It’s the second week of the new year, and already I’m making progress on my resolutions! Specifically, the one about sharing my photography with the world and figuring out how to monetize it (because money=helpful!). I have a TON of photos that I’ve never even gone through (like, over 100k and 6 TB), and I NEED TO DO SOMETHING WITH THEM. It helps to have some external deadline or motivation for me to actually go through and edit them—a personal quirk I’ve learned with my writing lately. We all need to figure out how we work best, yes? That’s a huge boon to productivity!

So, what is the answer to editing images, sharing them with the world, and monetizing them? Stock photo agencies! I can post my images to a number of stock sites and have people license them (hopefully), earning me a small royalty in return. Mind you, this isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme by any means, but it’s passive income that I don’t have to tend to other than putting new images up on a consistent basis. Which, again, gives me the incentive to actually cull and edit my photos. Win-win!

Last week, I started this process by editing a few of my animal photos (what I love shooting the most right now) and submitting them to Getty/iStockphoto to become a contributor (you submit to both and they decide where your best revenue may come from). After a mere few hours—when they said they might take up to 30 days to get back to you—they emailed me with an offer and contract to become a contributor to iStock. YAY. 

To be honest, I was aiming for Getty—because who wouldn’t? It’s the largest stock site in the world—but starting out with iStock is a better fit. The don’t have to be exclusive with iStock the way I would with Getty, which means I can submit my photos to other sites as well. Most contributors for them also start with iStock contracts, and some images can wind up on Getty if they’re popular enough anyway. So it’s a great first step!

Next up is Shutterstock and Adobe Stock, the two other big names in the stock photo game. The issue with submitting here right away, though, is that, if approved (for Shutterstock; Adobe doesn’t seem to have a review service) your images go on sale right away. I’m not quite ready for the that, yet. Need to get a larger batch of images ready for sale and then REGISTER THEM WITH THE COPYRIGHT OFFICE.

Ding ding ding. That is the absolute kicker here, needing to register all images I’m putting up for sale with the US copyright office. All images are immediately copyrighted by the creator upon pushing that shutter button (if you didn’t know), BUT…if you don’t register with the copyright office, you are only protected for the price of the image if someone steals your work, not for the loss of sales and other substantive damages. SO REGISTER YOUR WORK (this goes for writing, too. You cannot copyright an idea, but you can copyright the execution of an idea. So, as soon as you finish your book, slap a copyright registration on it—especially if you’re an indie publisher. Traditional publishing houses will take care of this for you. And, no, the “poor man’s copyright” (mailing something to yourself to prove date of creation) is a myth. Don’t rely on this for your protection.)

Bottom line is, I’ve got work to do, along with all my other—and priority—writing and editing work. It feels great to be productive, though, and to be moving forward in the direction of some sort of passive income, even if this income will likely net me mere pennies on each sale. I’ll have beautiful, edited photos that I can then do whatever I want with, sell them on other sites on phone cases, as wall art, etc. 

This is a great start to the new year, and I’m excited about this new direction I’m headed in.

How have you been tackling your New Year’s resolutions in these first two weeks? Most people wind up dropping them after two weeks, so how will you beat that trend? Share in the comments below!