Everyone and anyone is looking for a get rich quick way to make money while doing little or no work. There may have been a time for that years ago but now that we are fully in a digital age there really are less and less opportunities involving no work to rack up some funds. However there are ways to make money online still available. Markets may be saturated but you can still get your piece of each and a small piece of many can still add up to a fair sized portion. Translation, if you do a bunch of small things you can still pull in something somewhat decent.
Over the past 4 years I have ventured more an more into various areas of online work that allow me to sell media or my skills. At first I started small, I had a rather large image portfolio and started selling it on Shutterstock. The sales were rather pathetic at first, a dollar a month if that. Then I started selling on Adobe. The commissions were better but sales were less so I saw about the same results as I did on Shutterstock. However I still had my sales on Shutterstock as well. I basically doubled my (minimal) income. So I again joined another site called iStock by Getty Images and again saw the same results. Then my sales started to increase on Shutterstock as I had some good niche images for particular markets. I saw the same on the other sites as well. Within a 6 month period that dollar a month increased to 10 and across all 3 sites.
Now 30 dollars US per month really isn't a lot of money. But it's still something I was bringing in and all I was doing was selling images I had sitting on my hard drive. Again I joined more and more sites. Some I saw no sales on and some I saw the same as the 3 I started with. Slowly I was building up to a decent amount of side income and because I was using images I collected performing my hobby it seemed like little work. This was all a bunch of photos I took while traveling and in my spare time to develop a skill I had interest in.
Maybe you are not into taking photos but you have another hobby like creating music, videos, or even in the case of Vocal, writing articles. These are all marketable skills on a smaller scale that if you combine together with the right social platforms can earn you some income. In this article I am going to go over many ways you can make a micro income and talk about how to use platforms like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube to intertwine and connect them. I will provide links to various sites and services you can use and give you a run down on my experience with them. To be completely transparent some of the links will be referrals (like Shutterstock) where I get a commission if you sign up. I only use referrals on sites I use, that's to help me pay the bills and as I explain later on in this article, is another way for you to increase your income.
What Are Your Skills?
The first thing you should do when attempting this venture is to make a list of your skills and hobbies that produce some type of material you can sell.
When it comes to a hobby that produces something it is not an issue so much to worry about the time you spend on it because chances are, you are already performing these tasks for your enjoyment. Even if you have a hobby that doesn't produce something you can sell, there is still a high possibility you can produce videos and articles on how to perform tasks. There are many people interested in the same things you are and the internet is a very big place. If you have a skill that you have perfected or have experience through trial and error you can help others.
When it comes to a skill that you can market you should always consider that you will need to put your time into the projects you are hired for and what you may be paid. For example you can put together websites for a customer online but if you are only paid 10 dollars for 40 hours work it really is not something that is profitable and it is taking away from your free time.
Using Social Media
Social media is something pretty much anyone with a mobile device or computer uses frequently. When used correctly and combined together it is a free way to market your brand, items and services. It allows others to comment on your posts giving you feedback and other users a feel for the quality of what you do. Remember if you are posting images that you are selling you should resize them to a smaller size and water mark them, otherwise you are just giving them away for free.
The key with using social media to market your products and services is simple. Use more than one platform and make sure they work together. If you are using YouTube you should most definitely try and get your audience to subscribe and view videos from there as it can lead to making additional funds in the long term.
Below is a quick breakdown on the 3 major social platforms and lists of things to consider when using them. I recommend using all 3. I have found using all 3, I have separate audiences on each. I only have about 50 users that are on all 3 platforms and my numbers range from 1000 on YouTube, 1500 on Instagram and 1800 on Facebook at the time of writing this. That means if I cross post across all 3 platforms I get an audience of about 4250 individual viewers plus whatever I pick up additionally with hash tags and through search results.
Many of us use Facebook and spend at least a few minutes a day. We spend time looking at others posts, re-posting things of interest or stuff we find funny and creating our own posts to share with friends and family.
Facebook is a huge platform that most of the world has access to. Some posts get millions of views, comments and likes. You can post images, videos and written comments to share with the world. Creating a Facebook page to establish a brand can help you build an audience that will look at or purchase whatever it is you are marketing to sell.
Some things to consider when making a Facebook page:
- Use a small watermark or branding on images, this means if the image is saved and re-posted or used by another, anyone who sees it will know where it is from.
- Posting links to videos on YouTube will help get you views, but posting a short portion of the video with a banner at the bottom advertising your YouTube channel will keep interest on your page and drive more views to YouTube.
- Posting links to articles is useful but you should still add something to the post to get peoples attention like "This looks like so much fun" or "I really want to go here".
- If you are selling a physical item, you can setup a Facebook shop but be mindful you will need to watch for sales to come in.
