Sell Your Digital Photos Online For Profit

Have you ever thought about what it would be like to sell your digital photos?

Are you the type of person who thinks that your photos are actually only snapshots? Or maybe you think only your friends and family will praise your efforts. If you're a member of a photography club, you might have won or been highly placed in some photo competitions which might boost your assessment of your own efforts.

Whether or not you have a hunch that you can sell your digital photos, that's clearly down to another person - the person who's willing to buy your photo (or not!). Camera magazines are very popular, and all are looking for photo submissions from their readers, so sending in a range of your top photos to them is one way to get into print and wave the obliging magazine under the noses of doubters as you laugh it up about being a "published" photographer.

Stock Photography

But there is another way to sell your digital photos. It's called stock photography - photos or other imagery that can be used and reused for commercial design purposes. None of the photographs were commissioned; that is - the photographer wasn't hired to do a job.

Book publishers, specialist publishers, magazines, advertising agencies, film makers, web designers, graphic artists, interior decor firms, corporate creative groups, and other companies all use stock photography to attend to the needs of their creative assignments.

Stock Photography And You

Since there are so many stock photo agencies online, many ask for photo submissions from anyone interested in photography instead of using work only from professional photographers. So that's where you come in. Pick a selection of your greatest digital photos and submit them to a few of the online stock photo agencies. If accepted, the image banks will sell your digital photos on your behalf.

Don't forget that the image banks will review your photos before they make a decision to accept or reject them. Yes, they have some basic requirements that you must meet before they'll accept your photos. Different agencies might have slightly different criteria. All you can do is try. You've nothing to lose and everything to gain. Just read what terms are provided so you can match what you submit as closely as possible to what each agency is looking for.

Submitting Photos

There are two things to consider when submitting your work for review in order to get an image bank to sell your digital photos : Title and Keywords.

1. Choose as descriptive a title as possible for each of your photos as it'll help future customers sort out the topic of the photo more quickly.

2. The other thing to go into is keywords related to the subject matter of your photo. These are used to match the search terms keyed in by customers for photos matching what they're looking for. So the more keywords you use, the greater the likelihood of your photo appearing in the search results which, in turn, increases your chances of a sale.

Any image bank with whom you sell your digital photos will not take copyright of your work. You always retain that. All you are doing is giving the stock photo agency a license to sell your digital photo and not the image itself. Most of the agencies have a non-exclusivity arrangement which means that you can submit your photographs to as many agencies as you would like to. Some stock photo agencies do supply optional exclusivity clauses which can result in you earning a higher payment per sale but that's something you have to measure against the number of sales you may make for the same photo at all the other agencies you've submitted it to.

So what sized commissions can you expect to make if you sell your digital photos?

Stock Photo agencies don't pay a big commission per photo. They sell digital photos at low prices (from a dollar upwards) and remember that they cover the administration fees for handling transactions as well as hosting and serving the photos to customers.

Expect to make in the region of $0.20 to $0.50 on average per sale. Very popular photos will have higher commissions but it's best to assume yours won't be in that category. So you definitely aren't going to become rich overnight.

You've nothing to lose if you sell your digital photos online. The more photos you submit, the more you will sell and the more money you will make