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Whether photography is your hobby or profession, here are the best ways to sell photos online and earn more from your stock photo portfolio.
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Looking for a way to sell photos online? Whether you’re just starting out or looking to earn passive income on the side of your photography business, several websites can connect you to the market for stock images.
Stock photo websites license your photos to brands, agencies, and anyone who needs high-quality photos for commercial use. In return, they give you a cut of the revenue.
Here are 15 of the best websites to use to sell photos online, plus a step-by-step guide on how to turn your content into a lucrative photography business.
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Alamy has one of the internet’s most diverse stock photo collections. With millions of stock images, vectors, videos, and 360-degree panoramic images, there are many ways for you to contribute. It also offers an iOS app called Stockimo, where you can sell photos online from your phone.
Alamy pays contributors monthly and has several commission models.
Photographers receive between 17% and 50% of sales, depending on image popularity and license type. There are no long-term contracts with Alamy and you can be paid in multiple currencies.
500px hosts millions of photographers who sell and license photos online. Its Pulse algorithm surfaces new photographs and photographers to clients, so inexperienced photographers can get recognition—so long as their photos meet the platform’s quality standards.
In addition to being a platform for selling, 500px is also an online community for amateur and professional photographers. You can follow other photographers, get feedback on your work, list photos in the online marketplace, and participate in photography competitions for prizes.
Paying members can earn up to 100% royalties for exclusive photos.
Shutterstock is a well-known stock photography website for selling photos online. It’s paid out more than $1 billion to its community in the past 15 years.
Shutterstock is considered a micro-stock site, where photos are cheaper and non-exclusive. The main way to increase downloads is by contributing a large quantity of images. While you may not expect to earn as much with Shutterstock, it’s a good place to start if you’re learning how to sell stock photos.
Payouts are based on earnings over time and range from 15% to 40%. There’s also an affiliate program where you can earn additional money if you refer new photographers or customers.
Getty Images attracts brands and online publishers looking for high-quality or hard-to-find exclusive images to license. The platform, along with its microstock site, iStock (below), reaches more than 1.5 million customers around the world.
To maintain its reputation among publishers, the standards for selling your photography with Getty are stricter than many other stock photo sites.
Apply to become a contributor with a set of sample photos. After you’re accepted, you’ll be paid anywhere between 15% and 45% of an image’s license fee.
iStock is an offshoot of Getty Images. The major difference between the two stock photo platforms is that photos on iStock can be non-exclusive, which means you can sell your photography with other agencies.
To sell your photos with iStock, you need to apply with a set of sample images. Commissions range from 15% to 45%, depending on contributor agreements.
Stocksy is a popular stock photography site that offers high payouts to contributors. Photographers can earn a 50% royalty on standard licenses and a 75% royalty on extended licenses. But all photos must be exclusive to the platform.
Stocksy is an artist-owned cooperative, which means contributors are part owners of the business and can help control its direction. Contributors can also receive profit-sharing in the form of patronage returns when the co-op has a surplus.
Stocksy contributors are paid monthly via PayPal, Payoneer, or check, with a minimum payout of $100. If you’re interested in selling photos on Stocksy, check out its contributor application FAQ.
Picfair is a good option if you want a degree of control over your online photo portfolio. You can set your own prices for photos—both prints and digital downloads—and Picfair handles payment processing. It also manages print production, shipping, and licenses for digital images.
Sign up for a Plus plan, priced at $4 per month when billed annually. Create a custom Picfair store with up to 10,000 images that can be sold as prints or downloads.
If you use the Adobe suite for photography projects, you can add your images, videos, vectors, and illustrations to Adobe Stock, the company’s online stock photo platform.
Upload assets directly from Lightroom and Bridge when you’re finished editing. Contributors who link their Adobe ID to Adobe Stock can earn 33% royalties on photos and 35% on videos.
Envato Elements is a stock photography site where you can start selling your photos online and connect with potential clients.
With Envato Elements, you can sell photos on its app or upload photos to your own site on the brand’s domain. Either way, it’s a popular place to sell pictures and make money online doing what you love.
Contributors earn between 25% and 50% of net subscription revenue.
Unsplash is a free stock photo site that’s also owned by Getty. Instead of paying photographers based on sales of submitted photos, Unsplash partners with contributors through its Unsplash+ program, where photographers respond to briefs and requests.
