Freelance Photography Jobs are becoming more and more popular these days. With the availability of good camera at reasonable prices, freelance photography jobs are getting into demand. Photography is a unique and beautiful job profile. Also freelance photographers are earning great income by submitting their snaps to large stock-photo firms. This article is for those enthusiasts, independent photographers who want to turn their hobby into a rewarding career. Here, we have tried to enlist every aspect of freelance photography jobs.
How do freelance photography jobs work?
Freelance photography jobs are very closely related to stock photography. Stock photography is nothing but the collection of a large number and variety of photographs. There are many big and reputed stock photography firms which buys a wide variety of photographs. These firms allow the users to download the images after taking payment from them. A part of this payment is given to the photographer as his commission. The whole process of freelance photography jobs is illustrated in the diagram below:
Income to be expected in Freelance Photography Jobs:
The income generated through freelance photography jobs is completely dependent on the company where you submit your photographs. Generally, a freelance photographer gets paid when someone downloads an image submitted by him. This commission may vary from $0.25 to $1 per download. Suppose, you have submitted 1 image to bigstockphoto.com and you receive $0.25 per download. Assume that, your image has been downloaded 1000 times in a particular month, then you would get a commission = 1000 X $0.25 = $250 (Rs.15000/-) monthly, for just 1 image submission. There are many freelance photographers who are earning more that $1000 per month.
Freelance Photography Jobs vs Regular Jobs:
Mark Twain once truly said, “The more enjoyment you get out of your work, the more money you will make.” This should be an inspiration while starting a career out of your passion and hobby. Freelance Photography Jobs are very artistic and requires ones imagination and creativity. Artistic jobs like photography, writing, cooking, painting, music, etc all requires a great amount of passion to be successful. Now, here is a brief comparison between regular jobs and freelance photography jobs:
i). Regular Jobs have a fixed timing of work. Life runs as per a routine and routine is boring. Freelance Photography Jobs does not have any fixed working hours. Pick up your DSLR/Camcorder/Mobile Phone and go out for the hunt of the day.
ii). With regular jobs, you take orders from your superiors and there is always someone to nag or demote your self-esteem. In freelance photography jobs, as it sounds, you are completely free and take your own decisions. There are only two things that can happen to you: Your photos may be selected or rejected at most.
iii). In a regular job, your future and your life may be secure as you are sure of getting your salary each month. In freelance photography jobs there is quite a risk on the income front. But, once established as a good photographer, you would earn your dream income.
List of Companies providing Freelance Photography Jobs:
Freelance photography jobs are provided mostly by stock photography firms. The following contains a list of companies providing freelance photography jobs:
- bigstockphoto.com:BigStockPhoto was founded in California in 2014 and was acquired by Shutterstock in 2009. You can signup as a BigStock contributor for free and start uploading images. On selection of your images, they will be added to the BigStock collection. You always keep the copyrights to your work.
You can sell your photographs to BigStockPhoto and earn royalty from $0.25 to $0.38 per download. Your earnings, per download, are based on the customer’s selection of payment plan and the size of the file that was downloaded. You can make a request for payment at any time once your commissions have reached $30.00. Payment requests are processed once a week on Monday. Payments are made either by PayPal or Postal Check.
How to apply for Freelance Photography Jobs with BigstockPhoto?
There are two things you need to complete before you can begin to upload content in Bigstockphoto.
i). Visit: bigstockphoto.in to sell-your-images. The first thing is to set up your account, including entering a Profile Name. Once this is done, you will need to read their Contributor Tutorial. This will give you a general idea of what types of content that Bigstock will accept into their collection. It will introduce you to basic concepts of successful commercial stock imagery, what is allowed under copyright law and what is not allowed, and the technical quality that will be required.
ii). After you finished the Contributor Tutorial, you will have access to the Upload Area. Select ten of your best images, illustrations or vector files to submit. Your content will be reviewed for technical quality, commercial viability, accurate titles, descriptions, and keywords, and the appropriateness for the Bigstock collection. The first time a contributor uploads images, there is a limit of 10 images that can be in the review queue. As your approval rate increases, you are allowed to upload more images. If your approval rate drops the number of images you can upload also drops.
