Where to Sell Photos Online

When deciding where to sell your photos online, there are a variety of options that are available to you. Every option has its own advantages and disadvantages and in order to make the best decision, it is important to understand which option is right for you.

Where to Sell Photos Online

1. Your Own Website or 3rd Party Websites

The first decision that is a photographer must make is whether to use a 3rd party website or to create and host their own website. The advantage of creating your own website is that you have total control over everything. Additionally, you get to keep 100% of your profits. The drawbacks are that you must maintain your sites by yourself, which can often become a time-consuming task. Additionally, you will need to get customers to find your website and choose it over the competition. With 3rd party websites, they work hard to drive traffic to your photos. In many cases, you only pay them a commission when they sell your photo. The downside is that you may be limited to how many photos can be hosted, and many have caps on the price you can demand.

2. Pay Per Download or Pay Per Sale

When using a 3rd party website to house your photos, there are two common methods of making a profit: pay per download and pay per sale. Pay per download websites will pay you every time your photos get downloaded. These websites charge buyers a monthly membership fee and allow them to download whatever images they want. If they download your photo, you get paid. The other option is pay per sale. This is fairly straightforward. Every time your photos get sold, you get a percentage of the sale and the hosting website gets a commission. Few websites have exclusionary rules, so you can even add your photos to a variety of sites to create multiple streams of income and find out which websites work best for you.

3. Commission or Monthly Fee

3rd party websites will either charge a monthly hosting fee or take a commission off of each sale. Often, it is financially beneficial to start off on a commission basis. Since you only have to pay when you make a sale, you can never lose money. Whereas, with a monthly hosting fee, you have to pay the fee regardless of whether or not you made any money. On the other hand, if you are making a large amount of sales every month, it may be cheaper to simply pay the monthly fee. The commission rates can get fairly high on some websites and if make $1000 in sales in on month, you could be paying nearly $200 in commissions, instead of a $50 monthly fee. Both options are great choices, depending on how many sales you average per month.

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