As a novice photographer, it is only natural to look for ways to sell your work and make some money. But without an accomplished mentor and any other forces of guidance, you could feel lost in this competitive, cut-throat field. Here are some channels for you to sell your images online and earn something for the hard work that you put day in and day out.
- Post on your website: The first obvious option is to post your images on your own website. There is a multitude of reasons for resorting to this option. Some of them are:
- You can always set the prices according to your needs. You aren’t answerable to anyone.
- You have the creative freedom to exercise complete control over the aesthetics of your photos.
- The terms and conditions can be set according to your preferences.
- Shutterstock: This website has been a pretty popular platform for over a decade to buy stock photos online. With over 200 million images, videos, and music tracks for people to purchase royalty-free, they have garnered millions of paying customers through their well-conceived business model.
As a photographer, this could be a fruitful long-term investment for you. According to their official statistics, the sellers on Shutterstock have amassed over $500 million worldwide, which adds credence to their reputation as a lucrative online-selling option. Shutterstock also protects your copyright.
- Alamy: This is another wonderful platform to sell stock photos because it doesn’t bind the photographer with restrictions and rules. While this may not be as popular a platform as Shutterstock, it’s still a reliable platform to generate some revenue from your work. Photographers can upload their work to Alamy without being stifled by licensing and copyright issues.
Alamy also has some pretty cogent statistics to buttress this fact. It has made over $180 million through payouts to novice photographers. Alamy also provides us with more virtues to extoll. This marketplace offers photographers about 50% on each sale, which is, in fact, way higher than what some of their contemporaries offer.
- Fotomoto: This isn’t a conventional online marketplace but is instead a widget that blends with your website to facilitate the operation of selling photos online. Once you upload your picture to your website, the widget takes care of all the sundry photo-selling processes for you.
Fotomoto also permits you to offer digital photos, photo prints and sometimes even certain canvases to the visitors of your site. Some photographers aren’t eclectic enough to be well-versed with online platforms. Fotomoto is designed explicitly for those who want to direct all their energy and focus towards their photography endeavours. 500px- This site is an online marketplace that aids you in the creation of a captivating portfolio of your images for earning money. This is easily one of the better sites to sell your photos online. This free site also has an added feature called a “Pulse algorithm” which expands your exposure by adding your newer uploads to a Discovery page, which is flocked to by thousands of visitors every day.
