Sell Photos Online: How Photography Amateurs Can Make Money With Just Smartphones

If you are looking to make some money online during your free time, this is one of the perfect ways to do it without complicated tools. Photography is a very entertaining hobby that can be done even by beginners. Aside from unleashing their creativity, amateurs and beginners can sell photos online as a side hustle as well.

Your iPhone or Android phone is enough to start monetizing your hobby. Here are the ways you can sell photos online:

You can search Google to find the best places to license and sell your photography shots online. Your shots can be about nature, an activity, street art, fashion, etc. Licensing a photo to someone means that you, as the photographer, allow someone to use your photos for certain purposes in exchange for a fee.

Brands, companies, and small businesses will be your usual clients. The use of pictures in advertising has been proven to be effective at selling a brand’s products so you will always have a potential client browsing your portfolio.

Aside from stock photography sites, there are also print-on-demand platforms which allow you to upload your photography shots into their site to print and ship them when you make a sale. It is similar to an online store where you display your products for sale and the print-on-demand company will do the printing and shipping. 

If you are not yet familiar with print-on-demand companies, here’s a little overview about them. These companies are those who are engaged in printing designs on a particular merchandise like t-shirt, mugs, organizers, keychains, etc as per the customer’s request. The designs are usually provided by sellers who advertise their products and designs to customers. Print-on-demand companies do not require a minimum order. If you want to sell photos online, you can follow the same model where you advertise your portfolio printed on a certain product, say a keychain, and hope that a customer will like and buy it.

Hosting sites like WordPress allow you to upload and build your portfolio online. To monetize your growing hobby, start a blog and publish your beautiful shots in there. You can share some tips about photography, the tools that you use, some tutorials to edit and photoshop images, etc. Once you start to grow an audience who regularly visit your site, you can monetize it through ads and even by affiliate marketing.

You can also sell photos online through your blog. Showcase your designs printed on products like the strategy above. Your own blog will allow you to advertise your photography skills for brands and companies to see (and possibly convince them to hire you as their project photographer).

This is one of the easiest ways to sell photos online. There are hundreds of photography competitions for newbies and professional photographers. You don’t have to worry if you don’t have fancy equipment to make your photos pop. Most competitions have separate criteria for newbies. You just need the right subject and determination to express your message, through photos, aligned with the theme of the contest.

Monetizing your hobby does not need to be complicated. You can sell photos online with the help of licensing websites and print-on-demand companies to speed up the process. The secret, however, is to build your portfolio first. This does not have to be hard especially if you carry your camera or smartphone anywhere with you.