Sell Photos

Photography is one of the most widespread hobbies. Especially with the boom of digital photography the last years it's now easier than ever for people to discover the extremely interesting world of photography. In addition to that it is now easier than ever for people to make money from their photos by selling them online. Below I will cover the places that I know and use to sell my photos.

There are various places where you can sell your digital photos online. Here we will focus on microstock photography sites that I personally prefer and use. The process in most sites is simple, you just create a free account and you are ready to start submitting your photos. Each time one of your photos is sold you get a commission. Each photo before appearing on the site goes through a review process by human moderators to ensure that it meets the quality standards of the site. That means that only good quality photos get accepted and can be sold.

So lets start by listing some microstock photography sites.

Fotolia

Fotolia has grown fast to be one of the biggest microstock photography sites. Anyone can register but before users can start uploading their photos they need to go through an easy online training. Fotolia accepts JPG and SVG (a vector format) images, JPG files must be larger than 4MP. After you have completed the training (it is really easy and fast) and you have uploaded your images by any of the three available uploading types (simple, JAVA, FTP) you need to categorize your photos and add relevant keywords so that potential buyers can find. Commission start from 33% and depending on the user's status can go up to 64%.

Visit Fotolia

Shutterstock

Shutterstock is a bit different than most microstock photography sites since it doesn't sell individual photos but subscriptions. Buyers for a flat fee can download a set amount of photos. Photographers get 0.25$ every time one of their photos is downloaded. I know it may sound too little but it adds up pretty quickly. Photographers can upload their photos either by using an FTP client, the website upload interface or a browser plugin. Shutterstock was the first microstock site I ever joined and still remains one of my biggest earners. Photos submitted should be larger than 2.5MP

Visit Shutterstock

Dreamstime

Dreamstime has been in operation as a microstock site for more than three years. Personally it is one of my favorites and a good earner for me. It offers a good commission of 50% and it is definitely a site I reccomend you use.

Visit Dreamstime

IstockPhoto

IstockPhoto was the first microstock site and probably the one with the highest traffic. It is a really good site but it is the most difficult of all the get your photos accepted and it also has a low commission (20%)

StockXpert

StockXpert which is now owned by Jupiter Images is a relatively new site. It pays 50% commission and has one huge advantage, it was created by the owners of sxc.hu, a site that already had a huge amount of traffic by people looking for stock photos.

Some other stock photo sites where you can upload and sell photos are

1. Bigstockphoto

2. Lucky Oliver
3. 123RF
4. CanStockPhoto

Here are some important notes that everyone that wants to try to sell photos online should keep in mind.

1. The copyright of all the photographs you upload must be owned 100% by you.
2. If your photos contain recognizable faces you should have signed model releases from the persons appearing in your photos.
3. Your photos should not contain any copyrighted material.
4. Photos must be of high quality, that means: no snapshots, no noisy or dark photos. Photos should have good lighting and exposure, a clearly defined subject, good composition etc