We’ve spent a lot of time raving about DepositPhotos Stock Photos here on the StockPhotoSecrets blog, but in doing so we’ve realized that some user may not know what DepositPhotos is to start with or how the service works.  So today we are going to take it back to basics, and answer the questions: what exactly is DepositPhotos?  Read on for our explanation of the service, how to use it, and the power that DepositPhotos Stock Photos can provide to small business owners, bloggers and more.

DepositPhotos is a Microstock Photo Agency

While DepositPhotos is a particularly good example of a microstock agency that does things right, it’s not the only microstock agency out there by a long shot.  Compared to traditional stock photo agencies, microstock agencies source their libraries from a much wider variety of contributors, allowing amateurs and hobbyists to submit photos for vending consideration.  Of course,not every photo that is submitted to a microstock agency like DepositPhotos makes it into their stock photo library, but there are usually a lot more images from a lot more places than you would find in a traditional professional only stock agency.

And because of the fact that microstock agencies get their imagery from a wide variety of places, they can sell them for incredibly cheap.  For example, DepositPhotos Stock Photos can be bought with a credit system that comes out to just around $1.13 per on demand image.  IF you are willing to commit to a subscription service, where you will get a specific amount of images to download every month, photos on DepositPhotos can be as cheap as $.15 per image.  You can thank the fact that DepositPhotos is a microstock agency for those incredibly low prices.

Why You Need a Microstock Photo Agency in the First Place

If you’ve never used a stock photo agency before and you are still a bit confused about why DepositPhotos is a good deal or why you should be paying for your image needs, don’t worry: we are taking it all the way back to basic today.  If you use images for any commercial purpose, you need to have the rights to use those images.  For small business owners, that means that every piece of your advertising and promotion that uses images needs to be executed with properly licensed imagery.  For bloggers and other online professionals, that means that every image that is uploaded to your website must be licensed for your use.  Otherwise, you could face legal percussions from the image’s rightful owner.

A microstock agency like DepositPhotos Stock Photos allows you to purchase the commercial rights for images for an incredibly low price.  If you negotiate with an artist directly for the commercial rights to use their imagery, you could be paying hundreds of dollars.  But again, with DepositPhotos Stock Photos, you can get properly licensed imagery that is legal to use for dollars or even pennies.  No matter what commercial uses you have in mind, if you are using images, you need a microstock agency like DepositPhotos to get the best possible deal for legally licensed imagery.

How Does DepositPhotos Stock Photos Work?

Before you ever encounter DepositPhotos as a business owner or other stock photo user, an artist engages with DepositPhotos and provides the agency with their photography.  Then, Depositphotos makes sure that imagery is correctly licensed for commercial use, and passes on that cheap imagery to customers.

In order to start utilizing the cheap stock photography on DepositPhotos, all you need to do is create a user account on the site.  You will need to enter some basic profile information like your name and email, and eventually will need to enter online payment info as well to give you the chance to buy imagery.  Once you’ve created an account and entered payment info, you can start searching for images to download for your commercial uses with DepositPhotos’ search function.  You can narrow down your search results along a variety of metrics, filtering out images that you don’t want.  Once you’ve found the perfect image for your uses, downloading your ideal stock photo is as easy as the click of a button.

Once you’ve downloaded the image you want to use from DepositPhotos Stock Photo library, you can use that image forever for whatever commercial purposes that you want.  That’s because all of the images (except for “editorials”) on DepositPhotos library are “royalty free,” a type of license that allows for wide use and lets you use the imagery forever.  As a business owner, there’s really no better way to get cheap, legally licensed, high quality imagery for your business uses.  There are a whole tone of microstock photo agencies out there, but DepositPhotos is undeniably one of the best.  And now that you know what it is and how it works, start exploring the agency for yourself!