The concept of stock photography is that an agency, or a photographer, has a stock of general-purpose photographs — as opposed to hiring a photographer for a specific shoot. Stock photos are technically licensed, rather than sold. This means that the photographer retains the copyright and simply allows someone else to use the photo.

There are three basic types of stock photography: Royalty-Free Stock, Right’s Managed, and Micro-Stock. Let’s take a look at each of these.

Royalty-Free Stock Photography

Royalty-Free means that when someone purchases a photo from an agency they are paying for the right to use that photo as many times as they want, wherever they want, whenever they want. There are a few restrictions – the big one being that they don’t have the right to sell the photo for someone else to use – but it’s pretty wide open. This is the standard of stock photography.

Until recently buying Royalty-Free photos was the cheapest way to get quality photos, and they would cost around a few hundred dollars per photo. Getting into a stock agency was very difficult and exclusive. However, the cost of standard royalty-free photography has been dropping steeply with the rise of micro-stock agencies, which we’ll get to in a moment.

Rights Managed Photography

Rights Managed means that buyers pay for specific rights to a photo. For example, they might purchase the right to use a photo only in a calendar, or for a book, but they can’t use it for anything else. Rights managed photos always come with a sunset – someone buys rights to the photo for a limited amount of time.

Rights Managed photos can cost tens of thousands of dollars to purchase. The main advantage for the buyer is that they’re not only buying rights to the photo, but they’re keeping anyone else from getting it. So if you buy rights to use a photo in calendars, then no one else can use that photo in a calendar for the duration of your contract.

Rights Managed photography is a very small and elite group of photographers. Getting accepted by an agency often has more to do with your reputation and renown than simply the quality of your work.

Micro-Stock Photography

Micro-stock is basically just royalty-free stock photography that has taken advantage of the internet and the proliferation of talented amateur photographers with digital cameras. The only difference between micro-stock and standard royalty-free is that micro stock uses thousands of photographers (anyone can submit) and in turn they charge radically less for the photos — often as little as $1 for a small photo.

Micro Stock sites typicaly allow a photo to be purchased in a number of different sizes. The smallest size (usually only good for web use) is the cheapest. If you want high resolution large files they charge up to $25 or more — still far, far cheaper than standard royalty-free.

The last couple of years have proven that micro-stock is the future of stock photography. Standard royalty-free stock agencies have had to continually lower their prices to compete. Professional stock photographers have found their income from stock plummeting with the competition, and many of them have even moved to offer their photos through micro-stock agencies themselves.

This site is all about micro-stock agencies. Anyone with decent equipment and good photos can sell their photos to micro-stock agencies.

Just how much money can you make with micro-stock agencies? We’ll find out!