Once you’ve completed the Unsplash+ contribution application and been accepted, you’ll see a list of briefs created by Unsplash customers. Choose a brief that suits your skills, upload your photos, and get paid for each accepted image. Rates for photos range, on average, between $5 and $30 per image.
Dreamstime is a microstock platform with a huge range of royalty-free media, including stock photos, vectors, videos, and audio files. With a library of more than 250 million files and a user base of over 50 million, Dreamstime gives photographers access to a large, active audience.
Dreamstime offers revenue sharing of 25% to 50% for non-exclusive content. Exclusive contributors earn an additional 10% and receive 20¢ for each approved submission. The platform also features an affiliate program that pays 10% of transaction values for each referred contributor or customer.
Snapped4U is a marketplace for photographers specializing in portrait and event photography. It lets photographers create personalized galleries, set their own prices (up to $20 per image), and sell digital files directly to clients.
In this way, Snapped4U is designed for photographers selling photos to customers who attended events or sat for portraits. Travel, landscape, and still-life photos are not accepted on the platform.
Snapped4U charges a one-time $10 registration fee during sign-up and retains a 10% to 12% commission on sales. Photographers are paid the balance in their account via PayPal on the first and 15th of each month.
Foap is a photo-selling site that allows photographers to sell commercial-quality images directly to brands and individuals. Photographers can participate in “missions,” where brands set specific photo or video requirements and reward winners. To date, Foap has paid out more than $3 million to creators.
Mission payouts range from $100 to $2,000. Users can also sell individual photos on Foap market. Foap takes a 50% commission on all sales.
EyeEm combines a marketplace with a photographer community. The platform invites photographers to contribute to missions that call for images on a theme.
Contributors earn a 50% commission on each sale made through the EyeEm marketplace. Photographers are paid via PayPal.
Unlike the sites above, Pond5 is a marketplace for selling royalty-free videos, music, sound effects, and other assets. According to the platform, its one-million-strong customer base includes clients like the BBC and Disney, with contributor content used in ads, TV shows, and feature films. Contributors create Pond5 storefronts to showcase their media.
Video artists earn a 40% royalty share, with the option to make your content exclusive and earn up to 60%. Contributors can respond to client briefs via the Artist Portal. Pond5 also offers a referral program where artists can earn additional income.
Here are some tips for running a successful stock photo business:
Many photographers have a consistent style or theme that runs through their work. Whether your focus is travel, fashion, nature, or food, consistency is key.
Photographers often feel their way into a niche by finding styles and subjects they enjoy shooting that also resonate with audiences. You can evaluate the demand for topics using keyword research to analyze search volume for terms related to your photographs. Google Trends is a basic tool you can use to see which image topics are gaining popularity.
Just like bloggers and YouTubers, photographers learning how to sell images online should also invest in building their audiences.
Visual social platforms such as Instagram can help you reach a wide audience. Use Instagram tools to help you follow the right accounts, engage with popular hashtags, and grow a following of potential customers.
Linking your social media accounts makes it easier to manage your photo-sharing across platforms and boost visibility. On Instagram, for example, you can link your accounts to also post your images to Facebook at the same time.
Most photographers have their own site to showcase their work to potential clients. By adding a Shopify Buy Button to your site, you can make it easier for customers to purchase stock images from you.
Photographer Dave Sandford, for example, has a store that both showcases his wildlife photography and offers the opportunity to purchase prints and calendars.
The easiest way to sell photos online is to build a personalized portfolio page or store on Shopify.
Use a pre-designed art and photography theme to set up your digital showroom, or combine a free theme with a gallery app.
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Join the ranks of the world’s best online stores with Shopify’s powerful tools and features. With the highest-converting checkout, Shopify stores sell more products, lower your costs, and save you time.
Your target market is the group of people most likely to buy your photos. You can produce photos that appeal to them when you know who they are, what they’re interested in, and what they’ll buy.
Say you’re specializing in wedding photography, for example. People who buy stock images of weddings aren’t brides and grooms—they’re the suppliers who work within the wedding industry. Your target market might include wedding stationery brands or suit wholesalers who want to show royalty-free images of wedding celebrations in their marketing collateral.
With this in mind, you can sell images that this buyer persona will buy, on the sites where they’re looking for stock images, at a price they’re willing to pay.
Use these steps as a guide to launch your online photography portfolio:
There is no “best” platform to monetize your photos on; it depends on the goal of your photography business and how much control you’d like to have over your imagery.
