18 Options to Sell Photos Online
Published in Make MoneyPhotographers have a growing number of options when it comes to selling photos. Stock photography sites aren’t the only option. Many different companies have developed ways to help photographers sell their work online through their own website, and many of these options allow for the sale of both digital (downloadable) files as well as prints. Some of them even handle the printing and fulfillment for you, if that is what you’re looking for.
In this post we’ll take a look at 18 companies that exist to help photographers with selling their work. Some of these options will provide the photographer with a website to display and sell the products, others can integrate with existing portfolio sites, and a few are marketplaces where photographers can upload their work to be sold.
If you’re a photographer you have probably thought about how you can make more sales online, so maybe one of these options would be a good fit for you. If you’re a designer you may have clients who are photographers. Some of these options allow designers to create customized sites for their clients, so if you work with a lot of photographers it can be worth exploring.
WordPress is an extremely popular content management system, and it is ideal for photographers. While WordPress itself does not include e-commerce functionality the Photocrati theme does allow you to sell your photos. Photocrati allows you to set up your site on WordPress and you have almost complete control to customize the look and feel of the site without the need to touch any code, and you can also sell your photos with several customizable options. One of the great things about this option is that it only requires a one-time fee to purchase Photocrati, and no monthly fees like most of the other options listed here. You would still need a hosting account, but you can get inexpensive hosting from a host like Bluehost for less than $5 per month.
SmugMug gives you a customizable website to host your photos. You can choose from their selection of templates, customize it without any coding, or make changes to the CSS to fully customize the look of your site. SmugMug includes a wide variety of features for displaying and promoting your photos, including the ability to publish photos to Facebook and Twitter or embed in blogs. You can sell your photos as prints or as digital downloads. The prints can be fulfilled and shipped directly to your customers. Prices range from $5 per month to $20 per month (or $40 per year to $150 per year).
Photo Merchant allows you to choose a website template and customize it to meet your needs. Each plan comes with unlimited storage and hosting so you can upload as many photos and create as many galleries as you like. The websites have an integrated shopping cart to allow you to sell your work to website visitors. You can choose to fulfill orders manually, or auto order fulfillment so prints will be shipped directly to your customers. Prices start at $9 per month, but you’ll need at least the $19 per month plan to use your own domain name or to opt for direct fulfillment.
With Exposure Manager you will get a website to sell your photos. You can use your own domain and customize the header and footer. Upload your photos and create galleries, which can also be password protected. For selling your work, photos can be sold as digital downloads or prints. Prints can be fulfilled by their lab, or you can set it up for self fulfillment. Prices range from $14.99 to $24.99 per month.
Zenfolio allows you to create a portfolio site of your work. You can upload photos, create galleries, password protect galleries, and make your photos available for purchase. For e-commerce, you can choose from different labs to fulfill your orders, or you can fulfill them yourself. Prices range from $25 per year to $250 per year, with a 14-day free trial available.
DigiLabs allows you to create photo galleries that integrate with your own website. DigiLabs can fulfill your orders or you can fulfill them yourself. You’ll also have the option to choose a plan with a flat fee or one with a commission from sales. Prices start at $40 per month or $150 per year.
With ifp3 you can get a Flash-based website to sell your photos online. You can set up galleries (public or private) and pages to show your work. For e-commerce, the shopping cart can be set up to sell an unlimited number of products, both downloads and prints. The price is $30 per month if paid month-to-month or $20 per month if paid in advance for one year. A 10-day free trial is available.
With More Photos you can choose from a variety of templates and set up a website for your photos. The shopping cart will allow you to sell your photos online in digital or print format. You can use their integrated vendors to print and drop ship orders directly to your customers. Pricing starts at $29 per month, but in order to sell your work you will need to $49 per month plan.
Instaproofs allows you to create galleries and promote your photos from events. Customers can purchase your photos, and you’ll have them fulfilled at a lab of your choice. Instaproofs does not offer auto fulfillment. There are no setup or monthly fees. Instaproofs keeps 8-15% of the sale as commission.
