Are you interested in making some money on your photography? Are you looking for legitimate places for selling photos and earn money? If you are passionate about photography, selling photos online is a great opportunity to earn good money.
If you have a creative eye and good camera sense, selling stock photos makes an ideal online income opportunity for anyone. Web designers, publishers, and advertisers are always looking for quality images, and often pay a good amount of money to get the perfect images for their projects.
Read: How to Sell Photographs and Make Money
Now the most important question is where to sell those photos. The first option indeed would be to create your own site and sell your photos online. In doing so, you will have certain advantages like total control of setting your own terms and conditions, no commissions to be paid to intermediaries, setting your own price, etc.
Creating a site is easy nowadays. You can check our detailed guide on How to Start a Photography Website Make Money to learn more.
Top 10 Places to Sell Photos Online
Here are the most popular photography sites offering photo selling earning opportunities:
1. Photodune
PhotoDune is the photo marketplace and is powered by Envato Market. Envato’s top authors make over $20,000 per month selling digital products and stock to a growing community of over 7 million users across seven marketplaces. They offer non-exclusive authors 55% of each sale. This percentage increases if photos are posted exclusively on the site.
2. Shutterstock
Shutterstock is a global marketplace for artists and creators to sell royalty-free images, footage, vectors, and illustrations. This photo-selling website serves customers from 150+ countries and has paid over $350 million to its contributors.
3. iStock
You need to be an iStock member before you can contribute your stock photos. If you are eligible for exclusivity, your royalty rate can reach up to 45%. To become an exclusive photographer or illustrator, you must have 250 downloads and a minimum 50% approval rating, or 500 downloads.
4. Dreamstime
Anyone can join the community and sell their photos, images, and videos. You have to create an account and upload your media files. Non-exclusive contributors in general receive 25% – 30% revenue share. Exclusive contributors enjoy a 60 % Revenue Share for all sales and an additional bonus of $0.20 for each approved submission.
5. Flickr
Flickr community is home to 13 billion photos, 120 million people, and 2 million groups and still growing. You will need a Yahoo ID to sign up on Flickr. Make sure the profile is public. Find the phrase “Want to license your photos through Getty Images?” in the “Additional Information” section.
Choose the Flickr licensing options you like best in Getty Images’ Request to License program. Save and sign out from Flickr. You will find a “Request to License” link underneath your photos when you view your profile when not signed in.
You have to wait for someone who wants to license your photo. They will email you to ask if you want to accept the license and furnish the terms.
6. Alamy
Alamy offers more than 50% to the contributor for each transaction. This online photo-selling website at present has a community of more than 20,000 photographers.
7. Adobe Stock
Adobe Stock formerly known as Fotolia has been a leader in the stock marketplace worldwide for the last 10 years. Now with 70 million images and an ever-growing. You will get 33% off every sale on an Adobe Stock subscription. The actual payout will depend on the price of the image paid by the buyer.
8. Crestock
Your royalty rate is calculated on a progressive scale, based on your total number of images sold since joining Crestock. The royalty income ranges from 20% to 40% on single-image license photos.
9. 123RF
This reputed photo selling platform at present offers up to 60% commissions to the contributor. 123rf is a royalty-free stock site. There are various categories like celebrations, lifestyle, and fashion to choose from.
10. Getty Images
Getty looks for images based on concepts and emotions. If you want to sell photos here, you will have to register with the site. Then check the review guidelines for submission. You will be asked to take a quiz and then submit a link to a gallery of your finest images.
4 Important Tips for Selling Stock Photos Online
There are two approaches you can take toward this selling stock photography online part-time job, and one way is more profitable than the other:
Sell your images through existing online stock photo agencies
There are a handful of established online stock photo agencies that are eager for your photos. Listed above are the top most popular stock photo agencies online.
All you have to do is upload your photos and images, they will select which ones they want, and then they will advertise them for sale. The images will sell over and over again to web designers, article publishers, and advertisers. After taking a small commission, you will get the rest. This is a very easy and totally hands-off type of online part-time job.
Suggested Read: How to Start Photo Editing Business from Home
Build your own website and sell images yourself
Although this is going to be much more work than simply uploading your photos to existing websites. However, the income will be more here. You own the marketplace here and as a result, you are in charge and have much control. And the best part is that you can also recruit other photographers to upload their photos to your site.
Start-Up Cost to Sell Stock Photos
If you already have a good camera, there are no start-up costs for this online part-time job. Keep in mind that start-up costs will increase if you choose to run your own store.
How Much Can You Earn Selling Stock Photos?
Some of the best stock photographers and illustrators make as much as $100,000 per year. However, as a beginner, you can earn by selling stock photos on an average of $500 to $1000 a month provided you have a good amount of creativity.
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