How to Sell Photos Online

Posted by Jacob on Feb 8, 2011 in WordPress | 0 comments

Did you know there is a big demand for quality digital photographs on the Internet? Online Marketers, Graphics Artists, EBay Sellers, Writers, Retailers and many other professionals looking to buy quality Digital photos online. This is a great opportunity for you to make some income by selling photos online if you are a freelance photographer or like taking quality photos as a hobby.

Don’t just take random photos and keep them stored on your computer. Make some money off those stored photos instead of letting them collect dust. There are two ways to sell photos online.

Sell photos through Third party stock photography websites.
Create your own Online Photo Store and Sell Photos.

Selling Photos through a Third Party Website:

One photo may be worth a thousand words; yet to businesses, the right photo could be worth much, much more. The right photo can be used for design, advertising, and marketing to help the success of a business. Stock photography websites help businesses find the right photos for which they are looking.

A “stock photograph” is a digital photo which can be licensed for private or commercial use. Many professional/Freelance photographers are currently selling photos on major stock photography websites such as Getty Images, Corbis Images, Shutterstcok, istockphoto etc. More and more websites are popping up all over the web, trying to get in on the action. There is no shortage of digital images, but businesses need help finding the right image for their needs; this is where stock photography websites step in and reduce the clutter for their clients while putting cash in your pocket.

When choosing a stock photography website, be sure you understand their rules and policies. Each website is different and has different ways of paying the photographer. Some websites use a royalty-free method of payment for selling photos. This means the photographer is paid one time and the photo can be used over and over as long as the buyer wants to use that image. A rights-managed license means that the value of the photo is negotiated so that the purchaser receives the maximum value of the photo.

If deemed to be a valued photographer, some websites will even hire you to create a series of photographs. You will be given direction on the subject matter and what needs to be included in the picture. If you are able to prove yourself to a stock photography website, you would be in a lucrative position. However, if you are just looking to make money on the side, it is easy to get started by submitting your photos to the variety of stock photography websites available.

Selling Photos through your own Website:

To do this you will need to have your own website. I will assume you have your own website and would like to turn it into an Online Photo Store to sell photos. There are perks selling photos from your own website. You have the freedom to design your own website and photo galleries as presentation is the key to show your creativity as a photographer and sell photos. You can display your portfolio to your potential clients and people to view. And you would be able to sell your photos directly to your clients without paying any commission to a third party website.

If you are using WordPress for your website you will only need two simple WordPress plugins “NextGEN Gallery” (optional) and “WP eStore Shopping Cart” to convert your website into an Online Digital Photo Store and start displaying and selling photos at the same time.

NextGEN Gallery is a full integrated Image Gallery plugin for WordPress. It allows you to show all the photos in a nice grid view on a page or post.

NextGEN Gallery Plugin Features:

Templates: You can add custom templates for your theme.
Role settings: You can setup an Author for each gallery.
Copy/Move: Copy or move images between galleries.
Sort able Albums/Images: Create your own sets of images.
Watermark function: You can add a watermark image or text.
Multiple CSS Stylesheet: Use a nice shadow effect for your thumbnails with your own CSS file.
Slideshow: Full integrated slideshow as jQuery or Flash solution.
Sidebar Widget: Show a slideshow, random or recent picture at your sidebar.
Language support: Translated in more than 30 languages.
Tag support for images: Append related images to your post, create a image tag-cloud.
Meta data support: Import EXIF, IPTC or XMP meta data.

NextGEN Gallery Plugin Demonstration

NextGEN Gallery Plugin Download

WP eStore shopping cart plugin allows you to sell any form of digital and non digital products and services from your WordPress site securely with complete automation and also provides security to your digital products (including digital photos). You can sell both digital photos and hard copies with WP eStore Shopping Cart plugin. It also allows you to receive payments from your clients if you are providing any other services rather than selling photos. WP eStore is integrated with NextGEN gallery but if you do not want to use NextGEN gallery you can still use WP eStore, as it is completely independent to sell digital and non digital products and also display images in grid.

If you are selling photos with NextGEN gallery and WP eStore you will be able to show “Add to Cart” button bellow each image which will look similar like below:

Selling Photo with NextGEN gallery & WP eStore

Selling Photos with WP eStore Shopping Cart plugin without NextGEN Gallery

With NextGEN gallery the options are limited. NextGEN gallery and WP eStore shopping cart are two different plugins and WP eStore cannot change the way NextGEN Gallery displays the photo gallery. But if you want to show the gallery in a fancier way, WP eStore allows you to customize the gallery without using NextGEN Gallery.

Selling photo with WP eStor

You can show the above image display by using WP eStore only, which is lot nicer than the previous display with NextGEN gallery plugin. With WP eStore you can display photos in a beautiful grid view and you don’t need to worry about Integrating with any other plugin.

Complete Documentations for WP eStore shopping cart Plugin

WP eStore supports Digital delivery for selling photos Online

WP eStore can automatically delivers digital products like digital images, photos etc to your customers once the payment is received and it takes less than couple of minutes to set up the plugin.

You might consider selling photos as tangible product such as print copy or posters. WP eStore also handles the shipping price and delivery cost of tangible products.

Protect your Digital Photos by WP eStore Plugin

The people who knows the trick, they can just right click on a photo and choose “Save Image As…” to save any image to their computer but if you are using WP eStore to display the photos even if they try to steal the image from the gallery they won’t get the actual image (they will be able to get the thumbnail version) as WP eStore only knows the actual URL of the image.

Tips on successfully sell photos online

Keep in mind that there are well known photographers selling photos on internet, make sure that your digital photos are good quality.
The subject matter needs to be easily understood by the viewer, the picture needs to be large, and the image itself needs to be clear.
As in photography, each photo needs to have a purpose. Think about photos which may be necessary to businesses.
Though you are not selling photos to an art gallery, there is still an art form behind each of the photos sold on these websites. These photos are going towards a purpose; one which only the buyer may know.