10 Best Sites to Sell Photos and Earn Money Online (2023)

You are a photographer and want to earn money from your photos but don’t know how to? Might be thinking what are the platforms that allow you to sell photos online and earn money?

Photographers are in great demand these days since small businesses, entrepreneurs, and marketers need high-quality photos to grow their businesses.

Maybe you are learning photography and making your career in this amazing field but confused about which path to take and what are methods to make a profit from your passion.

Read the full article to know about the best sites to sell photos and earn money online.

Actually, Who Buys Photos?

You know how important the role images play in any content or advertisements.

Many small businesses, marketers, and content creators need high-quality, copyright-free images to use in their content. So they buy images from these stock photography sites with legal licenses and regulations.

Best Sites to Sell Photos Online

1. Shutterstock

Shutterstock is the most popular stock photography site that allows you to buy and sell stock images and videos on its platform. They have a collection of over 200 million images and videos to sell.

The best part is they allow you to keep your copyrights protected and also give credit to the image’s owner which helps in personal branding.

As a contributor, every time your photo sells you get a commission of 20-30% on each sale. Shutterstock pays on a monthly basis.

2. Alamy

Alamy is a British stock photography site that doesn’t have any strict rules and regulations since you can upload and sell photos without any strict licensing issues.

The payout rates are very much satisfying as the platform pays 20% of each sale to photographers whose annual sales are under 250$, 40% to those photographers if their annual sale is more than 250$ but less than 25,000$ and 50% to those photographers whose annual sales exceed 25,000$.

This platform is not as popular as Shutterstock but it can be a great option to sell photos and earn money online.

3. Getty Images

Getty Images was founded in 1995 and is considered the most exclusive site among stock photography sites.

Buyers need to buy a Rights Managed license for images on Getty Images which means they don’t pay for the image itself but for the rights to use the image in their projects.

Due to its exclusivity, it is quite hard to start with Getty Images. For getting started with Getty Images, you need to submit six images, then the Getty Images team checks whether your images qualify for Getty Images.

Images on Getty Images sell for high prices and you get 20% for each sale once you get started.

4. iStock

iStock is a microstock branch of Getty Images but it does not have any criteria set like Getty Images. As I said, you need to submit six images on Getty Images then the team identifies whether your images are appropriate for Getty Images or iStock.

iStock has helpful resources that will help you to sell photos online if you are a beginner.

They pay 15% of each sale you generate and it increases to 45% if your images get popular.

5. Adobe Stock

Adobe Stock is another microstock photography website that was previously known as Fotolia till 2014 when purchased by Adobe.

Millions of users buy images from this site so you can obviously try this site for generating revenue.

Their payout rate varies from 20-40% on each sale and you get your commission instantly rather than waiting for the minimum threshold or month end.

6. Stocksy

Stocksy is a very exclusive stock photography site as for joining your images should be creative and high quality. When you join them, you are like a co-employee of the company, not just a seller.

Due to its exclusivity, brands, and publishers tend to look for Images on Stocksy which makes it a reputable site.

They pay 50% commission on standard licenses and 75% on extended licenses. Thus the images are sold at higher prices you can make a great profit.

7. Etsy

Etsy is the biggest marketplace to sell physical and digital products with more than 30 million users on the internet. It is mostly famous for handmade products and many products are one-off products.

You can sell photos in digital form as well as in the form of printouts.

Etsy keeps 20 cents for each product you upload and 3.5% of the price of your product sale. They also offer a handbook on how to price, and sell photos, and other marketing strategies.

8. Dreamstime

Dreamstime can be the perfect choice for beginners as there is no specific requirement to join and the user interface is very simple.

You can choose to sell rights completely or for a particular time period which gives you many options to sell photos here.

The payout rate is 25-45% for non-exclusive and exclusive images. You get a 10% bonus if you sell complete rights for images.

9. Crestock

Selling photos on Crestock is very easy as you have to sign up and start uploading photos. Crestock then analyzes your photos and adds them to your Crestock portfolio. Users can purchase your photos from your portfolio, it’s as easy as that.

Crestock allows you to add keywords and descriptions for images which makes it easy for users to find your images and purchase them.

They pay a commission of 25% on each sale completed.

10. Bigstock

Bigstock is the same as other stock photography sites that allow to sell photos online but it has a completely different credit system which makes this platform something unique.

People can buy photos with regular payment methods but the trick is they earn credits for buying photos which they can use to buy more items on the site.

The commission you get is 30% for each sale but the price increases if your photos get more downloads. This way you can earn more from your photos through Bigstock.

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