Where to Sell your Photos & Best Sites That Pay Up to $100 per Image

   – Where to Sell your Photos –  

As a photographer, you can easily earn some extra cash (or even start a new career!) if you know the right places to sell your photos online. Photographers of various skill levels are in high demand for their work, now more than ever.

Everyone from large corporations, small and medium-sized businesses to bloggers, graphic designers, marketers, and publishers buy and use photos regularly online.

Who Buys Stock Photos, and What Type of Photos Sell the Best?

The largest buying bases of stock photos are bloggers and small to medium-sized website business owners.

What type of images are they buying the most?

  • People — kids, adults, and everyone in between from every country and culture!
  • People working — These images are very popular with businesses. Folks working on laptops, writing, speaking at a meeting, etc. Just don’t make them so generic they become a meme.
  • Food — Various types of delicious foods even empty unwashed plates.
  • Tools — Gears, hammers, nuts, bolts, and screws can convey a lot of things for potential buyers.
  • Cities — Cityscapes, buildings, people commuting.
  • Nature — This is a no-brainer that never gets old to shoot or sell.
  • Travel — Shots from around the world are always in high demand.

Pro-tip: Have a look at the categories for some of the image marketplaces we’ll discuss to see some more of the most popular images.

In this guide, we will share the top 12 best places to sell photos online and make money doing what you love.

Related Searches:

Here are Sites Where you Can Make Money with Your Photos.

1.   IStockphoto

This site of contributors and thoroughly vets new applicants to make sure they’re a good fit.

To apply, just select the most appropriate category (photos, illustrations, video or audio) and fill out an application (it’s free). The iStockphoto team will review your qualifications and you’ll have to take a short quiz to assess them. The final step is to upload a few samples of your work to make sure it’s top-notch.

Once accepted with iStockphoto, you’ll receive a minimum of 15% of any sales. However, if you have “Exclusive” status, your earnings can increase to 45%. Here’s a full royalty schedule with typical prices to help you estimate your revenue.

has been selling stock images since 2001. Since it’s been around for a while, it has an extensive network.

2.   Etsy

Etsy’s not just for selling wedding decorations, custom Halloween costumes, and quirky cat-themed gifts. You can also sell your photos!

While the fee structure is beneficial to a photographer (Etsy keeps 20 cents on each sale as well as 3.5% of the sale price), you have to put in extra work to make those sales.

While people browsing stock photo websites are specifically looking to purchase images, not everyone browsing Etsy will necessarily be looking for photos. And people looking for photos may not think to look on Etsy.

That’s why, if you choose to sell your images on this site, you’ll need to invest time and energy into marketing your designs and images. But Etsy takes such a small cut of each sale, it may be worth your while.

Where to Sell your Photos

Etsy offers a helpful handbook to help you learn about branding, marketing, how to price your items and how to succeed. When you set up your own Etsy store, you set the prices, so your earning potential is virtually unlimited.

3. Shutterstock

Shutterstock has been a popular site for over 15 years to buy stock photos online. They have over 200 million images, videos, and music tracks for folks to purchase royalty-free, which also means they have millions of purchasing customers.

As a photographer, you can earn great money with this marketplace in the long run. According to their site, sellers on Shutterstock have made over $500 million worldwide!

Shutterstock allows you to keep your copyrights protected, so it’s up to you to set the rights on your photos. Shutterstock also gives credit to the image’s owners, which is a major plus that protects your ownership and markets your brand.

Once you become a site contributor, you begin earning money every time someone purchases and downloads your content. As a contributor you can make anywhere from 20% to 30% of whatever your image sells for, which Shutterstock pays out monthly.

Like Adobe Stock, Shutterstock doesn’t force you to use their marketplace exclusively. You might even consider selling on Adobe Stock and Shutterstock at the same time!

4. Adobe Stock

Adobe Stock (formerly Fotolia) is a stock photo marketplace by the maker of the most popular photo editing software solutions, including Photoshop and Lightroom. This platform has been around for over 10 years and known to be the very first online marketplace to sell photos.

The thing you’ll like most about Adobe Stock is their royalty share, which is higher than other online shops.

Photos uploaded at Fotolia become a part of the Adobe Stock library, which means they are also available in other Adobe applications and thus reach millions of Adobe users and potential buyers.

Contributors make anywhere from 20% – 60% with Adobe Stock. And, unlike some other marketplaces, Adobe Stock does not force you to give them exclusive selling rights to your images. So, you can sell on Adobe Stock and other platforms at the same time.

