One fun way to make money with your model photography is through a microstock agency. These agencies market your photos for you, and then pay you a portion of the proceeds. Tasteful images of nude models (for example, non-explicit, implied nudes) are the best selling of my microstock images and Shutterstock earns the most for me.

Tricks to getting approved

Shutterstock is one of the more lucrative microstock sites, and it took me a while to get accepted. I did learn a couple of tricks that I suggest you try. Choose your sample images carefully and submit no more than the required amount. Don’t upload nudes until after you are accepted. How you size them is important, downsizing your images to the minimum requirement will help you hide flaws. Downsizing to the minimum requirement is how I got accepted. You only need to do this until your account is approved. If you get rejected (any you will the first couple of times) keep reapplying (with the same account but different images.) Look carefully at your rejection notice, replace only the images that were rejected until you get accepted. It will happen if you keep at it, and don’t forget to resize your images to be close to the minimum size requirement.

I’ve identified an interesting trend, amongst the many nude models and potential nude models that I’ve talked to about doing a shoot. Quite often, an inexperienced model will request much higher pay than an experienced model. This seems ironic, but there are logical explanations. Part of this phenomenon is economic, and part is psychological.

The Economic Aspect

In a recent conversation, an inexperienced model requested between three to four times what I and other area photographers normally pay models. Although she was attractive, she was nowhere close to the level of physical beauty of nude models that were working for far less. So why would a less attractive model, with almost no experience ask for over three times what more attractive, experienced nude models are willing to work for? Some may think she’s simply doesn’t know the market and is just guessing at what nude models earn, but this is not the case. In her mind the sum was not outlandish. I established that she had indeed worked for this pay rate, although on a very short shoot. So the market will bear this kind of pay, even for a model that is not in the upper half of physical attractiveness. Read more

Posting to forums and photo sharing site is a great way to get feedback on your work and to share some of the beauty you’ve proudly created.

Some of the forums hide or otherwise restrict their nude forums from non-members, and you may even need to ask where to find the forum after you’re signed up.

Forums taking nudity*

photocamel.com [my posts]

newschoolofphotography.com [my posts]

photographycorner.com [my posts]

inspiring-photography.com [my posts]

thenewnude.com Read more

A few nudes of Dede on red background in the studio