Looking for ways to make some money with your photography? Many photographers are finding that selling stock imagery is a great opportunity to turn their creativity into cash.

One of the benefits of stock photography is that it offers you the chance to earn a passive income. Once you shoot your photos, upload them to the stock imagery site, and set the metadata for your images, your work is mostly done! You can move onto other things while your stock photos start selling and you start earning royalties off of every sale.

While selling stock photography is far from a get rich quick venture, photographers that are creative enough, and persistent enough, find that selling stock photos can be a fun way to earn some extra income.

Ready to get started? Read on to see ten popular stock imagery sites that you can submit your images to, and see how you can get started.

1. Shutterstock

Shutterstock houses 184 million images and 91 million videos. They have been enjoying steady growth in sales since its founding in 2003. In 2017, people downloaded 172,000,000 images from this website.

Uploading to the marketplace will net you up to 30% of the sale price of your image. This percentage depends on the size of your image, with payouts falling between $0.25 and $28.

The best thing is that you keep the copyright. So you can still sell the images elsewhere.

2. Dreamstime

Like iStock and Shutterstock, this agency is a perfect starting point if you want to sell online photos. It’s user-friendly. And the requirements are not as stringent as its rivals.

What makes Dreamstime different is that you get to create and curate your galleries. That way, you have more control over selling photos online. In that respect, you can think of this agency more as a hosting site.

But, of course, that doesn’t mean you can post just about anything. Your submissions will still undergo screening to ensure you don’t violate the site rules. For instance, you can’t upload violent or copyrighted content. But if you follow all the guidelines, you can expect to make money once your images are online.

Your commissions start at 25% for a non-exclusive image and 27% for an exclusive option. But as you sell more photos, that can go up to 45% and 49.5%, respectively.

3. Adobe Stock (Fotolia)

Adobe Stock (formerly Fotolia ) is another microstock photography website. It represents over 57 million images. Adobe repurchased this site in 2014, integrating it into its creative cloud service. Here, you can receive royalties of between 20 and 46%.

The best part about this site is that your royalties come immediately. Other sites wait until you reach a financial threshold or after 30 days.

Four million buyers use this site, so showing them your images is in your best interest.

4. Getty Images

This company is perhaps the most prestigious on the list. Since its founding in 1995, it has become one of the world’s premier stock and editorial photography websites.

As mentioned earlier, iStock is Getty Image’s microstock photography branch. But they sell high-end content through GettyImages that often sell thousands of dollars.

People pay a few dollars for a photo of iStock since it’s loyalty-free. But for Getty Images, they need to buy a Rights Managed license. That means buyers don’t pay for the pictures themselves but for the right to use them on specific platforms such as the web or print.

Due to its exclusive status, it can be challenging to get into Getty Images. To apply, you need to submit six images. Getty then determines if your material is appropriate for either iStock or Getty.

You can earn up to 20% in commission if you get in. Photos on the site sell for hundreds of dollars, so that percentage can make you quite some profit.

5. Wirestock

Wirestock is a handy tool to help you sell your photos on multiple platforms. You can upload the images to Shutterstock, Depositphotos, and more… All at the same time, with just a few clicks of a button.

Another benefit of Wirestock is that the platform handles captioning and keywording. Your future sales and commissions depend on how easy it is to find your images. And how well the keywords capture their essence. Wirestock taking care of this tedious process is a real time-saver!

Wirestock allows creators to focus on creating – instead of juggling multiple platforms.