With digital camera pricese getting cheaper, specially good, high-megapixel digital SLRs, a lot more people are into selling pictures.  One such site where amateurs sell pictures is DeviantArt.com, however, this website is not primarily into selling pictures.  For serious picture trade there are stock photography sites and agencies.

Stock photography is one way of making money out of pictures.  The idea is that the photographer still owns the picture, and allows the buyer the use of the picture.  One other way of earning from a picture, specially for  professional photographers, is to take in commissions for works from ad agencies, book publishers and other users.  The resulting works would be owned by the entity which commissioned them.  In stock photography, the pictures are for limited use or one-time use, or with various exclusivity options.  There’s also the older business model of paying royalty for pictures.  The royalty is paid for every use of a picture.  Nowadays, there are stock agencies which offer non-royalty use.  There is a one-time payment for a limited time and unlimited use.  Even then, there are some pictures which have been sold multiple times and earning the photographer a lot of money.

Stock photography is like an inventory of pictures for sale by a buyer.  To be successful, an agency must have a big volume in stock.  Some agencies (and photographers) specialize in a specific style or genre.   Other agencies, pick a wide range of pictures and photo styles.  For a photographer, compiling large numbers of pictures of a particular style or genre would be best.  Specializing on wildlife or cityscapes would allow the photographer to hone his craft and develop his technique some more.

Some people think that owning a camera is already automatically means that they take good pictures, or that the pictures are good enough for selling.  In stock photography, this is not a problem as the industry started with photo discards from journalism assignments.  And besides, this is a numbers game:  the more pictures a photographer has in stock, the greater the chances from him earning because somebody picked up his picture.  For a stock photographer, having 100,000 pictures in stock means that he’d probably earn more than 10 times compared  to having only 10,000 pictures.

There are a lot of stock photography sites on the web.  And it’s not a bad idea for an amateur to submit to these sites.  It’s one way of earning money from photography.