Instagram is similar to Facebook but has its own audiences. It offers a few special features like having a creators account or using IGTV to post videos into various series. Instagram seems to cater to a younger crowd and has a much simpler interface for the user to use than Facebook. Instagram also uses a hashtag engine to help your posts get engagement from people who don't even know your account exists.
Some things to consider for an Instagram account:
YouTube
YouTube is the grand daddy of all video platforms. No matter where I go in the world someone is watching something on YouTube at some point in time. I get into monetizing a channel later in this article. Right now we are just going to look at YouTube for building an audience and a place to publish videos.
With YouTube you can upload a video and cross post it into a blog, onto Facebook or your own website. You can advertise your own product freely, show experiences you have had or tell a story. You can do anything you want really in video format and then embed that video into many places.
Some things to consider when creating a YouTube Channel:
- Your name / brand should directly relate to your content. You can have more than one channel but its best to have a public channel that covers whatever it is you want to market.
- Your channel should be customized with a display image, wallpaper and make sure to include the links to your Instagram and Facebook accounts as well as any other site or service you are promoting. For an example you can check out my channel here: LIOP YouTube Channel.
- Your videos should contain custom made title cards. This makes them more appealing when they are displayed in searches and in various areas on YouTube.
- Use end cards to show other videos you have available on your channel that relate to the content in the video being shown to the viewer.
- Use indexed cards in the video to promote other videos and playlists the viewer may find of interest.
- Create playlists to string together multiple videos to keep a viewer interested and watching.
- Make sure your descriptions are detailed. Include a subscribe link, links to any articles you have written like reviews, etc. that are on the same subject and links to any other content that a viewer may find of use like map data, attraction websites or where to buy a good that is shown.
- Use the tags option on videos to allow the YouTube search engine to find your content easily.
- Add a location on the video, this also assists in the YouTube searches.
Selling Stock Images and Other Media
One outlet you can use to make some extra money is selling stock images, illustrations, video and music. I have found certain sites work well for me and others do not when it comes to selling images and video. Video is the trickiest because the subscription and sale of individual videos is quite high so you really need to know what to record and how to edit it in order to produce high quality video you can sell.
If you are selling images you should really know your way around Lightroom, Photoshop or another post application. The concept of taking the perfect shot is nice but you are needing to produce a commercial image for customers to download. You will also need to pass the QC on many sites when uploading. Even when a site has little or no QC, the customers will still be looking at your photos and deciding about the quality.
All that may sound a bit scary but developing commercial images is not that hard. There are many tutorial available online on how to shoot clean shots and use post software. It just takes a little practice and some patience.
Creating Illustrations is a matter of having some skill when it comes to drawing. You can draw images by hand or you can draw them using a program on your computer or mobile device. If you draw them on paper, you will need to process them the same as a photograph after you have scanned them. You will then need to save the image as a TIFF file as well as a JPEG for upload. The JPEG is used as a preview on the site. Each stock site will have its own requirements. If you digitally create an illustration using Adobe Illustrator or other software you simply have to export the finished product into the required file types and perform an upload (normally using FTP).
Stock video as I mentioned before, is one of the more difficult areas to get a sale. You need to be shooting in the quality required by the customer, footage they want and have it edited to perfection. This does not mean you shouldn't try to sell footage but you probably will also want to sell another medium while you are at it.
Stock audio is needed by many people. YouTubers need it for their videos, application creators look for it for games and music producers require samples and beats to produce a finished product. If you have good recording gear, play an instrument or know how to mix a good beat electronically this could be a good place for you to get started.
You have to maintain your portfolio, your sales will dip if you stop submitting files after about 6 months. Normally I keep a few files aside and submit them when I have nothing fresh to add. This also allows me to upload a large quantity when I do have files available so they are for sale, not waiting to be uploaded.
Below I have details on 3 stock sites I have had good luck with selling stock images and videos. They all accept illustrations and some like Shutterstock accept audio. These are 3 sites I would start with and then move on to more if you decide to do so. I would actually start with Shutterstock then Adobe and then iStock or Getty depending on who you get accepted for. If you are looking for more places to sell there is a full list of all the sites I use plus links to software like Adobe Creative Cloud and FTP managers for uploading in bulk.
Adobe Stock
Adobe is a well known name in the graphic industry. Everyone knows what Photoshop is and it is one of the most popular graphic design applications available. The also are the creators of the PDF and are well known for applications like Acrobat, Illustrator and Premier Pro. Because they come with such a high reputation and continually set industry standards, selling for them is a huge plus. If you have good quality media and it is in an area that is in demand you can bet it will get some form of exposure.
Adobe Stock is part of the Adobe Creative Cloud Community. Because of that they offer many integrations for customers making it easy for them to see what a sample of your work looks like in whatever it is they are creating. They also offer integrations for contributors, making it easy to upload your work directly from Lightroom to be submitted.
