Best Places to Sell Photos Online - 56juqingba: How-to instructions you can trust

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Love taking photos and want to share your skills with the world while making extra money? Check out the best places to sell photos online, including using your storefront as a portfolio to showcase your skills to potential clients.

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1. SmugMug

Pricing: Free trial, plans start at $31/month

SmugMug makes it easy to set up a professional photography shop. The site offers three plans – Portfolio (for individuals), Pro (for businesses), Venture (custom needs). Each plan gives you your own site, and you can even add your own domain.

Set up galleries and organize your photos and videos the way you want. Not ready to go public or just need storage? Set your gallery to private. Choose your own pricing model and sell digital and physical copies. The main downside is the cost. Not only do you pay a monthly fee, but there’s a 15% commission on all sales.

2. Best Built-In Audience: Adobe Stock

Pricing: Free, Sellers earn 33% commission

Adobe Stock is one of the best places to sell photos online thanks to the built-in audience. The platform’s been around for over 20 years and is a well respected site for buying photos, video clips, vector images, and illustrations. Plus, it’s completely free to sellers to upload as many images as they want and start selling.

Every seller gets a free portfolio to display their work. You can link to your portfolio to showcase your work or let Adobe handle all the marketing for you. Of course, since you get a free site and audience, Adobe takes a large cut of your sales, a whopping 67%. But, you may sell more photos here than elsewhere without any extra effort on your part.

3. Best for Students: Alamy

Pricing: Free to join, Earn up to 50% commission

Alamy works similarly to Adobe Stock, but doesn’t have quite as large of an audience. However, it’s a wonderful place for student photographers to start selling and showcasing their work. Students earn 100% of all their sales for the first two years.

Simply upload images, add keywords, and wait 24 hours for approval. Then, Alamy places your images in the marketplace. Every creator has their own profile with all their images listed. If you’re not a student, you earn a 20% commission. For sales over $250, you earn 40%, and for those earning over $25,000, you get 50%. Plus, you can offer non-exclusive licensing and sell elsewhere too.

4. Lowest Fees for Sales: Zenfolio

Pricing: Starts at $9/month

Zenfolio lets you create a portfolio or online store for your photography. With the Portfolio plan, you only get a professional portfolio site. Start selling with the PortfolioPlus ($23/month) and ProSuite ($40/month) plans. You’ll get the most benefit with the higher plans, which also include marketing features and free domain.

In addition to selling digital copies, Zenfolio also helps you create wall prints, calendars, metal prints, canvas wraps, and more. You also get access to advanced photo editing tools. There’s a 7% commerce fee on sales, meaning you keep more of your earnings here. Plus, the free trial doesn’t require a credit card.

5. Best for Professional Stock Photographers: Shutterstock

Pricing: Free, Earn up to 40% commission

Shutterstock isn’t designed for amateur selfie takers. Instead, it’s for professional stock photographers looking to earn a living. If you follow all the guidelines, you’ll have no trouble getting your photos accepted. But, the site does warn that most users have their first batch rejected due to missing a few guidelines.

While you get a bio page with all your images, Shutterstock is just one massive marketplace like Adobe Stock. So, there’s also a large built-in audience. It’s free to upload, but you only earn between 15-40% of sales. To earn the most, you have to sell over 25,000 licenses per year.

6. Best Revenue Share Program: Depositphotos

Pricing: Free, Earn up to 38% commission on sales

Depositphotos works much like Adobe Stock and Shutterstock, but offers an extra way to earn – a revenue share program. It’s completely free to upload images, as long as they meet all guidelines. Then, you earn a commission, between 30%-38%, on sales. But, Depositphotos offers a monthly subscription for buyers to download a set number of photos a month. Sellers get 40% from sales through this program.

You can also sell videos and music here, with a similar pricing model. The guidelines are strict and they only accept the best photos. But, having two earning models may help you earn more here than similar sites.

7. Best for Custom Products: Etsy

Pricing: One time setup fee and transaction fees

Etsy isn’t just a great place to sell photos online. If you’re a creative person, Etsy is a popular place to sell all types of handmade items. For photographers, creating framed shots, calendars, planners, digital prints, and much more. You could even offer your services or perform editing on others’ photos and frame them.

Etsy doesn’t specify how much the initial store setup fee is and not everyone has to pay it. However, you do have to pay fees for listing, transactions, processing, and offsite ads (only if someone buys through that ad). Depending on what type of photography you’re selling, Etsy could be one of the more profitable options.

8. Best for Full Control: Own Website

Pricing: Free, but best with premium hosting and domain

Obviously, if you want full control over your photography business, having your own website is the best option. Many platforms let you build your site for free, but only give you a subdomain and may show a few ads or their own branding somewhere on the site.

Of course, if you want a more professional site to sell photos online, you’ll want to at least have your own domain name. You can try these personal website builders to get started. Just remember, the biggest downside is you’ll have to do all your own marketing since there isn’t a built-in audience like photo marketplaces.

If you’re trying to prep your photos to sell, you might want to try these free and cheap Adobe Lightroom alternatives or even these free online photo editors. You can even try AI-based photo editors.

Image credit: Unsplash

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Crystal Crowder –
Staff Writer

Crystal Crowder has spent over 15 years working in the tech industry, first as an IT technician and then as a writer. She works to help teach others how to get the most from their devices, systems, and apps. She stays on top of the latest trends and is always finding solutions to common tech problems.