You may have been taking photos for a number of years or have recently taken up photography. However long you’ve been taking photos, if you have some fantastic shots then you may well be considering the possibility of selling your photos online. After all, is there any better way to gauge whether your photography is as good as you think it is than seeing what the general paying public think.

Of course, making the decision to sell your photos online is just the first step. Once you have decided that this is what you want to do then you need to work out exactly how you are going to achieve your goal of making some money from your photography.

Here is our guide to how you can do this.

Choosing your platform

There are two main ways in which you could consider selling your photos online. The first is to set up your own website. This means creating your own simple website or employing someone else to create something that will work for you. Once you have this up and running you will need to keep up with any queries, sales and then issues that might occur. This can be time consuming and could eat into your photography time.

The second way is to join a photo sharing platform like ClickASnap. If you choose an upgraded online store with many of these sites you will not only have full control over a number of elements but also much of the work will be done for you.

Choosing your images

If you have opted for the photo sharing platform route then there will be some guidelines and terms and conditions in place, and the first thing you will need to do is read these. They are here to protect you, your photos and any buyers that you might attract. Therefore, it is well worth ensuring that you are following any current guidelines that are in place. As long as your photos conform to any rules that might be in place you can upload the images that you are interested in selling. These might be in the form of photos, but you can also upload digital artwork as well.

You will want to choose those first images that you post really carefully. They say first impressions count so make sure that you make the best first impression possible. You should aim to post something that will ensure that buyers will want to keep an eye on your online “shop” so that they can see what else you might post.

What format?

Once you have decided on the images that you want to sell, your next task will be to choose just how they might be sold. Do you want to sell just images, or do you want to have the images on products, of which there are a great many to choose from? 

Whether you want to put your photos on mugs, keyrings, jigsaws, canvases or prefer to opt for simple prints the choice is entirely up to you. If you opt for a few products, you can always expand the range later to suit buyers. You may also want to consider selling your photos as digital downloads as well.

Pricing

Whilst there is usually a base price for the individual products you will need to consider how much you want to charge for your images, charge too little and it won’t be worth your while, charge too much and you will not get any buyers. Take a look at what similar items are priced at and use that as a starting point for your pricing. Remember to take into account any fees that the photo sharing platform takes.

Once you’ve decided how to sell your photos online and have set up your shop, make sure you let everyone know where to find it on your socials, tell family and friends to spread the word and wait patiently for your first sale – it may come sooner than you expect.