Adobe Stock moderates the media you upload and when you are starting off this is a really good thing. Moderation sets a standard for you to adhere to when submitting to other sites and helps you build a quality standard for yourself. The only complaint I have about how they moderate is they give some really broad answers about refusals. To be told a technical error is why an item is rejected is great, but its even better to know what that technical error is.
Another huge plus about working with Adobe is they offer free subscriptions to their software if you meet specific criteria. This is a great savings if you plan on using Lightroom, Photoshop or Premier. Even if you have no sales and get a free subscription for your software you are coming out ahead.
As far as sales go on Adobe Stock, I find them to be #2 for my portfolio. This is just based on the types of images and videos I sell and results may vary, however I find Adobe sells less than Shutterstock. Adobe does seem to give a higher commission per sale though. This hasn't been enough to balance things out with my sales on Shutterstock but I do prefer getting 99 cents US for a download over 25.
Getty Images / iStock
Getty Images and Getty iStock are two different companies. Getty Images sells items that are exclusive to Getty only. They also look for images that are close to if not are fine art quality. This is great if you have a great camera, superior lenses and don't mind only selling certain images on Getty alone. iStock however gives you a choice to sell items exclusively or not. Exclusively you get a higher commission per sale.
Getty Images moderates its images to the highest standard where iStock in my experience will take any image or video you decide to upload so long as it isn't a duplicate. This to me is not a great standard for a beginner or a customer but they do sell quite a few images. Even better you can end up having images from iStock sold on Getty which will bring in a much higher commission.
My experience with Getty has mostly been through iStock. I rank them as my 3rd highest performer. I see a lot of downloads on there but some of them are for as low as 9 cents. I have actually considered removing my profile because I don't consider that to be a worth while commission but it does add up over a month and when added to my other income streams it still increases my over all total for the month.
Shutterstock
Shutterstock is one of the oldest and largest stock sites out there. They sell audio, images, illustrations and videos as single downloads and subscriptions.
Because Shutterstock has been around forever they have a massive portfolio and huge client base. They also have a great contributors area and moderate your uploads giving feedback in a somewhat detailed way.
Shutterstock for me is #1 as far as downloads, earnings and the highest commissions. Even though most subscription downloads I get are for about 25 cents each, I get many and the highest commissions I have ever had are from Shutterstock on images purchased with an extended licence. I recommend starting on Shutterstock first.
Resources
As I said earlier here are some links to several stock sites for you to get started as well as resources for software (some free, some trial). I put the stock sites in order that I would join them. Remember if your media is rejected from one, that doesn't mean it will be rejected from another. It depends on the moderator really. I use all of these sites and the software included below and from experience they all work as they should.
Stock Sites
Software
Selling Content
Selling content refers to selling an article or other form of information used on a website. There are several ways to sell content on the internet. You can sell content on a site like vocal and be paid per read, you can sell content on a market place like fiverr, listing your skills as a content writer or you can create content using multimedia and sell it on any number of freelance sites available. I have limited experience selling content outside of when I have built websites so really the only place I can recommend is here on Vocal.
Vocal Media
Vocal media is a simple platform that allows you to produce stories and get paid per read. They have a pretty modern dashboard setup for contributors and from there you can create stories, check your stats and view articles you have written and published.
My experience with Vocal Media has been pretty good. The more I cross post my reviews and stories on my social media, the more reads I get and the higher my balance gets. I see a small but daily growth and added to other ventures I have going it ties together nicely.
Vocal allows me to embed my YouTube videos into my reviews and travel stories. This has increased my viewing time and subscribers on YouTube. Vocal allows me to embed Facebook posts as well, and add hyperlinks to my Instagram. If you look at many of my stories they actually utilize these abilities. You will see a YouTube video embedded in most and at the bottom there are links to my social accounts as well as to market places that offer my images and videos for sale.
Vocal is a great way to tie together all the other things you are doing into a neat package and make a few extra dollars while doing so. You don't need to pay for your own website using them and you can add more detailed explanations for things like travel tips, reviews and how-to videos you create for YouTube.
What led me to starting to write on this platform was simply because I don't always want to watch a video when I am looking something up. I prefer a written step by step over a video I have to pause and rewind. I also wanted a place to build review articles for my Facebook page without needing to pay annual fees and put in additional work on a website.
If you are interested in writing content you can sign up for Vocal Media here.
There is also a great in depth article on Vocal and content writing by another author you may want to check out. He goes into explaining the dash board as well as explaining in full all the features Vocal Media has to offer. You can find it here.
Marketing a Skill
If you posses a skill such as the ability to draw an illustration, code a website or proof read a document there are a few places online that you can easily find work in these fields. The only issue as I mentioned before is you will have to complete a project and you will want to make sure your time is worth what the payment is from the customer. Below I have 2 platforms, one is Fiverr which is a great place to grab small jobs and the other is called Freelancer which is a place you really should avoid.
