In this post we’ll be looking at some of the best stock photography sites to sell photos. Most photographers would enjoy earning money from their craft, even amateurs, and selling on stock photography sites is just another option to make money from your camera.
The beauty of selling on these sites is you can sell the same image over and over again and receive a residual income. Once photos have been uploaded, the selling process is pretty much passive, although doing some marketing to get people to your online portfolio is always advisable. You have the option of uploading your images to several sites, or going exclusive with just one and receiving a bigger cut of the sales.
Obviously stock photography sites aren’t just for photographers wanting to sell their wares, they are just as much a resource for buyers seeking suitable images for anything from book covers to website images. Some sites even have a free images section, which is usually comprised of images that have been for sale for several years without any downloads. Many of these photos are ‘good enough’ to use as images on blogs and affiliate sites.
But whether you’re a photographer looking to sell, or a buyer wanting to purchase quality images, the following recommended websites will be just as relevant to either buyers or sellers. I use a number of them myself; either to sell my own photos, or purchase suitable images for book covers and for my websites.
Note that most of these sites are quite stringent on the quality of the images you upload, so only upload images you believe are of a high standard, or you will be wasting your time with image rejections.
While all stock photography sites allow for single purchases, many of them also have subscription services for buyers, where they pay X amount and can download X amount of images. The downside for sellers is they only receive a very small commission for any image downloaded via a subscription service.
It’s also good to note that most of these stock photo sites have affiliate programs, enabling the photographer and marketer even more scope to draw an income.
This site I use a lot for purchasing images, but I don’t sell on Fotolia (I used to). Recently their prices for purchasing images went up a little, which is good news for photographers as the commission split is also increased.
Fotolia has been around for 10 years now and offer over 45 million images for sale, so there’s a lot of competition. However, that being said, they are a very popular site for buyers and the quality is high. This company pays more if you go exclusive with them. I’ve never been keen on exclusivity with anyone for anything when it comes to business, but that’s personal choice. Below is a chart showing the royalty rates for non-exclusive contributors. This payout percentage varies depending on your Fotolia ranking.
Dreamstime is a site I do sell images on. I found they weren’t quite as fussy in the approval process as Fotolia. I also purchase the occasional image from Dreamstime using credits earned from my sales. Their cost per sale is a little more expensive than Fotolia.
Once again there is the option of going exclusive with Dreamstime, where contributors earn a 60% commission plus a $0.20 bonus for each approved image upload. They have a free image section for files that have had no sales for several years.
Fine Art America is relatively new, having only started up last year. This is one of the main sites I sell on. They are a little different than most stock photo sites. For one, you can pretty much upload any image you like as there is no approval process. They offer royalty-free image downloads like any stock photo site, but their main business thrust is to sell ‘art’. Many painters and artists sell prints through FAA, but photographers are popular on the site, too, enabling them to sell their images as prints, canvas prints, greeting cards, iPhone cases and a whole bunch of other stuff. The site is well worth considering.
Another great thing about FAA is when you set up an account (Costs $35 per year), they also give you your own website which is linked to the main FAA site. This way you can promote your own portfolio on social media and through other sources, with your own branding and all your own images in the one place. They offer some pretty nifty promotional tools, too.
The contributor gets to choose what price their ‘art’ will sell for. It’s hard to put much of a mark up on print sales, but you can make some great profits on the royalty-free image section.
This site is notoriously fussy when it comes to the images they accept for sale on their site, and the more images on the site, the fussier they seem to get.
Single images sell for quite a high price on this site, which can be a good thing and a bad thing. Sure, the photographer will make more money, but compared to the prices of images on other sites, buyers may just go elsewhere rather than purchase on Shutterstock. This company does have a pretty reasonable subscription program, though, for buyers who use a lot of images in short spaces of time, so there could be money to be made there.
I used to sell on this site, but no longer do.
iStock is a part of the Getty Images group of companies. For those looking for images, iStock has a subsidiary called freeimages.com, which has thousands of free downloads of pretty good quality. Great for website use. iStock is the paid version.
Once again this company is very pedantic when it comes to both image quality and uniqueness of the image you wish to sell. If they feel they have too many similar images already (even if the quality is great), they will reject the image.
iStock pay 15% commission of the download price, or 45% if you go exclusive.
To Wrap Up
While this is only a short list of all the possible sites to sell stock images on, I have personally dealt with all 5 sites, either as a contributor or buyer, or both. My personal favourite for purchasing images is Fotolia, while the one I most like to sell on is Fine Art America, followed by Dreamstime.
If you already sell photos online, tell us which site is your favourite to deal with in the comments below.
Darren Burton
Latest posts by Darren Burton (see all)
- NeuroGym: Harnessing Neuroscience for Personal Transformation and Success - October 31, 2023
- Is Lotto Profits a Scam or Not? Read This First! - August 27, 2019
- How to Boost Your Website’s Affiliate Sales - November 22, 2018
I’ve tried stock photography in the past and not had much luck with it. Have you managed to make much money yourself through stock photography sites?
I tried to join some of the really top ones that pay a lot, but I found out that the bar is set really high. I consider my photos to be great quality, but they still weren’t good enough. As for the other stock libraries that I was able to get into, I found that they didn’t pay much per photo.
I’m just wondering whether it’s really worth the time…
Hi Marcus. Your experiences sound pretty similar to mine. You’re right, the ones that pay more are almost like some exclusive club that you aren’t good enough to get accepted into, and the easier ones definitely don’t pay as much. An alternative is to set up your own site and sell your own images from your own site. At least that way you can post whatever you want and will get all the profits. Sounds like it would be a lot of work, though.
I think stock photography can still be worth doing, but it’s probably better to jump on newer sites that need the stock and maybe bypass the established ones. This advice kind of goes against the post I’ve written here, but I’m just being honest. I love photography and my site is meant to be about all sorts of possible online income streams, so I felt the urge to include stock photography into the mix, even though it’s a tough field.