There are many places to sell photos online and earn money. Why not make extra cash with your keen eye on taking photos and selling them on stock photography sites.
Whether you’re a professional photographer or a casual smartphone picture taker, the following are great places for content creators to sell digital images.
- Alamy
- Shutterstock
- Foap
- Adobe Stock
- Depositphotos
Welcome to the phroogal 5, a series of the five best apps. We learned how important it is to help you narrow down your choices. So we’ve done the work to share the best. Want more options? Check the marketplace.
How to Sell Your Photos Online
In this best places to sell your photos online, we used the following criteria:
- Size of online marketplace to reach more buyers
- Ease of creating a seller account and uploading photos
- Royalties earned and seller fees
The following are the 5 best platforms to sell your photos online and make money in the best stock photo websites.
Alamy
Alamy has over 250 million stock photos, videos, vectors and more. With Alamy, you can sell your photos and images to reach a wide audience or find your target niche. Easily add your photos and have it seen by over 110,000 buyers.
Upload Fee: None
Payment: Get paid monthly and earn up to 50% from exclusive images and up to 40% from non-exclusive. Alamy has paid over $200 million dollars to photographers.
Best: For unique and broad range of photos.
Shutterstock
Shutterstock is a well known stock photos site to license images for use. They also let you sell your photos online and have paid over a billion dollars to photographers.
Upload Fee: None
Payment: You can earn up to 40% based on the number of images licenses in a calendar year.
Best: For those who have large quantity of images and wanting to get started selling stock images.
Foap
Foap is one of the best places to sell digital photos online. It boats a community of over 3 million members. With Foap, you can upload professional photos taken by your thousand dollar camera gear or casual images from your iPhone. Images on Foap are licensed to large brands. Foap also offers missions to earn extra money by completing photography contests.
Upload Fee: None
Payment: Make money whenever your images are licensed with a 50/50 profit split.
Best: For smartphone photographers.
Adobe Stock
Adobe Stock is one of best places to buy images, but also a great place to sell photos too. You can reach millions of buyers and become part of the largest community of creators who are big fans of the Adobe suite or tools.
Upload Fee: None
Payment: Earn 33% of royalties when you sell images on Adobe Stock
Best: High quality images.
Depositphotos
We’ve used Depositphotos to buy images for phroogal.com. It’s a solid place to buy and they allow creators to submit images and videos too. You can start earning money from your work.
Upload Fee: None
Payment: Earn up to 38% from on-demand licenses of your work. Earnings are based on the types of licenses of your work.
Best: Better images and niche photography.
Alternative Place to Sell Photos Online
Do you still want more options? Here’s additional places online to sell your images and videos.
Etsy
Etsy is known for it’s handcrafted products and vintage goods. But you can also sell your creative photography that you make available for digital download and print yourself and ship. It made this list as an alternative.
Listing Fee: Free
Payment: Etsy takes 5% cut of your sales plus credit card transaction fees.
Best: For creating products around your images–think you sunset picture on a mug.
Tips to Sell Photos Online
Depending on your skill level and camera gear, there are many ways to sell your photos online and make money. The following are tips to help you sell more and make more money.
1. Choose your niche
Decide what type of photos you enjoy taking and focus on a niche. For example, you like nature photography and can focus on selling images of forests and the animals that live in them.
2. Choose your style
Each photographer can offer a unique perspective on what’s happening around them. Continue to practice your craft and define your artistic style. Just because there are images of sunsets already in the stock image websites, doesn’t mean your sunset photo won’t offer anything new.
3. Choose the right website
The websites we listed on our best places to sell photos online are some of the trusted names that offer good commissions. They are upfront with their requirements and rules. Make sure you read them thoroughly to understand what rights you keep and what you sign over to the company.
4. Sell in multiple platforms
If the site you’re selling images on doesn’t have exclusive rights to sell your images, then expand your reach and provide your photos and videos on other platforms as well. Again, read the fine print. You may want to decide if you’re licensing exclusive selling rights or offering non-exclusive images.
Selling Photos Online FAQs
The following are frequently asked questions on how to sell photos online for money.
Are these websites good for beginner photographers?
You don’t need to be a professional to make money from photography. Make additional money as a freelance photographer through these stock photo sites. Simply, add your images to their stock library.
How much money can I make with stock photography?
If you are trying to figure out how to sell stock photographs, any website in the list above is a great place to start. Each platform has a set of pros and cons, so do your research before you start using a website as a way to sell photos.
There’s no exact answer to this question because there are many factors involved. It also helps to know how much people spend when buying stock images. With companies like Adobe Stock offering up to 60% commissions, you can see the potential for income.
How do I make money from stock photography?
As you can see, selling photos is a great online business idea. You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars buying expensive camera equipment to start making money from stock photography. You can create high quality professional looking images without spending hundreds of pounds on gear. All you need is a decent digital SLR camera or your smartphone, a tripod, lighting kit, editing software, and a few hours per week to learn how to edit your pictures.
Can I sell images on products?
You can use print-on-demand services like Cafepress and Printful to offer your images printed on products such as pillows, mugs, and t-shirts. Start by creating an account, uploading your photos, and selecting what products you’d like to have these items printed on. Then, start promoting your on-demand store through social media platforms.
Can I sell printed posters of my images?
Similar to selling images on products, you can offer physical prints or photo prints. Make money using Etsy or service like Printful.
Can I really make good money selling photos online?
It’s possible to make money using these stock photo sites to sell your images. But it all depends on the amount of images you sell and the types of commission you’ll earn. The more images you upload that are unique and on-demand by buyers the higher the likelihood of earning consistent income.
When you’re thinking about diversifying your income streams, selling images, videos, and vector art is a great way to build your royalty income stream. It’s a passive income. Your royalty payments is income made by licensing your work to others. The amount of money you make can be unlimited and earnings can continue indefinitely.
If you’re a professional, an amature or just an iPhone photographer, consider selling your images for money.
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