Fiverr
Fiverr is a great community where you can easily complete simple tasks for 5 dollars and up. There are many people on Fiverr looking for people with skills to complete odd jobs that vary, so no matter your talent you can easily get something going if you put in the time. The key I always found with Fiverr is you have to log in once a day. This keeps your profile active and customers will see you have been online recently. When I was using Fiverr a lot I would just leave it open in a minimized web browser in the background. I use Microsoft Outlook for my Emails and get an alert when someone sends a message or starts a chat so I didn't need to worry about a customer being ignored.
Some of the odd jobs you can find on Fiverr are (but not limited to) as follows:
- Accounting
- Illustrations
- Writing
- Language Translations
- Graphic Design
- Marketing
- Image Editing
- Image Meta Data
- Video Editing
- Product Descriptions
- Much More
To get an idea of what kinds of services you can offer simply go to Fiverr and check out what others are offering. It's as simple as making an account and building a reputation over time. It will take time being new for you to get hired, but once you get some good feedback you will get more and more customers.
You can check out and sign up for Fiverr here.
Freelancer
Freelancer.com is a website that offers to connect freelancers to customers for a fee. I have had some horrible experiences with them over a 2 year period and I recommend staying clear of using this site. Normally I would only mention services and companies you should try, but Freelancer has been so bad I really feel the need to warn anyone thinking to use this platform to stay away.
In the course of my first year I lost hundreds of dollars because customers did not pay but Freelancer still took their fees like I was paid in full. I also had major issues getting payments from Freelancer. I waited a month for a payment to process just for the domain name on my email address to magically change. I then had to wait another month and the day the transfer was about to go out I noticed the domain had changed again. Luckily the domain was available and I was able to purchase it to get my funds. You read that correctly, I had to purchase a domain after waiting 2 months for my funds to be released or I would have had to wait another month.
There are too many issues with Freelancer and it is very discouraging to take a large project and then have the mediation site interfere with the process. They don't take any responsibility for errors and blame it on "the system" and then make you wait another month. To me this is not worth my time.
YouTube (There is Still Money to be Made)
Finally we have YouTube. Although YouTube has made it much harder for new creators and small channels to monetize, it is still possible to make money with YouTube. The minimum requirements for a channel to monetize on YouTube at the present are 4000 viewed hours and 1000 subscribers.
What I have found with YouTube is it is a final piece to tying everything together. As I mentioned before the best way to make all of these online ventures work is to tie them together and YouTube is a powerful tool. If you do it correctly you get view time and subscribers come in from many places, all you have to do is wait.
What works for me in this sense is simple. Say I would like to review an attraction. Obviously I go to the attraction, I take video and photos while I am there. The next thing I do is process my photos and get them for sale on stock sites along with some short video clips. After that I create some form of video about the attraction. It doesn't have to be overly detailed, sometimes it is just a slide show of the images I am selling, showing the attraction. I upload the video to YouTube and add a title image along with end and index cards for my other related videos. After that I make a teaser video and put it on my Facebook and Instagram accounts. Once all that is finished I come here to vocal. I write a detailed review, embed the video and add some images. At the end of the article I add a subscribe link to my YouTube channel along with some other links, and I post the article on my Facebook page.
Now all that seems like a lot but it isn't, and the end result gets me more views on YouTube and more subscribers. This is how you get to and maintain a monetized channel. I am also using my various accounts to promote and support each other.
If you were to make how-to or tutorial videos for example, having an article on Vocal that lists all the materials needed and provides a step by step, you will get a read and a view guaranteed. You may get several views because the person isn't interested in reading or vice versa. If you are selling stock images, YouTube slide shows allows you to showcase your work.
I hope this article is useful to anyone reading it. I can speak from experience that putting a little effort in during your free time and growing something that interests people can provide a small income while doing something you enjoy. The key is you do need to make an effort and the more small things you have working with each other, the larger the audience will be that sees what you are marketing. This is really just an overview to get you started and I hope to write some more, in depth articles for each platform in the future to continue to help others grow a small online business.
Normally this is where I would say for more great videos and images check out my profiles but I will spare you from that for one article. If you would like to see examples of what I am talking about feel free to check out some of my other articles offering travel tips or reviews.
Best of luck with your future endeavors and thanks for your support in reading this article.
About the Creator
The goals I did not achieve
Every writing goal I made for the year is a wash. It has been this way for a while, but I think it's important to be open about my failures and the reality of how life can get in the way. This is especially true considering the several times I have posted on Vocal about my writing goals, how I was changing my approach, and where I was hoping to be for the upcoming year. I will probably do that again in a couple months, but for now, it is time to acknowledge where I am today.
By Kay Husnick18 days ago in Journal
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