Do you love photography? Do you find comfort and pleasure in taking breathtaking photos? Why not turn it into a business and earn from the things you love the most.
Technology has transformed the meaning of photography and opened a new opportunity to earn from stunningly captured photographs. Yes, it’s possible. Read on and find out how you can convert your library of images into cash.
Aside from earning, you can build a business from your hobby. You don’t have to go through middlemen to sell your photos for you because you can do it directly through these top 10
websites to sell your photography. There are numerous channels to sell your passion-filled images such as social media, stock-photo sites, marketplaces, and other platforms.
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10 Best Sites to Sell Your Photography
1. Adobe Stock
Formerly known as Fotolia, Adobe Stock is a stock photo commerce platform and offspring of the famous Adobe Creative Cloud programs such as Lightroom and Photoshop. Including its Fotolia days, the marketplace has been in the worldwide market for more than 10 years now and has gained a reputation; being one of the oldest and the best.
Its royalty share runs between 20% to 60% depending on your reputation and devotion to your craft. It’s pretty higher than its counterparts, and contributors are paid every month.
Main Advantages
● Wider Audience Reach
Because Adobe Stock is integrated with other Adobe Creative Cloud programs, photos uploaded in the platform is stored into Adobe library and are accessible in other Adobe applications. It gives you wider access to potential buyers.
● Nonexclusive Selling Rights
Adobe Stock is one of the best ways to sell photos online because it won’t limit your marketability. It allows me to sell my photography on other online platforms where you deem fit. And lets you grow, gain popularity, and find more buyers outside Adobe.
● Easy to Navigate
The platform is user-friendly, and uploading is pretty easy and simple. Drop the photo into the correct area, wait for it to upload, and once done, add tags and keywords to help your photos stand out and come up on search results.
As for buyers, they can test the photos with other Adobe creative software before buying; a win-win solution for both parties.
●●
Seller-friendly Interface
It offers simplified analytics that lets users understand sales data and other important information regarding their product’s performance.
● Reasonably High Rate
As compared to other stock photo marketplace, Adobe Stock offers an average of $1 to $1.50, which is reasonably higher than its competitors.
Adobe Stock also has its fair share of drawbacks, including strict content approval which is understandable because they’re trying to maintain high product standards. Another disadvantage is their early cancellation fee that does not sit well with their free trial.
2. Shutterstock
Shutterstock is the best place to sell stock photos. It has been on top of the chain for more than 15 years now. Through its journey, it had an accumulated download of over 500 million and has paid out more than a billion dollars to its contributors. It also flaunts a wide range library of more than 200 million images, music tracks, vector illustrations, and videos.
They also offer fair pay to contributors with a hefty 20% to 30% share from whatever price your image sells per download. Contributors get paid every month. Copyright wise, Shutterstock allows you to set and keep your copyrights, so you can find other alternatives to boost your sales. For me, it’s nonexclusive selling right helps me sell my photography online through other channels. And they also give credit to the photo owner, which is a big advantage for newbies to make a name in the industry.
The main downside of the platform is that images are sold at a low price, and selling rights are nonexclusive. The trick is to stick with the platform and be consistent in contributing large quantity photos. Though this may not be the best paying platform, this is surely a great place for starters
and newbies in the stock photo business.
3. Alamy
If you’re looking for a straightforward but diverse stock photo marketplace, then Alamy is perfect for you. Ranked as our 3rd pick of the best stock photo selling platform because of its diverse library of more than 215 million stock images, vectors, videos, and their popular 360° panoramic photos. Their ecosystem of over 60,000 contributors and 11,000 buyers already made over $180 million of total payouts.
What’s good about Alamy is that it sells random photos from everyday photos to niche-related images. They also launched Stockimo, an app that allows you to sell iPhone captured images and earn a little extra from your passion. Lastly, their payment scheme is simple. For exclusive images, you’ll earn 50% or half of the selling price, while non-exclusive images get 40% of direct sale, and payments are sent monthly.
4. Etsy
Etsy is a popular marketplace for unique hand-crafted goodies and a great contender in the best-selling site for images category. It flaunts its community of 30 million photography shop owners and buyers.
To start, let’s talk about its favorable features. Etsy gives its sellers full control over how they want to sell their prints and digital images from display design down to prices. Building your image shop in Etsy gives you wide access to diverse clients and that gives you a higher chance to widen your audience reach and generate more sales.
Etsy also offers a simplified payment scheme by taking a reasonable 5% from the total transaction cost, including shipping fees. However, if you opt to use Etsy payment, they will collect an additional 3% and $.25 payment processing fee.
5. 500px
500px Licensing, formerly known as 500px Prime, has its own version of a stock photo site called 500px. It is built based on a social community type of concept where you can build your portfolio, follow other photographers through their profile, add your images to their marketplace listings, and join in various Photo Quest contests. The platform houses both amateur and professional photographers and the platform serve as an earning and profile building ecosystem to both.
With over one million global customers, 500px is quite a popular name in creative content. All images submitted into the system are royalty-free contents, which are licensed, available to use, and prices depend on file size. The payment scheme is also straightforward, where exclusive images get 60% royalties while non-exclusive pictures get 30% commission pay.
