“We try to grab pieces of our lives as they speed past us. Photographs freeze those pieces and help us remember how we were.” Gene McSweeney

Do you carry your digital camera everywhere you go? Are you the person at family events that everyone wants to take the pictures? Then why not make money at something you enjoy. Photography has been a hobby of mine since high school and if you are anything like me your computer is loaded with photos of family events, pets, cars and more. Have you ever thought you could make money from all those photos? You can start Today!

Photographs, or to be more precise, images – are everywhere. Magazines, newspapers, publications, websites, brochures, leaflets, pamphlets… the list goes on and on and on. Everything that has a commercial use has some sort of marketing on it, and more often than not…it’s a photo.

There are many ways to go about making money with your photographs. We will look at the ones that make you smile every time you click through them on your hard drive. Let’s take a look at how you can make money with stock photos. There are many benefits of using stock photo sites to sell your work.

A stock photo site is a place where people or businesses can purchase digital photos and other images that fit their needs. The stock photo site may offer the images as a purchase or lease the image for a specific time period. Each time one of your photos is used you will be paid, the amount depends on the site and how the photo is purchased.

I suggest going to www.istockphoto.com register and take a look around. If you type “puppies” in the search box (they are all so cute) Click on the first photo and notice the download history. It was a yellow lab with 2400 downloads when I searched. What types of photos do you like to take? Put that in the search box and see what is the top downloads in that category. This will give you an idea of the popularity of that category and what type of photos are being downloaded.

As you well know quality is a must for your photos to sell. Before you can start earning extra income from your digital photos, you must produce digital photographs that are worth buying in the first place. This is where browsing the site for different types of photos and checking the stats to see the quality of those submitted and which types of images sells on a regular basis.

There are many other avenues you can sell your digital photographs offline as well. I live near the lake where there are fishing contests being held. Make sure you are there at the end and see if anyone is interested in your services (they probably forgot to bring their camera).

If you go to a family reunion take lots of photos and create a calender then contact the family members to see if they would like to purchase one. You can offer your services at children birthday parties or any other family event.
You can go to car shows, parades or start a business for anyone needing pictures for items they want to sell on Ebay or at auctions. Contact your locale realtors offices and offer to photograph their houses they are listing. Make sure you have photos from each of these ideas in a portfolio to show your work.

You can even start a website that showcases your digital photography. There are many free sites that you can start with to keep overhead down. Www.squidoo.com, www.wix.com just to name a few.

I hope this article leaves your creative juices flowing and will help on your path to prosperity!