Now, for those creative people out there, who want to sell their work, whether it's photography, 3D and vector illustrations or video footage. That's probably you, reading right now and truing to find a side job, making money from what you enjoy doing.

Yes, it's still possible to earn serious money producing stock images and footage, but I should give you a heads up that it's becoming increasingly difficult for new and established contributors. The number of images online is growing by the minute and you content is quickly getting lost in the sea of stock.

If you are ready to dedicate all your free time to this business and build a serious library of high quality content (I am talking about hundreds or even thousands of images) you can still succeed. It's possible to earn $1000 and more per month with 1000 or less images online.

I would recommend you to start with Fotolia and your initial submission of 10 images at ShutterStock one of the leading subscription microstock photography web sites. Your images must pass the inspection for you to be approved as a contributor. It's not hard, but it is much easier if you have a 6MP+ DSLR camera and studio lighting. Also, make sure you use ISO 100 or 200 settings and don't have much visible noise and artefacts in your images. Before submission you should always look at them at 100% magnification to check for dust, artefacts and noise. Save files as jpg, with quality level 11. Here is a list with detailed description. Good luck!

There are some agencies that offer you less than 20% in royalties. I wouldn't recommend you joining them because it's a bad business practice harmful for the whole industry. There are plenty of options where you are offered 40-60% in royalties.

You can start by looking into Free Stock Photography collection from BigStockPhoto now!