as per se, what's the criteria that qualifies a photo to be a stockphoto?

or maybe i'll change the topic to stockphoto:all u need to know

how do we sell our photos and where?

Many of the stock photos I've seen appear to be professionally staged, utilize models, professional lighting, etc. all of which require a fair investment of time and money by the photographer.

How in the world does the photographer recover his investment and make a profit by selling these photos for $1 or so apiece on the stock sites?

I'm obviously missing something. It's strictly academic to me, I'm just curious.

personal marketing i guess... with proper licensing on the pictures, although it's sold for just $1, if the photo made it big time... sure can get credits etc. right?

but i don't think professional photographer would really make money from stock photos... probably just for fun

I last purchased a stock it cost me rm28 for the large copy.

wow.. which site u bought it from? are u from an advert company? usually for billboard, what type of photo they would like to buy? must it be from medium format camera?

Each stock photo sites have their own requirements of photos. If I am not wrong, iStockPhoto's requirements are that the image must be 6MB in file size and has a minimum 1600x1200 resolution. DPI cannot be digitally extrapolated.

Each photographer may sell a photo for $1 but when someone buys if for $1, they don't buy the rights for the photo.

You can check out this site, he is a professional stock photographer, so his main income is from stock photography.
http://leggnet.com/

His online portfolio:
http://istockphoto.com/file_search.php?act...?refnum=LeggNet