Given the behemoth that Adobe is, it’s likely that Adobe Stock will continue to become a prime destination for buyers and sellers of stock photography.

You can start selling on Adobe Stock’s site here.

5. Fotolia

Fotolia is a stock photography website that’s owned by Adobe.

It’s integrated into many of Adobe’s programs, including Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign – meaning that people can buy your images from within those programs.

You earn 20% to 46% commission on the images you sell through Fotolia – the better your contributor rank, the higher the percentage commission you’ll earn.

On Fotolia, you earn credits, which you can redeem for cash. You can earn between 1 to 30 credits per image. And one credit is worth $1.40

The site accepts a wide variety of high-quality images in all subject areas. But, it encourages you to review the images of top-selling artists to get ideas for photos.

6. 500px Prime

Five million photographers list their stock images with 500px, according to the site. You’ll receive 70% net for every license sold (standard licenses are $250), and your images may appear in big-name ad campaigns if you submit them for commercial licensing.

To give 500px Prime a try, first sign up for a free account on 500px. Then submit your photos, enable your store, and complete the required forms for each image (including model releases, liability releases, etc.).

You’ll also have the option of selecting an exclusive or non-exclusive license for the images. You’ll earn more for an exclusive license, but that means you can’t license or sell the photo to anyone else.

Here’s a breakdown of prices, though it’s not clear how exclusivity affects them.

7. Alamy

Alamy is another great platform on which to sell stock photos because it doesn’t have any hard and fast rules.

The site may not have as many buyers as Shutterstock and Adobe Stock, but it’s still a great contender and another great option for revenue.

Photographers can upload their photos to Alamy without licensing or any other copyrights issues. To date, Alamy has made $180 million in payouts to photographers.

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Alamy’s rates are competitive, too. The marketplace pays photographers 50% of each sale, which is significantly higher than some other competing platforms.

Give Alamy a try today! Sign up here to get started as a contributor.

8. Fotomoto

Fotomoto is not an online marketplace, but rather a widget that integrates with your website to help you sell photos online. After you add it to your site, Fotomoto manages all the photo selling processes for you.

Like Etsy, Fotomoto allows you to offer digital photos, photo prints, and even canvases to your site visitors. And, Fotomoto handles the packaging of your material photos so you don’t have to. It doesn’t get much easier if you plan to sell physical photo prints or canvases!

What’s really great about Fotomoto is that the widget itself is customizable. You can adjust the widget’s settings to display your own branding information, including your logo! That way, customers come to learn your brand and associate it with your images.

Whether your are a hobbyist photographer, professional photographer or even graphic designer, Fotomoto has some great features that will work seamlessly with your existing WordPress site. Visit the widget website to learn more about its monthly, tiered plans and transaction fees.

9. Instaprints

Most people think of Instagram as a social networking and image-sharing site – but, did you know that you can actually make money from your Instagram photos?

While Instagram itself does not pay you directly for your images, you can earn money from the photos you upload from a website called Instaprints.

All you need to do is link your Instagram profile to your Instaprints account, and you can sell your photos as physical prints.

You sell your images in a variety of different forms, like:

  • Posters
  • Canvas prints
  • T-shirts
  • Phone cases
  • Throw pillows
  • Acrylic prints
  • Greeting cards
  • Shower curtains and more.

One of the best things about selling your images through Instaprints is that you can set your own rates!

Instaprints handles the printing and shipping of the physical print.

You can earn anywhere from $5 to more than $50 per image!

10. PhotoMoolah

PhotoMoolah works in a slightly different way to other photography sites. Rather than uploading your images to an online catalog that customers can purchase from, on PhotoMoolah, you enter different photography contests.

The average contest prize is $100 to $200. So, if your photos win, the site can be very profitable.

All you need to do is browse through the contests on the site, and then submit your photos to the themes that you like.

And, if you win, you could earn up to $500!

11. Snapped4U

Unlike other stock photography sites that accept images with a variety of different themes, Snapped4U only accepts photos of events, like weddings, festivals, and concerts, and portrait photography.

So, if those are the types of photos that you think you could offer, then Snapped4U could be a great match.

You will be charged a $0.50 commission on images that you sell for $5 or less.

sell photos

For photos that you sell for more than $5, you’ll be charged 10% commission.

We hope this guide has helped you to find the best places to sell photos online and make money. Let us know in the comments which stock photo site or strategy you’re most excited to try.

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