Shutterfly allows you to create a gallery of your photos at their site or integrate your own website with their ordering process. They have their own lab to handle fulfillment of your orders. Prices range from $99 – $199 per year.
PhotoBox allows you to create customizable galleries and sell your work. Customers will be able to buy prints of various sizes plus magnets, mousepads, coasters and more. There is no cost to sell with PhotoBox, but they keep 10% of all sales as commission.
With PhotoShelter you get to choose from one of their customizable templates. You will upload your photos to the site and visitors will be able to buy digital photos or prints. You can choose to have orders fulfilled by their lab, or you can fulfill orders yourself. Plans range from $9.99 per month to $49.99 per month.
PicsCliq helps photographers sell more photos to event guests, such as people who attend a wedding. You can use social media to promote photos to those who attended the event, and they can buy the photos from you and PicsCliq handles the fulfillment. There are no upfront or usage costs. PicsCliq makes money by taking a commission from sales.
Zazzle is an online marketplace that allows you to sell your artwork. You can upload photos and visitors at Zazzle can buy various items that use your photo, including t-shirts, mugs, photo cards, posters, calendars, and more. There is no cost to set up a store at Zazzle.
CafePress is similar to Zazzle. You upload your photos or art and visitors can buy various items like t-shirts, posters, photos on canvas, and more. You can sell on CafePress for free or you can get a customizable shop for as low as $4.99 per month.
Other Options for Selling Photos:
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68 Responses
This is extremely helpful for beginners, thank you for sharing this info!
Great post about ideas for selling your photography. Thanks for sharing!
How could you miss http://www.collages.net !?
Another option is http://www.shootproof.com I’ve been very happy with them so far.
Thanks for your information….Keep on sharing….
PhotoBella,
That one is new to me. Thanks for the suggestion.
Hi Eric,
I didn’t really miss collages.net, just chose not to include it. I’m familiar with the company, have a friend that used to work there, but from what I saw they have a different approach to the sites that were included in this post. It seems like they focus on event-based sites rather than a portfolio site. Maybe they also offer portfolio sites, but from their website it doesn’t look like it.
Really great information not just for a beginners, but for an everyone who is want to make a little bit more from their photos. Good alternatives to the stock sites.
Also http://www.fotoviva.co.uk sell photos by photographers although we have a different approach in that you don’t upload your pictures yourself, and we choose the images we think will sell best. This is to try and keep the quality high and ensure a better return for all concerned. We specialise in the more creative type of photography that’s suitable for interior wall art.
This is some thing which i never found anywhere, also beneficial for those photographer who born with photography skills but not in this profession.
Nice collection, I’ll be looking into this!
Check out http://shootproof.com as well, they don’t take any commission on your sales and offer a free plan.
Totally agree. Great alternative to stock sites. Thanks a bunch!
I was with photoreflect it was ok but Im not a big time computer guy I have abot 20k photos I am looking for a turnkey operation if the writer or anyone else wh can help please contact me thanks Pat Carrigan
this isn’t helpful. you’re just making these companies rich. you might as well go to fine art america, at least there your artwork won’t sell like at all these places but at least you didn’t have to spend money.
ask yourself why this website didn’t list any of the free places
Ted,
I couldn’t care less if I am “making these companies rich.” If they have a good product or service that helps their users they deserve to make money. The article is intended for professional photographers. Anyone who treats their business professionally will be willing to pay a small amount for a service that makes it easy and profitable for them to make more money through photo sales. This post isn’t intended for those amateur photographers who just want to share their photos without any expenses. The reason no free services were listed is because I couldn’t find any free services that can compare favorably to paid services for the intended purposes.
Do you know any template or a script which can be installed on my own domain to sell my photos? I prefer to pay an one time fee…
Cornell,
There are several e-commerce plugins if you are using WordPress. There are also e-commerce options on other CMSs like Expression Engine and Drupal.
Thanks for sharing!
Does anyone know of any company that has a spanish interface so i can sell my photos from my own website??
Hi Pablo,
Sorry, I’m not aware of any.