Here’s the best part about 500px, they use a Pulse Algorithm that increases your content’s exposure. New uploads are featured on the site’s Discovery Page, a gallery of fresh images. This feature helps boost the marketability of each image you submit.
They also have analytics and tracking services features where contributors can analyze their image performance, such as clicks per day, ranking, total downloads, etc. The platform also offers a user-friendly interface. To join, just create a free account, add your photos, authorize your photography shop, fill out the form for each picture with model description, and publish it live. From there, you can start selling your content and interact with other photographers.
6. Getty Images
Getty Images is a well-established, high-end, and premiere stock photo site that has been in the business since 1995. They are the top to-go choice when it comes to unique, high-quality, and hard-to-find pictures to license.
Getty Images uses a unique selling scheme where images are sold not for the material or photo but for the Rights Manage license or the right to use them for a specific purpose and publish them on a particular platform. That’s how exclusive their images are.
Getty Images contents are worth thousands of dollars because they maintain exclusive, unique, high-quality images that underwent through rigorous quality check processes. Contributors get as much as 20% on commission and considering the hefty price of an image which often sold at hundred of dollars, you’ll sure get fair compensation from the site.
However, getting into their exclusive community can be challenging since they maintain the highest quality standards. To apply, you need to send six sample images for them to assess your potential and skills. Depending on the quality of your sample images, you’ll either get into Getty Images or iStock, the company’s micro-stock photography site.
7. Smug Mug
Smug Mug is one of the best stock photo marketplaces for photographers with a serious entrepreneurial outlook because they offer a hefty 85% of the total sales of your images. A tempting offer, right? But here’s the catch. You need to sign up for a paid Smug Mug Pro subscription that starts at $12.50 for you to start selling your pictures; no free shortcut there.
There’s a price to pay to enjoy the high royalty, but if you look closely at it, it’s a win-win situation to both seller and the platform. They allow you to mark up and decide your image’s price. You can mark it up 10x from Smug Mug’s default price and keep 85% of it.
The platform promotes a seller-friendly Interface. To get started, just sign up, upload the images you want to sell, and mark up your products. So the more images you sell, the higher your chance at profitability.
8. iStock Photo
Next is GettyImage’s micro-stock site, the iStock Photo. It is highly recommended for starters in the stock photo selling business because it’s a popular, and established, and trusted brand, and has an existing audience population with a wide audience reach. Thus you’ll get a fair chance to build a name.
They also provide learning materials on how to sell my photos online for money through their forums and resources. Royalty payments for images start at 15% per download but may increase up to 45% depending on how popular your images are. However, you’ll get a flat 15% commission if the client bought your photo using their subscription credit.
If you don’t mind exclusivity, you can take advantage of their 22%-45% commission per exclusive image. Their exclusivity offer also comes with a 30-day notice period contract.
To get started, you need to follow the same process implemented by Getty Image. You need to send six sample images. Their application review committee will decide whether your skills and sample image quality suit the standards of Getty Image or iStock.
9. Dreamstime
Dreamstime is like a hosting site where you can create your galleries and organize your pictures. Unlike its competitors, it has a user-friendly, less stringent interface. However, despite being laid back, they still run a strict quality check on images that you posted to maintain the platform’s quality standard in conformity with legal policies.
For beginners looking for a good start, Dreamstime offers fair commission per image sold. For non-exclusive images, you’ll get 25% on commission while exclusive images get 27% from the total sales. As you build a name and your image becomes popular, your commission gradually increases between 45% to 49.5%. So the trick here is to stick, learn, establish your gallery, and submit more high-quality images.
10. CanStockPhoto
Last on our list on the best website to sell photos is CanStockPhoto, a micro-stock platform that sells super affordable stock images but pays its contributors with a competitive 40% commission. It is our top recommended site for beginners who are still learning and figuring out how the stock photo business works. Its application is simple, just follow the process and submit three of your best images as sample images. From there, they’ll decide whether you’ll be a great fit in the community.
Furthermore, you don’t have to worry about submission fees, subscription fees, and other monthly costs because selling on the platform is free of charge. Plus, contributors get to retain their ownership of their content and are free to sell their photos on other platforms. It allows you to freely look for other marketing alternatives and doesn’t hinder your growth, marketability, and profitability.
The only drawback I noticed is its minimum withdrawal threshold of $50. You can only withdraw your accumulated earnings once it goes beyond the $50 limit. However, that’s a minimal and manageable downside compared to its bountiful benefits.
Author’s Parting Words
Technology has broken boundaries and has transformed hobbies and passion into income-generating opportunities. It’s more fun to do the things you love while getting extra cash.
Photography needs skills, a good eye, an observant mindset, and keen attention to every detail. It’s a relaxing and fulfilling hobby but you can turn it into a sustainable business if you want to.
Entrepreneurs these days prefer outsourcing everything they need including images. If you have what it takes, then start making a few cash by starting your stock photo business and try our top 10 recommendations of the best websites to sell your photography. So start capturing stunning images and turn your hobby into a business; hitting two birds with one stone.