© Luckyoliver

You must keep in mind that selling anything takes a lot of work. If you want to make money from your photographs with stock photography, be prepared to spend time and energy looking for the right stock photography site, choosing the right keywords for your images, managing you photos, editing and promoting them. You should always be professional in your work. Make sure every image you submit is clean, is good quality, has the right composition, etc. You have to be your own toughest critic. Photo-business experience is not a necessary if you want to sell photos on stock agencies but you do need a good eye and some photographic experience.

Dealing with photo stock agencies is an alternative to dealing directly with publishers. One advantage is that the agency does the selling for you, which frees up your time to take photos! There is also a downside in selling on stock agencies. The disadvantage is that it takes more time for your income to be generated, and the usual commission rate is about 50% of what you could negotiate directly. So you have to think carefully if you prefer to do commissioned work, or if you would like to make your living as a stock photographer, or if a balance of both would suit you best.

Usually, becoming a contributor photographer to a royalty free stock photography site doesn't cost anything. The registration is free for most agencies and they ask you to submit a sample of your work for evaluation. You should avoid royalty free sites that ask you to pay for a fee to store or handle your images. Remember that the photographer will, in most instances be able to retain the copyright of his images. Should you be offered the sale of copyright of certain images, you would be well advised to look for a substantial remuneration, as an outright sale of a picture will transfer all rights to the buyer.

Before selling your photos you have to search for a website that suites your needs. There are hundreds of stock agencies but each one is different. There are agencies that sell general stock photos (this includes categories like abstract, objects, people, nature, business, lifestyle, art, abstract, background and textures, sport, travel, religion, and so on...), but you can also find dedicated stock photography sites. For example botanical agencies (like Flowers & Foliage) action and sports agencies ( Actionplus sport images), beach, sealife, surf agencies (AframePhoto), aerial photography (Aerophotostock), and many more.

There are differences between stock photography agencies regarding how much they pay for your pictures and how are you going to be paid. Some sites pay you smaller amount of money per picture download. This is not a problem if the pictures on that site are selling often, because this way you can still make money. Some examples of this type of stock agencies: Shutterstock pays the photographer 25 cents (or slightly more) per download, but the pictures sell many times, Dreamstime pays about 50 cents per download, ScandinavianStockPhoto pays 1 euro per picture download. Fotolia pays the photographer between 33 and 80% of the image price. They also allow the photographer to set the price for his own photographs. Some stock photography agencies pay the photographer more money, but they are more demanding and the pictures sell rarely. For example ImageVortex allows the photographer to set the price for his image somewhere between 20 and 300 dollars. Alamy, a traditional stock photo agency, sells photos for prices between a few dollars and thousands of dollars.

Regarding the way the stock site pay the photographer, you should check if the payment method they use is available for you. For example if the site only pays by Moneybookers and this is not available in your country, you will not be able to receive your payment this way. For information regarding Moneybookers and its availability in your country, visit Moneybookers website. The most common and accessible payment method is by check, and you can cash your check a your local bank. In some countries cashing a check may take some time (a few weeks) and the bank can ask you to pay a high fee.

Finally, after you have chosen one or more stock photography sites to sell your photos, you have to register. You should always read first the Terms of service of the website. You need to know how are you going to be paid for your photographs, if the site is exclusive or not, read the Photo Submission Guidelines or anything else that may interest you as a contributor photograph. The registration is usually free and the procedure may be slightly different for different sites. Usually it doesn't take more than a few minutes to register, some sites (like Istockphoto) may require you to carefully read some terms and instructions and that take a test based on those instructions. But this is more a formality. 

After registering you may upload the first batch of photos and hope they will be accepted. Usually, the review of the first submission takes a longer time than the next submissions. Submission can be reviewed on the same day (if you are lucky) or can take a few days or even week on some sites (like Gimmestock). Carefully prepare your photos before uploading them and choose the right keywords for your images. Keywords are very important because they help your photos to be found on the stock site by designers in search of an image. Each stock agencies allow you to specify a certain number of keywords (let's say 30, 50 or 70) and sometimes you can even specify phrases by putting the word between quotation marks. If you plan to upload your photos on more sites you should use a software (you can do this in Adobe Photoshop: File>File Info) to specify keywords, a description and a title for your photos. This way you don't have to take care of keywords every time you upload an image on another site because most stock photography sites can automatically extract this information.

You should look for non exclusive stock agencies and upload your images on as many non exclusive sites as possible in order to maximize your sales. Be careful not to mess things up because it is quite difficult to manage many images on many stock photography sites. Exclusive stock agencies have their own advantages: the selling price can be higher for exclusive images and the marketing can be better.