After 5 years working in the photo selling industry and researching so many online services, I vote for what I think are the best three websites suitable for selling your event photographs: http://www.smugmug.com, http://www.zenfolio.com and http://www.bluemelon.com
In my personal opinion, all three offer good and stable service, but have various set of features and level of customization. All offer free trial.
I also wanted to let you know about the stock library at imagegate.com where you can buy and sell images online. This might be an other option to look at.
Hi to all
could you indicate a one which have also the option to sell just the file dowload for personal use (no stock)?
Thank you in advance!
klaud,
Whether it is sold for personal or commercial use isn’t going to matter which system you use. That is something that you will specify in the terms or the license.
I’m REALLY struggling to find a solution for a business we’re starting. I love smugmug and the others listed. But, I’m needing a service that provides the ability to sell framed photos with multiple mat openings for “letter photography.” We’re doing it on our own right now (in this test phase), but will need a professional service that is affordable if we’re going to grow. I see other letter photography businesses out there that seem to have figured it out, but my wife and I are stumped.
Right now we’re selling via Facebook (facebook.com/abcdavis.art), mostly to friends. Can anyone offer a suggestion? Smugmug (et al) would be great, but they seem to only print/frame single images. HELP!
Bill,
You probably want to use a standard e-commerce platform, that will give you more flexibility than the ones intended for just selling photos prints. Check out Magento and Shopify and see if either meets your needs. You can also use content management systems like Drupal, WordPress, or ExpressionEngine for e-commerce with the right add-ons.
Could one of you very experienced people help me out please. After searching, searching and reading through the blogs, I still haven’t found a suitable solution to my problem. Basically, I have built my own website from scratch and am very hapy with how it looks and performs, but I would like to find an order or print fulfilment solution that can integrate with my website and fulfil orders when my customers visit, choose and order a photograph from my gallery. Can I find a service like this in the UK?
Thank you so much.
Regards
Tor,
There are some solutions like ShootProof the you can use with your own website. If you want it to integrate completely with your site you could use a general e-commerce solution like E-Junkie. You would have to fulfill orders yourself, but it could be integrated any way you like with your existing site.
Does smugmug offer the chance to fufill the prints yourself? You mention this with the other sites, but I wasn’t sure with smugmug. It would be nice to be able to offer digital download, and prints fufilled from a local printer.
Kay,
It’s been a while since I used SmugMug. I think you may be able to set it to fulfill the orders yourself, but I can’t say for sure. If you contact SmugMug I’m sure they can answer that question for you.
Glad I found this list of photo management resources. A development client wants to sell her photos online and this came in right handy. Thanks!
With listed 18 options, which one is easy to setup on the back end and user friendly for the consumers?
I have tried PhotoDeck.com but it’s hard to understand how to setup even after I watch the video tutorials. When I email them, the response was “that’s just the way HTML works”. I don’t want to or need to know how HTML works, I just need to find a right option that think of user when they design it and will work for me without knowing how HTML works.
I think Photoshelter is on the harder/complicate side. I don’t like how SmugMug and Shutterfly looks, too consumerish looking. I haven’t try other ones but would like to know which one is easy to use so I can start with that one first.
thanks,
Hi Sabrina,
It’s hard for me to say which option would be easiest for you because I don’t know anything about your background except that you don’t know HTML. You shouldn’t need to know HTML to use most of these, but if you want advanced customization, that is where you would need to know HTML and CSS. I would say SmugMug was fairly easy if you just wanted to use one of their templates.
Is anyone aware if one of these websites offer the french language option?
Hi Yannick,
I’m not sure.
Thank you for including us in your list and we are also honored.
Yannick, morephotos is in French plus others.
I did want to mention we just launched a app through Facebook, you can find it by doing a search on FB for morephotosapp. This app let you put prices on your
facebook photos create albums, pass worded watermarks the cost is $7.95 a month.
The Pros will still like the morephotos system better, though it might come in handy for smaller jobs or stock.
Let me know if there is any thing we are missing,
Thank you again
Michael Connors
CEO morephotos.com
Hi Mike,
Thanks for the info about languages. That is good to know.