Here’s a quick rundown of your options. If you want to:
A portfolio is a photographer’s résumé: a place for potential clients to view your past work and decide whether to hire you.
Pay attention to these elements of your portfolio:
Photographers often get frustrated when they’ve shot an incredibly detailed photo, only to have to compress it when they’re selling the image online. But fast-loading images are essential to the user experience. Large image files can make a webpage slower to load—and most people aren’t willing to wait around for slow site speeds.
When uploading images to your online photography portfolio:
People buy from people, so it helps to have an About page that tells prospective customers about yourself. Include a brief summary on who you are and the story of your photography journey.
This is an opportunity to sell yourself with a unique and engaging personal brand, so dive deep into your love of photography. How did you get into the industry? What types of things do you love to shoot? Where do you get your inspiration from?
An ecommerce platform handles the logistics of selling photos online. Creating your portfolio on Shopify, for example, will make it easy to:
Not everyone who visits your online portfolio will be doing so on a desktop. Studies estimate that more than half of global website traffic happens through a mobile device, so check that your portfolio looks just as good on a smaller screen.
Having a mobile website means using a responsive website design, displaying your photos vertically, and using large finger-friendly buttons.
Now it’s time to share your photos with the world. Grab the link to your portfolio and share it online using marketing tactics like:
You can make and sell items that feature your photography for your customers to own, whether it’s as a simple framed print or a pillow. Selling your own physical products can be simpler than you think.
You can make money selling photos as prints on paper or physical products, such as mugs, t-shirts, and calendars. Popular sites and tools include:
The best way to sell photos online as physical prints or products is to work with a local photo lab that helps you ship and sell prints, or use a print-on-demand company to dropship a wide range of products (prints, phone cases, pillows, and more) featuring your photos.
Be sure to order samples first to ensure the quality of the products match the quality of your photos.
Photo books are another physical product that can feature your photography. The more niche and consistent your photography is, the more likely you’ll be able to put together a stellar photo book based around a compelling theme and sell your art online.
While you won’t get the best margins with print-on-demand services, it’s a risk-free way to test demand for your products before you decide to invest upfront.
Whether you’re covering events, doing fashion shoots, or getting into product photography, there are plenty of business opportunities available for professional photographers.
You can list your services in freelance directories like Fiverr and Upwork. But also consider networking locally, or meeting with clients via video chat.
Here are some networking tips for selling your photography as a service:
Since photographers must operate in strict time slots, it’s good to have a booking platform you can use to let prospective clients see your schedule and book you when you’re available.
Both Setmore and SimplyBook.me have free plans and features that work well for photographers. If you’re using Shopify, you can add a scheduling app to book appointments directly from your site.
Your time is valuable
Shopify’s integrated appointment booking apps let you effortlessly manage your availability. Allow clients to schedule services directly from your online store—no coding needed.
Explore appointment booking apps
Your talent and your determination ultimately decide your earning potential when selling photos online, but the income you get from doing what you love is some of the best cash you’ll ever earn.
Here’s how to decide on a pricing strategy for your photography business:
While rights and licenses related to selling photography may seem confusing, there are key terms and concepts you should know to help protect yourself.
This is by no means a comprehensive list or a substitute for actual legal advice, but it should offer you broad definitions that will help you navigate the world of usage rights:
Theft is common concerning content, and many people do it unknowingly.
Photographers can watermark their digital images before selling them online to protect against theft. If you sell or share your photos, you can apply identifying marks in Photoshop or use a watermark generator.
A smaller watermark, often in the corner, will less impact your photo, while a larger watermark with reduced opacity offers the most protection against theft.
But what do you do if someone steals and uses your photos anyway? A cease and desist request usually will work. Or you can send the culprit an invoice for using your photo. Combining the two will likely be the most effective at persuading the perpetrator by offering them the choice to either pay you or take the photo down.
At the very least, you should always try to get others to credit you whenever they use your work, even for editorial purposes. Remember that backlinks to your portfolio site are useful for driving traffic to your other work and for search engine optimization and helping your standing in Google search results.
From first-time sellers to global retailers, Shopify works for everyone. See plans and pricing.
The best way to sell photographs online is by selling them as stock images for sale on third-party websites like iStock, Shutterstock, or Alamy. Selling your photos through stock sites is quick, easy, and affordable.
A stock photography website, or stock agency, sells high-priced and exclusive images that you upload. The agency licenses individual images to the client and sells them for a set price. Then you, the photographer, get a royalty payment.
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