Sell photos online

It makes sense to sell photos online if you're a keen photographer and you have an extensive portfolio of work.

You don't need to be wedding photographer or in a formal business, even if you're a keen amateur there are many outlets for your work on the web and they might help you to make a bit of extra income.

There are many different outlets for photographic work, though most of them work in different ways and are looking for different types of image.

Sell photos online with Flickr

As well as hosting and displaying photos in a massive visual community, Flickr also provides an outlet for selling photos.

Flickr partners with Getty images who take photos that they're interested in for use in their main website ... it's called 'stock photography', where generic photos are sold to third parties and the original photographer takes a small commission on sales.

You need to opt in to receiving Getty image invitations and don't forget that Flickr also serves as an excellent showcase for your photographic work even if you can't sell directly on it ... so make sure you have contact details and links back to your main website built into your Flickr pages and profile.

Sell photos online with Stockxpert.com

Although many stock photography websites will allow you to add your images and pay you a commission for each download, my favourite site is Stockxpert.com so I'll use them by way of example.

Stockxpert.com offers 50% commission on each of your images that is downloaded and they also have numerous payment options to transfer your funds to your account.

The trick with a website like Stockxpert.com is to provide generic images which many people will want to use.

The images on this page are all from the site - note how non-specific they are in nature, so they're suitable for a variety of uses.

Sell photos online with photobox.com

It's always worth checking out your favourite source for buying digital prints as they often have 'seller' sections which not only allow you to make money from your own images, but you can also integrate them with their products - like calendars and photobooks - to extend your portfoloio.

Photobox.co.uk offers this service to customers and also has a Pro Gallery service which allows you to customize and brand your web area.

Sell photos online to a national newspaper

If you take your photography seriously, it's always worth keeping the telephone number of sell-my-photo.co.uk programmed into your mobile phone.

They will liaise with national newspapers and magazines if you have an exclusive image in the following categories:

#I don't believe it! # News # Celebs # Quirky

I did a photography course taken by a photographer who's used a service like this, and he'd made a year's income from an exclusive image which was used by all the newspapers ... not bad for one photo!

Sell photos online via your own website

You should check out my page on photo gallery software for starters, but if you want to establish a proper branded presence online you need a website builder that will also allow you to integrate a shopping cart.

The best that I've found - and you should certainly look at it as a starting point - is Photium.com which offers everything that you would want in a personal photography website, including:

# Free 30 day trial

# Tiered pricing system for Light,Standard and Advanced users - no commissions taken on photo sales, so costs are fixed

# Domain name included as well as email forwarding

# Ability to customize your website and adapt colour scheme

# Integrated shopping cart with multiple discount, voucher, postage and packing options

# Integrated Paypal, but also ability to use Google Checkout or invoicing

# Image protection included ie watermarking

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