If you’re considering selling photography online the first thing you really need to do, is choose exactly what you’re trying to achieve. You do have plenty of options and there is serious money to be made selling photo images, but if you select the incorrect approach to do it, you will not make money and you may potentially suck all of the joy out of your photography also.
Deciding what you want to do with your photography isn’t easy. Obviously everyone would like to sell a pile of photographs and make a pile of cash, but you need to be practical. You need to temper what you need from all this with what you are prepared to do about it.
If you need serious cash from selling your photography you want to approach it as proper business. If you simply want a little bit of small change from your hobby, then there’s a few simple ways that you can go at it, but if you’re looking for career changing cashflow, you’re in for plenty of work.
You’ll need to invest effort and time and money, and you shouldn’t be expecting to quite the real job anytime soon!
That said , a career in photography is as much about the lifestyle as the cash for most pros, so do not let that put you off if it’s your passion. I only mention it to keep things pragmatic.
As nice as a photography career might appear, it’s a business like every other. It may take long-term time and effort, and like any other business, success isn't guaranteed.
The better news is, it is one business that’s especially well suited to being developed part-time, so a proficient and determined photographer probably stands a better chance than someone relying on their new business to put food on the table.
So what’s the right option for you? Well obviously that’s something you will need to decide, but here are the 3 main tactics folk are earning from photography right now.
Selling Stock Photos:
For the most part, this is best left to the more accomplished photographers. It’s a super- cutthroat industry which has been absolutely flooded with lackluster pictures in recent times. Unless you’re bringing something new to the table, there is no point just adding more of the same.
That said , if you are gifted and creative, and prepared to work at it, there's a real opportunity developing to stand out from the crowd and build a rewarding & viable business. To try this well you want to continually look for new markets, identify potential purchasers, examine their photograph needs and supply unique and new material.
Stock photography is now not a matter of submitting thousands of random images to a library and waiting for sales. Those days are well past.
In the new market, you want to service specific clients wishes better than anyone else with a continual supply of very high quality original pictures. And if you are making that kind of investment, the smart photographers are walking off from the Microstocks and demanding fair and reasonable payment for their work.
Photograph Prints & Products
If you're not so anxious to make life-changing revenue from your photography, photograph prints and products could be a better option. There are some wonderful photo-product and fulfilment services online now which make this a breeze.
Fundamentally you upload images, select product types and make a ‘shop’. A few of these websites offer a variety of print sizes, posters, canvas prints and all kinds of paper products like gift cards and calendars. Most also include present items, office supplies and even clothing items, anything whatsoever that your stills can be imprinted on.
When the purchasers buy your products , the site accepts payment, prints your image on the required item, and then handles delivery.
For the greenhorn photographer hoping to make money from photography, this is the perfect platform. After you upload photographs and set up your store, you can kick back and wait, or it’s possible to get pro-active and promote your shop to drive even more targeted visitors to view your offerings. If you’re looking for where to sell photography, check for our fulfilment service suggestions at the end of this post.
Photography as Content
A final option that the majority overlook is by using your photography as website content, and this can be a nice option for the web-savvy photographer hoping to make some money online from their photography.
The unlucky fact is, most photograph web sites do not make a cent, because most photography website owners never stop to consider who their guests are. The truth is, most visitors to photographer site are photographers themselves and they are never going to buy prints or other photo products. Unfortunately though, photo prints and photo products are the only monetisation most website owners implement.
So when I talk of photography-as-content, I’m suggesting you use your photography to draw in visitors to your Website, and then use other techniques to generate revenue from your website, in particular applicable affiliate marketing programmes and advertising options.
So how do you decide where to sell photography?
If you're a talented and creative paparazzo, and you are prepared to work long term to build a heavy business, you cannot go past stock photography. It is no longer a hands-free submit and wait business, but the rewards are much better than ever for those photographers prepared to do the hard yards.
If you're just searching for some additional cashflow from a pastime you adore, I'd have to counsel selling stills and photograph products through a fulfilment service. You can grow your earnings by adding more pictures and more products. And you can send it into over-drive by sending focused net traffic to your shop.
And if you're a flowering webmaster and a photographer, I would have to suggest the Instant Photo Web Sites approach using photography as content.
However you choose to start selling photo images, always remember why you are doing it. You got into this as you love creating great photographs, so take care you never let the commercial aspects over power your passion for great photography.
In other words, whichever approach you take, don’t forget to switch the computer off regularly and get out to make some cool new images!
Brad Stephens uses all of the methods in this article to sell photography online. He contributes to and recommends GlobalEye Photo Stock Agency, he likes to sell prints and photo products through Zazzle and he swears by the Instant Photo Web Sites approach using photography as content.