Do you enjoy photography? Have you pursued it as a hobby? How about reading this blog? It contains helpful ways to turn photography into a rewarding online business.
Capturing beautiful landscapes and wonderful people in a 36x24 mm lens is no less than a heavenly feeling for a shutterbug. There is something about photography. You may not preserve a memory physically. But you can always capture it through a lens and cherish it for the lifetime. In addition, photography, as an activity has several benefits in terms of monetization.
Do you know there are at least
147,300 photographers around the world? And most of them are offering their works and displaying all projects via digitised mediums? Almost everyone from large organisations, small and medium sized businesses to bloggers, digital marketers and illustrators buy and sell photo online. But, as they say, the grass isn't always greener on the other side.
The risk associated with online image theft has emerged as a major point of concern for various business houses that deal with photo creation and selling. Reportedly, 49% of bloggers and social media users steal photos from online sites, thus leaving various companies and freelance photographers to suffer a huge loss.
Now, in case you are aiming to venture out and earn passive income by selling photos via secured and reliable digitised channels, invest some time in reading this blog for comprehensive knowledge.
Determine Your Target Audience
The creative crowd across the globe is always on the lookout for the latest photos in order to use them in their works, corporate projects, personal activities and the likes. However, you need to find out who exactly is your audience? It can be an organization or an individual.
Here are a few of the most crucial areas you need to monitor for the best knowledge.
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Digital Businesses: It is said that all types of online businesses, from assignment help forums to food delivery chains buy stock photos. In addition, small and medium businesses that work on tight budgets prefer stock photos as a solution to create compelling PPTs, graphic arts, illustrations and more.
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Food Bloggers: The contemporary food bloggers are always on the lookout for attractive feature images to use in their blog posts. So, it could be a nice idea for you to target this particular group of audience and sell photos to them online.
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Freelance Journalists: In this era of digitisation, freelance journalists look for online photos and feature images as well. You can reach out to them via online communities and determine the prospect of selling them your snaps.
In addition to three of these aforementioned groups, you may expect to sell online photos to other groups of buyers associated with academics, short-film making, YouTube contents, editing and the likes.
Determine An Ideal Platform to Sell Photos
Once you are done determining the target audience, it's time to find and fix an ideal platform to sell photos online. It is recommended to have your own website for this purpose.
It would help you to:
- Set your own prices.
- Ensure that no one else takes the share of income.
- Set personalised terms and conditions.
- Have absolute control on how to display each photo on the website.
In case, you aren't financially stable or venturing out on a small scale, then here is a list of reliable websites where you can sell contents to the prospective online buyers.
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Adobe Stock: Formerly known as Fotolia, this online photo selling platform is a great marketplace for creative people. Photos uploaded on this website automatically become a part of the Adobe Photo Stock library. This means the photos will also be available on other Adobe applications like Photoshop in order to make the purchase easy for thousands of buyers across the globe.
Tentative income: $0.20 - $3.33 per image.
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Shutterstock: It has been in the business for more than 15 years with a collection of more than 200 million images. As a photographer, you can earn great bucks by uploading your images. Shutterstock gives credit to your photos. As a result, it would protect your ownership and give credibility to your brand as well. It is said that as a contributor to Shutterstock, you can earn anywhere between 20% and 30% of the entire income made via this platform. Most interestingly, payouts on Shutterstock are made on a monthly basis.
Tentative income: The site will pay you $0.25 every time your image is downloaded.
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FotoMoto: This is yet another online marketplace for photographers. It has a widget that integrates with your website in order to sell photos online. The platform has several monthly plans available for photographers to opt for.
Tentative income: $1.69 - $2.55 approx per image
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500px: This is yet another online platform that allows you to create portfolios of your image and earn money online. One can set up a free account with 500px and participate in several contests in order to add an extra chunk of income besides selling photographs.
Tentative income: You can earn 60% of the net sales on images.
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BlueMelon: It is a user-friendly website to upload, share and sell photos across multiple platforms. BlueMelon holds a reputation for ensuring fairly decent royalties in comparison to other contemporary platforms.
Tentative income: 40% commission on referral and sales.
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Snapped4u: If you are a photographer who covers events like weddings, birthday parties and more, then Snapped4u is the one for you. However, you need to take note of the fact if you are sell photos at a good price, then this particular platform of charge their commission.
Tentative income: $0.40 - $20 per image.
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Etsy: Etsy boasts more than 30 million users and a plethora of different ways to sell their photos via online mediums. The best thing about this site is that they have a demographic that is ready to buy your images on the go.
Tentative income: Around $25 per image.
In addition to each of the sites mentioned above, you can choose to opt for other platforms like
TourPhotos,
PhotoShelter,
Crestock, and
Alamy.
Key Takeaways...
Before signing off, I would like to highlight the key actionable points and suggestions about online image marketing once again. Take note of the following points.
-Refrain from uploading random photos on websites without determining your target audience.
-Find out an ideal platform to sell your photos. Prioritise having an official website for this purpose.
-In case you don't, count on other digitised marketplaces like Etsy, Crestock, 500px and more.
Now that you are aware of the key actionable points and the smartest hacks to selling online photos for passive revenue, pull up your socks, step out with confidence, and SHOOT!
Good luck!
Author Bio: Patrick Austin is an experienced developer of online
paraphrasing tool and a dedicated assignment writer associated with the digital brand MyAssignmenthelp. Apart from that, he is a freelance photographer, trekker and yoga trainer, hailing all the way from Glasgow, Australia.
