Make Extra Money for the Holidays: Turn Your Photos Into Cash

Do you max out your credit cards during the Christmas holidays and spend the new year paying them off? Here's a better idea: raise extra cash for the holidays and actually have the money to celebrate and enjoy the season.

I've got a solution that's easy, fast and - don't worry - it's perfectly legal and legitimate. The sooner you get started, the sooner you'll be raising your holiday funds. What's more, this method will keep the extra cash coming in for months, even years to come.

I'm talking about turning your digital photos into cash! That is, sell your digital photos online through stock photo sites. It takes a minimal amount of time to get set up, and then it's a matter of adding pictures to your collections and tweaking them to sell more photos.

Here's how you can turn your photos into Christmas cash:

1. Sign up for free accounts in stock photo sites, if you haven't done so yet.

Make a Google search for stock photo sites, and sign up for those that allow photographers to sell their photos online. Make sure you can register for free, and read and re-read the terms of use to make sure everything's acceptable to you. You'll want to steer clear of sites that require you to pay for registration, or to give the copyright of your photos to them.

2. Look for sellable photos in your hard drive.

You probably already have sellable photos sitting in your hard drive right now. Organize your photos a folder. To find out which photos sell fast online, check out this free report called "Make Money with Digital Photography."

3. Prepare your photos for selling.

Your photos may require a little polishing to turn then into best-selling gems. Use your image editing software to make your photos professional quality.

You'll also want to tag your photos with appropriate keywords. To learn why keywords are important and how to find the right keywords, read your copy of "Make Money with Digital Photography." It's free.

4. Make a list of additional photos you can take right now.

As you read "Make Money with Digital Photography," you'll get ideas for more types of photos you need to be selling right now. Make a list of photo subjects you can take pictures of right away, to build up your catalog of in-demand photos.

5. Promote your photos.

Let everybody know that online photos are available. Send links your friends, family, clients and social networking contacts.

As you can see, it only takes a few hours work to start making extra cash for the holidays. In fact, some digital photography enthusiasts do this to earn a full-tim income.

To find out how to make your digital photos profitable, get your free copy of "Make Money with Digital Photography." In this report, you'll learn:

- What you need to know about making money with stock photo sites

- Four tips for creating photos that others are eager to buy

- Tips and tricks to draw more traffic to your photos online

- Four in-demand subjects you should be taking photos of

- How to edit your photos so you can sell more of them

Click here to download your free report right now.


PS. By the way, should you go ahead and buy a copy of Turn Your Photos into Cash from a link on this blog, I will be paid a commission for your purchase and I thank you!

Are Your Digital Photos Dullness Personified? Need Inspiration?

Are there times when you feel that currently your photographs are dull and uninspired? You set up the shot, try for a new angle, but it ends up looking like more of the same?

I periodically go through phases like this. I'm so dissatisfied and depressed because I feel that the photos I'm taking are reasonably nice, technically OK, but they just don't 'sing' or resonate with that ... 'something' extra! There is a dullness or a sameness to the composition and design of my shots that makes me realize that my 'eye' has become jaded and is in urgent need of an injection of freshness and inspiration.

This is when I put away my camera and go in search of inspiration - new ideas, different techniques, new vision, new influences. I raid fellow photographers' book cases, scour library shelves, the local bookstores, online stores in search of the input that is going to shift my perspective from jaded to inspired once again.

As you have no doubt guessed, this is where I have been stuck for the past couple of weeks. In my quest for inspiration I found a marvelous book on composing and designing digital photos that has shifted me from that awful space and introduced the freshness I was searching for. Phew, what a relief to have my enthusiasm back!

The book is aptly entitled The Photographer's Eye: Composition and Design for Better Digital Photos by the well-known photographer Michael Freeman.


The wonderful thing is that he articulates really well why images work and explains how to set up the design of your shots so that they become more than the sum of their individual image-parts. He shows you how composition and design help you set up images that can be meaningful or ironic or humorous or just great fun.


Michael Freeman has written many books on different aspects of photography and I, for one, am looking forward to exploring some of his other titles.

In the interests of full disclosure, if you do make a purchase from my link, I will receive a small commission - not enough even for a latte!