2). dreamstime.com: Dreamstime.com acts as an agency providing quality images to professionals in the industry, as well as helping professional or amateur photographers sell their portfolio online. As of June 2013, Dreamstime numbers 6,000,000 registered members, more than 157,000 contributing photographers and over 17,500,000 photos, illustrations, cliparts and vectors. With unique visitors exceeding 11,000,000 monthly, the agency occupies the 2nd place in stock photography audience and image licensing worldwide.
Applying for Freelance Photography Jobs with Dreamstime:
Visit: dreamstime.com to ell-stock-photos-images Anyone can join Dreamstime and sell their photos, images and/or videos. Just create an account and upload your media files. For each transaction, the contributor receives 25-50% Revenue Share, which is calculated based on the net sales amount for the transaction. Exclusive files receive an additional 10 % bonus, while exclusive contributors enjoy a 60 % Revenue Share for all sales and an additional bonus of $0.20 for each approved submission. Any contributor may request payment as soon as the balance has reached $100 and the contributor submits a payment request from the Management Area. When approved, your file will be included in the database as a 1 level file. As it gets downloaded, the image/video moves to a higher level and sells for a higher price.
Before uploading a file you must make sure the following criteria are met for your image:
i). Must be your personal work and you must own the copyright upon everything within it.
ii). Must be of least 3MP resolution.
iii). Must be saved at the highest JPG quality (100% or level 12).
iv). Check carefully for copyright issues such as labels, logos, characters from cartoons or movies etc. Note that some buildings are protected by a trademark (such as new sculptures), cars like Ferrari and Porsche, Harley Davidson motorcycles, the Coca-Cola bottle, the Olympic logo circles.
v). Don’t upload offensive content such as explicit nudes, drugs, people in offensive positions, racism.
3). alamy.com : Alamy.com is a stock photography firm which pays the largest royalty (50%) to its freelance photographers. The company has paid over $110 Million to its contributors since it began. Over 30,000 photographers and 600 picture agencies have submitted images to Alarmy.
Basic requirements to work as a freelance photographer with Alamy.com:
i). Images from at least a 6 megapixel DSLR or more.
ii). JPEG’s saved at a high quality setting (i.e. Photoshop level 10 or above).
iii). Alpha-numeric file names ending in .jpg
iv). For your test submission you need to send in (ONLY) 4 images of varied subject matter.
Once your images pass the Quality Check, you can annotate them to make them available for sale. To apply for the freelance photography jobs with Alamy.com, visit here to sell your photo.
4). istockphoto.com : Started in April 2000, istockphoto is another popular stock photography firm with a worldwide Alexa Rank of around 450. iStock pay contributors a base royalty rate of 15% for each file downloaded. If you are an Exclusive contributor you can earn up to 45%.
Applying for Freelance Photography Jobs with iStockphoto in 3 steps:
i). You need to be an iStock member before you can contribute your stock. Joining only takes a minute and is free of cost. Visit: istockphoto.com to sell stock photos
ii). Select a category in which you are interested to contribute photographs,
iii). The last step is the most important. Upload three samples of your work along with your application. These are the files iStockphoto will be using to evaluate your suitability as a contributor, so you’ll want to send your very best work.
5). shutterstock.com : Shutterstock is the largest and most popular stock photography firm available on the internet today. Its Global Alexa Ranking of 188 shows its popularity. Shutterstock has over 35 Million stock photos, vectors, videos and music tracks. You can reach nearly 1 million customers and start earning money right away. Shutterstock serves customers from 150 countries and has paid over $200 Million to its contributors. Before applying for freelance photography jobs with Shutterstock, one should keep in mind that the images to be submitted should be in JPG format and must be a minimum of 4 megapixels in resolution. For further details on this opportunity, interested freelance photographers must visit the company’s website here to sell your photo.
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These are a few freelance photography jobs currently open for interested candidates. Make sure to visit each of the websites and read their terms and conditions before joining them. Also, never join any freelance photography jobs which ask for an initial deposit or joining fees. In the comment box below, you may suggest some more good and genuine freelance photography jobs.