How about Fotomoto? http://fotomoto.com
whatever you do, DON’T USE PRINTROOM. they stole my profits and their customer service is a JOKE, at least at the FREE membership level.
thanks for providing all these alternatives, i’ll be doing some careful studying now.
Another great one is http://photorankr.com. You can sell photos for free, and buying photos is really easy since you just download them straight from the site, no hassle. You also get to maintain your own copyright. No limits to the storage size or anything either. I think where it kind of beats the others is it is also a social network. You can follow other photographers and everyone has their own “Photostream” to view what is going on around the site.
Hello,
I am an armature looking to make a little extra scratch. I have been told I should sell the pictures I take but have always felt they were almost part of me. However, times are tough and I am considering it. I am looking to just upload the images and selling however I can. Mostly outdoor, birds, animal and ocean pics. Also, some of them need to be cropped.
Thanks for any input
Bob
Hi Bob,
For the cropping, I’d recommend that you do that in Photoshop or some other photo editing software. As as selling the photos, check out the options listed in this post to see what suits your needs the best. Finding the right fit for you would depend on the number of photos you want to sell, the price of the various options to allow you to sell that many photos, if you need a website template, if you want to fulfill orders yourself or have a lab take care of that, etc.
So glad you’re here. GoDaddy support is very deceptive about this:
I have only an iPad 2. I edit and retouch and send my Nikon D-90 images with nothing else. BayPhoto makes the prints.
Is there ANY site for displaying them for sale, that will allow me to upload from the iPad?
I want to use Authorize.net for quick payment.
Question 2:
Can you put up photos on all these sites with a Mac? Or does the use of Flash force you to use a PC from Microsoft?
Mick,
Each company is going to be different in terms of their process for uploading photos. I don’t know for sure which ones would have issues on an iPad, so my recommendation is to find one that you like and see if their upload system will work on an iPad (if it doesn’t say so on their site, contact them and ask). If you are used to working with BayPhoto I would start by looking at SmugMug since their system integrates with BayPhoto.
Another one to checkout that isn’t on the list is Photography Orders http://www.photographyorders.com
To answer Klauds’ question about personal use, I’ve used Winkflash for years. They have quick turn around, and great Giclee prints. I have also taken photos of a friend’s paining, and had them reproduce it on canvas. The result was remarkable.
Their smaller photos are cheap enough that it is easy to go through several rounds of proofs if you need to before ordering something large.
Another is PhotoStore from Ktools.net http://www.ktools.net/photostore/
What’s nice about PhotoStore is that it gets installed on your own hosting space and you run your own photo selling site instead of using a service like many of these others do. There are no commission fees and you can run your site and set your prices however you would like.
Just an FYI – Morephotos has another option – even for those that do not have a website of their own yet. They have a Facebook App that can be set up on your free Facebook Page. It is free to test and only 6.95 per month to get more space. Everything but the taking of the pictures is done for you. They handle the credit cards, they handle the shipping, they handle it all. AND GET THIS – it keeps your clients right in Facebook! No annoying link that takes them to some other site. That way the images can be shared and when someone views that share, they are taken right back to your Facebook Page.
Hi, the more I read about stock houses the more confused I become. I’m eighty one, not very computer literate. I’ve been in the photo busyness for 36 years. I have about 400 images ready to sell, (of many types, landscapes, flowers, people, nudes and many others) and more to get ready. I have very little money, and at 81 a limited time. My work is pretty good, what should I do? DEAN
Another powerful option would be http://www.stockboxphoto.com.
Our software provides an affordable solution for photographers to display and sell their work online. A full featured SEO optimized online gallery maker and digital asset manager. A one time license fee and no commission on sales!
Adrian Ellis
Partner – Stockbox Photo
ImageQuix is another option, the main difference I have found is that they work with green screen photography. you can upload the photo and different backgrounds and allow your client to view and select the one they want. I would realy like to find a solution for showing green screen photos on my own website, any ideas on that or other services that support green screen. By the way my clients have realy liked being able to select there background and I think this would be something great for all portrait photographers to look into.
