How to Sell Your Photos Online and Earn Huge Income

Photography is big business these days. Webmasters and businesses use images for their websites and marketing materials. People purchase artwork for their homes. All of these photos need to come from somewhere. As a freelance photographer, you have numerous options to sell your photos online. And this can be a great way to create passive income that earns while you’re working on other things.

What Kind of Photos People Want to Buy?

Right now, one of the biggest consumers of online photography is bloggers and website owners. Every piece of content created from blog posts to social media updates needs an attractive image. Here are a few categories that are in demand.

1. Photos of people
2. Photos of work situations (at the office, carpenter, steward, etc.)
3. Photos of travel
4. Photos of cities
5. Close-up photos
6. Photos of things (screws, medication, signs, books, computers, tools, bags, cables etc)
7. Photos of nature
8. Photos of animals

That doesn’t sound too crazy. Right? You can totally do this. And on a budget. I’d also suggest taking a look at the most popular images in each category on the sites on which you intend to list your photos. This will give you a good idea of what’s hot at the moment.

Sell Photos From Your Own Website

If you have a large collection of high quality photos, you can post them on your own website to sell online. However, your site must have a large targeted traffic in order for you to be able to sell your photos. It may take time and hard work to build a steady traffic to your website. You can set up a blog on your site or create a separate blog to promote your site. Promote your photos and website via social media marketing. SEO is important to increase your site’s ranking for keywords relevant to your photos and website in search engines’ search results pages. When your potential buyers use keywords relevant to your photos, you site will show up at the top search results pages, meaning you will get more and high quality traffic to the site.

Sell Images Online

There are several websites that sell stock photos and vector images to webmasters and business owners. These photos can be sold over and over again providing long-term residual income.

• Fotolia – Earn 20-63%. Exclusivity is not required though some rules apply to pricing once a certain rank is achieve. Payment is made via Moneybookers or PayPal.
• Alamy – this site offers a 50% royalty and no exclusivity clause. Nice!
• Shutterstock – Contributors earn 20-30%. Payments are made monthly with a $75 minimum. Shutterstock does not insist on exclusivity. You are free to sell your stock elsewhere.
• Dreamstime – Earn 20-60% from each sale. Has an active community.
• iStockphoto – Contributors earn 15% from each download. Exclusive Contributors earn 22-45%. Payments can be requested up to twice per week by PayPal, Moneybookers or Payoneer Mastercard with a $100 minimum balance. Checks are mailed on the 15th and 30th.
• FreeDigitalPhotos.net – Keep 70% of your sales revenue. Payments are made via PayPal with a $10 minimum.
• Bigstock – Earn 30% from individual downloads and up to $0.38 royalty on subscriber sales. Payments are processed once per week upon request with a $30 minimum balance. Receive payment by check, PayPal or Moneybookers. Hi
• Demand Media offers freelance positions to photographers. Payment is like clockwork twice per week. Rates will vary by assignment. These must be exclusive photos and you give up all rights to the work upon sale.
• Sell Them Yourself – There are some themes and software like PhotoShelter that will make selling your photos a breeze without ongoing fees or giving up a percentage of each sale.

Make sure you read and re-read each site’s guidelines and fine print when it comes to requirements, exclusivity (you can’t sell your photos on multiple marketplaces) and property rights.

How Much Can I Earn by Selling Microstock Photos Online?

It depends on many things. Typically, you can earn only pennies for each photo sold or each photo download. However, the earnings can add up quickly as the same photo can be sold to multiple clients and that more different types of photos can be sold if you have thousands of quality photos listed on one or more microstock photo sites for sale. If any photo forhas been sold several times, the site where the photo is posted on may pay more per download. Some microstock photography sites will pay you more for your photos if you submit high-quality photos exclusively to those sites and if they accept you as an exclusive photographer. For instance, iStockPhoto pays much more to their exclusive photographers.

Some professional, even amateur photographers earn a living by selling photos online via microstock sites or their own sites. However, if you want to sell photos via your own website, you will need to attract a large targeted traffic to the site. You can attract people to your photos by using SEO and social media marketing.

Marketing and Making Sales

Most sites recommend the use of tags and keywords to help buyers better find your available photos.

Don’t forget to market your available photos. Social networks, guest posting about photography and getting active in photography forums can all help.

You probably aren’t going to get rich selling photos online, but you can earn some extra cash passively. We all like that. Many estimates state sellers earn on average $1 per month for every image listed. That means if you have 100 images available for sale, you may be earning around $100 per month. More images = more money.