The Three Ways to Sell Photos Online

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There are various ways to sell — or more accurately, license — your photography online. I’ve divided these into three groups: “microstock,” “website,” and “products.”

Microstock

The easiest way to license your stock photos is to use a company that acts as your agent. These stock agencies pool the work of many photographers and have standardized terms and prices.

Traditional agencies license “rights-managed” images to select clients for big bucks. They don’t generally accept work from newbies, but the Internet has created a new group of agencies which are much easier to get into. These Internet agencies license “royalty-free” stock photos for small bucks, tiny amounts of a few dollars. This business is called Microstock.

Although you don’t get paid much per license, microstock agencies appeal to a very large market and your photos can get licensed many times each month. What you lose in value, you make up for in volume.

You can join a microstock agency for free online. Once on board, you“upload” your photos by sending them as digital files electronically, over the Internet. Your photos will be displayed alongside those from other photographers, and be searchable using keywords. Whenever your photos get licensed, the microstock agency will credit your account, and you can get paid monthly. With “non-exclusive” licenses, you can even upload the same photos to many competing agencies, thereby multiplying your revenue.

How much can you earn? Typically around $9 per photo per year. So, with 1,000 photos, you might earn $9,000 a year from microstock. Volume is important so to be successful at microstock, you need to “feed the beast” by taking and uploading photos continuously.

Microstock
Earn:	$9 per photo per year
Pro:	Easy
Con:	No control

The upside of microstock is that it’s very easy. You can concentrate on photographing and uploading, and leave the sales, marketing, fulfillment and accounting to someone else. The downside is that you have no control over pricing and presentation. For this, you’d need your own website.

Website

If you’re photographing sporting events or weddings, or have some other defined market, you probably want to have your own website.

Websites can be complex to code and operate — believe me, I code mine by hand which has not been an efficient choice. Fortunately, there are several companies that will do all the detailed coding and other laborious tasks for you.

Photo website providers have different approaches which I’ve divided into four groups based on the services they provide:

• Service — Orders are sent directly to affiliated labs for automatic processing
• Printer — Orders are processed and printed
• Control — Orders are sent to you to fulfill directly
• Host — They host your site, but you provide the coding and do fulfillment

Types:	Hosting	Design Templates	Order Fulfillment	Choice of Printer
Service	X	X	X	X
Printer	X	X	X
Control	X	X
Host	X
Software

Most providers charge a monthly or annual fee plus a commission on sales. Thus this approach costs you more money upfront than microstock. Plus you have to make decisions on layout and offerings, so there’s more work involved too.

Website
Pro:	Control
Con:	Fees

The upside of having your own website is that you get to control the pricing, presentation, viewing, and printing of your work. The downside is the added maintenance costs and complexity. If all you really want to do is sell your work as products, there is an easier option.

Products

Besides letting other people use your photos, you can use your photos, to make items for sale. You can create products such as prints, postcards and books, to sell at galleries, gift shops and online.

Many sites allow you to set up your own online store, which you can customize for your products.

Products
Pro:	Control
Con:	Niche markets

Going Forward

Before we start to sell photos, let’s get a fuller picture of our three key terms — stock, copyright, and license — starting with stock.