords]

Has anyone here sold there photos to any of the various stock photo sites around? Does it pay off? Is it fun? Anything you can share about the experience? I've been looking into various freelance methods to make some cash and maybe ditch my day job and get into doing art full time. I thought that stock photo sales might be a possible addition to my freelance repertoire.

[kellyplz]

Hi there. I started selling stock in March with Shutterstock and have since joined istock, Dreamstime and Big Stock. I really enjoy the challenge and find it has really helped me improve my craft. My portfolios are still quite small so the money isn't great but I'm expecting to get my first pay out hopefully by Christmas on my first site.
The best advice I can give is for your initial submissions, make sure your images are top quality; good composition, tack sharp focus, good lighting, no noise or artifacts and having some uniqueness and commercial value is important as well. Check out the forums too, you can get a lot of useful advice there.