Is it easy to sell photos online?
Nowadays anyone can make some money from photography
The onset of modern digital cameras and huge advances in Smartphone camera technology has seen the erosion of the stock photo industry. Suddenly everyone is a photographer. Media companies have a much bigger pool to choose from. Amateur and hobbyist photographers have now become a big source of images. Picture researchers can scour places like Flickr, Facebook, 500px and much more for the photo they are looking for, and in many cases get them for free. It may seem like the days of making money full time from photography are long gone. However, like any industry you just need to adapt to the changing times, embrace the advances in technology and use them to your own advantage. The Internet has made everything much more accessible, so there has never been a better time to sell photos online.
While modern technology and the Internet may have caused the decline in the stock photography business, it has also made it so much easier to sell your photos online to a worldwide audience. The upside to this is that selling photos is no longer the realm of the full time professional photographer. Today, anyone can make money from photography.
So in this article I’m going to show you how you can leverage this modern technology to earn a bit of extra cash with your camera.
Can you make a full time living selling photos online?
Probably not in all honesty. Most full time professional photographers are supplementing their income and making extra money from photography workshops, selling online courses, giving talks, writing articles and much more. Actual photo sales probably make up just a percentage of their total income.
However, you don’t need to be a full time photographer to sell your photos. This is the biggest advantage of the Internet. You can sell your work anywhere in the world, and it’s never been easier. So you can keep your day job, and sell photos online in your spare time; even while you sleep.
How can I sell my photos online?
Sell wall art prints
One of the best ways to sell photos online is by selling wall art prints. People all over the world are looking to hang beautiful pictures on their walls, and not only paintings. Selling photos as wall art prints has become a popular way to make money, and it’s never been easier to do. People can buy your photos printed onto canvas wrapped around a wooden frame, or a traditional framed print. They can even choose a metal, acrylic or wood print.
How can I get my photos printed?
Print on demand companies
In order to sell prints in the past, you needed to buy stock prints of your photos upfront and also store them somewhere. You then had to drag your stock around to exhibitions, markets and all sorts trying to sell them. If stuff got damaged along the way then it was money lost. Plus the cost of selling this way is huge: petrol and fees at markets and exhibitions etc. If you did sell online then you had all the work of printing our photos, packaging and shipping to the customer, which was costly to the customer if they were ordering from overseas.
Today most printing companies now offer a print on demand service. It used to be that to get anything printed at a reasonable unit price you needed to print in bulk. However, advances in digital printing technology means that a dedicated printing house can now make single prints at much lower prices. Not only that, but many also offer prints on a variety of paper types and make products such as box canvas, framed, acrylic, metal, wood prints and more. Even stationery products like greeting cards can be ordered from them. What’s more, many will also ship your order directly to your customer, rather than you having to do it.
Here are a couple of good printers:
Photobox
Photobox is a great choice. They offer a great range of products from all types of prints: canvas, box, framed etc. You can also make photo books, calendars, cards, mugs, and a variety of photo gifts for families and kids.
Using Photobox to fulfill your orders, you can really tailor a range of products to sell on your own website.
Photobox regularly offers site-wide discounts on various products, especially on the run up to Christmas, so you can also increase your profit around those times, or pass it on by offering the discount on your website too.
Watch my video showing you how to make a calendar with Photobox
Print on demand websites
Now, you can go directly to these print on demand companies to fulfill orders. However, an easier way nowadays is to use a POD (print on demand) website. These have exploded over the years. A print of demand website deals with everything. You simply upload your photo and it is made available for sale on their website. When a customer wants to purchase a print, the print on website takes care of everything.
Many PODs have suppliers all around the world to fulfill orders. So if somebody in the USA buys your photo, the product is made and shipped from a US printing house. If it’s a customer in Europe, then it’s made in one of the EU countries. And so on. This means faster and cheaper shipping for the customer.
Most of these sites are free to use. As a seller on the site you get to set your own markup (the amount you earn for each photo print). For some it’s a percentage, for others it’s a fixed amount.
Some of the best print of demand websites:
Fine Art America
- Fine Art America – My personal favourite. FAA sells all over the world and has suppliers worldwide. There is a free option, or a subscription. If you pay the annual subscription, which is only US$30 per year, you can also have a shop on your Facebook page powered by FAA. Additionally, you get your own dedicated website that is a mirror of your FAA profile. So anything you upload to FAA is automatically made available on your personal website. This is great because if you market your work you can direct people here to ensure they only see your photos.
Other print on demand websites
Should I just sell my photos online via a POD?
You could, of course. However, while it may bring in sales ultimately a POD will work to promote sales of all photos on its website, and not just yours. So you cannot just sit back and let them do all the work, you need to also be marketing and promoting your work yourself.
However, if you do all the work to market yourself and send your potential customers to your profile on one of these POD sites, they can also see photos from other photographers and could well end up buying one of theirs instead; a situation that would no doubt please the POD and the other photographer, but leave you out of pocket for all your hard work.