Thanks
Helpful article and comments, thank you.
PhotorankR was very accessible and looked nice but I could not find even a single photo that had been sold even once! Nobody had purchased even top ranked photos!
i recently used http://www.easemysell.com and gumroad.com both website are very simple and easy to use , one can sell his digital content from the portal and collect money as well
I have been using Smugmug for a year. They just upped their price on the Pro account and changed the format for pricing the products/prints. The new way doesn’t work for me. Also the customer service hasn’t answered one of my questions about the new changes. They are responding to my questions by such things as “you must be confused” it has been highly annoying and time consuming for me to email the questions I have and get no answers. No Phone support! DON’T USE SMUGMUG!!!
Great tips, thank you for sharing! Here is another money-boosting hint from me: go browse those stocks to find the pictures with most downloads and try to guess what makes them top sellers. This will work out for sure
By the way, here is one more good article on related topic: http://photodoto.com/how-to-sell-photos-online/ feel free to check it out!
Thanks for your great help
I am currently handling all marketing etc for a school and am trying to find a site that offers a % of sales back to the school. We professionally shoot all events at school and want to post all photos online for parents to easily access and purchase photos, etc. I thought shutterfly would work but it requires an annual fee and I’m not sure they are the best solution. We will constantly be promoting whatever service we use and require parents use that specific company’s services to download, print, make a mug, etc ,,,so I was hoping there was a simple online solution that would give a % back to the school for promoting their services and products consistently to their target market. Any suggestions? Thank you!
Jen
Hi Jennifer,
That’s kind of a different situation than what we were covering here. I’m not really sure what would be the best fit for you. You may want to look into something like CafePress.
1. Any recommendations of what equipment to use to print your own canvas prints? I am living in Peru, and the cost of canvas prints in the U.S. or shipping costs from China are not helpful with the prices people can afford here.
2. There are so many choices listed in the article. I specialize in landscape, seascape, sunsets and flowers. Which of the various sites would be a better selection? I have never tried to sell on a website such as those listed.
What about http://www.PhotoStockPlus.com and http://www.PhotoEventPlus.com
They have amazing customer service and helpful tools.
Severe amature photographer here with limited computer skills. Any recommendations that would provide a quick easy setup. After reading the remarks, I agree that any photographer that is looking to make a go of it is willing to pay a little. Free sites scare the heck out of me because they are usually very difficult to work with.
Dave,
It’s been about 2 years since I gave SmugMug a test run, but I think you could set it up without much technical trouble.
Hello and thanks so much for all the comments and advice! I’ve been wanting to set up a photography selling website, but I have numerous questions just because I’m a noob. For fulfilling, I am pretty sure what most people mean is that when an order is purchased, it would mean fulfilling it such as prints and mailing correct? My biggest question though is in regards to watermarks and copyright – do we place our own watermark on the images (like with Lightroom) or can we just upload the images and the website will refrain from people right-clicking and copying the image directly and printing it themselves?
Also, would you recommend that we do a test print of our own images to see how they would print out as prints? Sometimes after editing, it can look great on screen but complete crap on canvas depending on the medium that it is printed out on.
Thank you again! This is a fabulous resource!
Vera,
Yes, in most cases order fulfillment would include processing, printing, and shipping, but you would need to check the details with whatever company or service you are using. On the watermark and right clicking issue, that would vary from one service to the next so you would need to consider that when deciding what option to use. Yes, I would recommend a test print. Some labs, like Bay Photo which you can use through SmugMug, will do a manual color correction or testing to help avoid bad prints. Also, calibrating your monitor can help here.
Thank you for Ll this possibilities.
Great article – it’s always difficult to sell photos online, but I’ve found that a mix b/w promoting on social media and posting on stock sites generally works the best. That’s why I love using and selling on this new photography platform called PhotoRankr (http://www.photorankr.com that is). It’s by far the easiest way to get candid feedback and sell your work (along with your own domain, for free!!) all at the same time. HIGHLY recommend y’all check it out sometime…