You probably thought that to sell photos to make a living you had to be a photographer. Well, that's not the case anymore. After the advent of internet and the revolution it has brought, many non photographers are selling photos to make a living. Some of them have made a fortune! This article tries to explain how.

Increasing Need For Photos: With the advent of the internet, a number of new things came up. Websites are available in plenty, so are newsletters, blogs etc. And then of course we have our traditional media which includes newspapers, ad agencies, annual reports and many such kind of documentation. Almost all of them would buy photos instead of hiring someone to click them.

To make these documents visually appealing, almost all of them use pictures in some way or the other. Randomly visit 10 websites and you will find out, or just go read through a magazine for more evidence.

Enter Micro-stock Agencies: An innovative way was found to meet this sudden explosion in demand. Instead of hiring professional photographers for a salary, many web based agencies called micro stock agencies came up. They realized that a lot of people take photographs as a part of their hobby. So to utilize this huge stock of photos of amateur photographer, micro stock photography agencies were born.

How Do They Work?

*These agencies then work as buy sell photo shops.

*They provide space to amateur and professional photographers on their website to post their photographer portfolio which is nothing but the photographers' personal photograph collection.

*Some of these agencies conduct tests before they allow posting stock.

*However as an individual decides to sell photographs online, the agency works out a revenue sharing agreement and the agency can sell photos but must pay a part to the photographer.

*When someone had a need to buy photographs, they could simply log on to the website and purchase it for a small amount say 50 cents.

*A photographer could now simultaneously sell his photos to many people online who needed them.

*Even though the money made per download was trivial, a photographer could have thousands of such photographs posted all over the net.

*Also each of these photographs could be downloaded thousands of times.

*The photographer could be making serious money if this happened and many of them did.

Beware: Like with every major innovation micro stock agencies have also had their fair share of scams and impostors. Many people lost their money to crooks that set up websites pretending to be micro stock agencies and demanding upfront payment for membership.

*Any genuine micro stock agency will always be free to join, although the tests that some of them conduct might be difficult to pass and it may take you a few attempts. But nobody will ever ask you for money upfront to sell photos that you may have clicked.

*Also none of these agencies will ever ask for a monthly payment or money in any form.

It is important to know that these agencies transform your talent into cash. They sell photos and not memberships. And the moment you hear words like membership fees or monthly charges hold on to your wallet.

In the meanwhile make the most of this platform to sell photos with the help of genuine micro stock agencies.