How to sell photos via your own website.
This is why every photographer should have their own website. You will make more money online if you sell your photos this way. It doesn’t mean that you will have to deal with all the printing and fulfillment yourself; although you can if you want. But why do all the work if you don’t have to?
There are several options available to build your own website and sell photos online:
Get a Smugmug website
Use a dedicated photo website platform such as Smugmug. Smugmug is a great option for anyone who wants an easy way to upload photos and create their own website without the need for technical knowledge or website building skills. With Smugmug, it’s really simple to upload and organize your photos into folders, and use the simple drag and drop system to create and display your galleries. You can choose from a variety of templates and depending on the plan you have, even use your own domain name.
Easiest way to sell your photos online
Additionally, if you choose the portfolio or pro plan then you can also make your photos available to purchase on your website. There is a choice of several different print on demand companies, including Loxely as mentioned above. You can select the one you want to use. Just like with a POD, you can set your own markup in the form of a percentage and choose how much you make. Smugmug will take care of all the payment and order processing, and deal with any problems that may occur such as damages or colour errors. You can also sell digital downloads.
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Other dedicated website builders
There are other dedicated website builders you can use to easily create a website. Here are two others and you can watch my videos too:
Setup a WordPress website.
If you would prefer to build your own website then a WordPress website is probably one of the easiest to make, and will also be responsive across all devices. You can choose a specific photography theme, build it with a page builder like Elementor, or use both together.
For my blog and photography website, I use the Photography Theme by Envato, along with Elementor as a plugin. While some skills are needed to use these, it’s still very user friendly and a great way to really build a more unique looking website. You can also setup your own ecommerce shop using a plugin called woocommerce and find your own printing company to fulfill your orders for you.
Alternatively, Elementor has its own theme so you can build the whole site using it. However, their photo galleries are a bit limited, so another great option is to use a plugin called Envira Gallery, one of the most popular photo gallery plugins for WordPress.
Link your own website to a POD
While you can use a printer to fulfill orders, an even easier way is to use a POD site. The downside to using a printing company is that for each order you receive, you will have to place the order with the company and send the high res files. This could be a problem if you are away travelling or on holiday and unable to get access to your high res files.
By using a POD, you can simply link potential customers to the product page for the photo they are interested in via a purchase button on your website.
My personal FAA website
On my own website I have created galleries and direct buyers to my personal FAA site to purchase. As I said before, by linking them to this dedicated site they will only ever see my photos.
Each gallery page has links to this, and each photo when viewed large has a purchase button which takes the buyer directly to the product page where they can choose from all the products you have made available there.
This option means I never have to get involved with the sales process at all. I could be climbing Mt Everest and make a sale without knowing it. Or more realistically, I usually wake up and login to see that I’ve made a sale, and the order has all been dealt with while I was sleeping.
You’ll need a domain name and hosting provider
If you choose to have your own website either via WordPress or another type of website builder then you will need hosting and a domain name. You can think of your domain name as your address and your hosting as the house where your website lives. There are many out there, but personally I use and wholeheartedly recommend both A2 Hosting and Hostinger.
You can very easily install WordPress on your hosting package through their control panel.
Other options for domains and hosting
Namecheap offer a range of low priced domains and are a good option for getting your domain name. You could also buy their hosting packages to go with it, or point your domain to another hosting package like A2.
Getting your website built
Of course the easiest and cheapest way is to build the website yourself. It just requires time and some learning. Today there are many resources out there for learning WordPress, Elementor and even Adobe’s Dreamweaver.
One option is to take an online course. There are lots to choose from on Udemy:
Design ideas
If you already have graphic design skills and are looking to expand your skills to start building your own websites, then have a read of this masterclass article here:
Pay a web designer
This one will be a lot more costly, but if your budget allows it could well take the stress away from it all and ensure you get the best looking website that is also well optimized for SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
My web design service
Okay, I’m going to shamelessly offer my very own web design services here. Should you decide to pay a web designer to do the work for you, then who better to hire than another photographer to build it. You can see more about my web design services here:
Best place to sell stock photos
While it is an eroding industry, it’s not completely dead yet. It’s still possible to sell stock photos, but don’t expect to make a fortune. You can easily offer simple licensing options via your own website or ask a viewer to email you about buying a license. If you have a Smugmug website then this option is also built in, so you can set prices and allow customers to automatically download the image upon payment of a specific license.
If you prefer to sell via a dedicated stock library then there are still many out there, but most of them are paying pennies. The best place to sell stock photos is Alamy. It is also the only decent one left, although even their prices have had to come to down in order to compete, is Alamy. This is the one I use and while income from it has dropped I still make a reasonably good fee from most of the images that are licensed.
Still possible to make money with photography
So there you have it, a few ways to sell your photos online and earn some money. You may not be able to give up the day job, but you can make a nice little earner on top.
