Where and How to Sell Stock Photos

If you want to sell stock photos, there are many sites that provide this service.




Selling photos online can be an excellent income producing venture. If you submit high quality photos, you have a better chance of success. They may or may not be professional images...it doesn't always matter.

In addition, the more digital photos you offer to sell, the better you will do. Take a look at the sites below, and read about how to go about selling photos.

Fotolia.com

Anyone can sell digital photos on Fotolia. However, after uploading your digital images, the editors review them for acceptance. Once they are accepted, it can take up to 48 hours for the pictures to appear in the searchable index.

Buyers of the photos must choose what type of license they wish to buy with the photo. When a photo is purchased, you will be paid a commission. How much depends on the type of license that was selected. Commissions for selling stock photos generally range from 33% up to 64%.

You decide on the price of your photo, within certain guidelines. There are a few ways that you can increase your earnings when you sell stock photos on this site. If you have Fotolia as the exclusive site where you sell your photos, you can raise your selling price faster. With the exclusive option, commissions will be higher. They can be from 50% to 80% of the sales price. The more you sell, the more you are able to increase your prices.

Fotolia provides a wide geographic area where your images can be purchased. They can be sold/purchased in France, USA, UK, Spain and Germany. This gives you a wider range of buyers!

PhotoStockPlus.com

This site is geared more towards professionals. I say this because you must pay a subscription fee in order to sell your photos at this site. It is called the Pro Member Agreement. However, there are some excellent advantages and features.

PhotosStockPlus provides you with some pricing guidelines. However, you can adjust it any way you like. You make 85% of the mark up minus a small processing fee whenever you sell stock photos.

This site offers bulk uploading tools, which are fast and easy. There are two ways to do this. One is via their website. The other method is to install the upload tool right on your desktop. There are no file size restrictions and they recommend that you upload the largest file that you have. Your photos must be in jpg. format.

You can get detailed stats to let you know which are the most popular subjects. Not only that, but you can also see stats on image views and get specific information on the buyers of your photos. If you want to market your photos yourself, you can password protect your portfolios for your own possible buyers. There are no exclusivity rules, which means you can sell your digital photos on many different sites.

Shutterstock.com

When sell stock photos with Shutterstock, you receive 25 cents for each of your photos that are downloaded. Once you have earned $500, you then will receive 30 cents per download.

This may not sound like a lot. However, because Shutterstock is a subscription site, it encourages a higher number of digital photo downloads. It starts at a minimum of 12 downloads for one type of subscription. Another type of plan allows for 25 images a day to be downloaded. This is for buyers… so you can see how additional buyer downloads mean more money for you.

They also have some very enticing videos for downloading also.

They refer to this as footage. So if you wish to sell videos you have created, you can do this also for extra income. They are called clips and must be between 5 and 60 seconds in length. They are usually priced at $10 to $50 each. You receive 30% commission. Any clips you submit will be reviewed for acceptance.

Each time one of your clips is purchased, you receive a 30% commission on the sale. Stock clips are typically priced at $10 to $50 per clip.

Dreamstime.com

Dreamstime reviews all photos that are submitted to their site. However, if a photo is not accepted, they will tell you why and make suggestions. You may re-submit the photo.

Once you submit a photo and it is accepted, it is designated as a 1st level file. When your photo has had 10 downloads, it becomes a second level file and sells for more money. This continues up to a photo having 100 downloads and becoming a 5th level file. The higher the level, the higher the price of your digital images.

You will receive 50% commission, regardless of what level you are at. If the image is exclusive to Dreamstime, it goes to 60% commission. There are some additional payouts too. Their commissions are consider high.

As you can see, different sites are set up in different ways and offer various commissions. So to sell stock photos online is not that hard to set up.