How hard is it to sell your photos online? If the pro photographers can do it, you can too… right? Well with EyeEm Market selling your photos online isn’t hard at all, but creating a great photo that will fit the buyers needs can be difficult.
Over the past year I’ve been steadily building up my photo library on the EyeEm Market and have learned a thing or two about selling my photos online.
Severin at EyeEm got in touch to talk about how I sold my first photo on EyeEm and featured parts on the interview on the EyeEm blog. Here is the interview in full –
How was it selling your first photo on EyeEm? Which one did you sell?
Selling my first photo was my second most favourite moment of using EyeEm so far (the first was being nominated for the EyeEm Awards 2014). I remember the day it happened; I was home from work because I had a terrible cold and I heard the email notification ping on my Mac [you can see the email in vlog episode 4 around the 7 minute mark]. The email subject line read ‘You’ve sold your first photo!’ and I thought ’no way!’
Even though I was ill that day I instantly felt better when I opened that email.
Knowing that my photos, the things that I have so much fun making, can be sold online so effortlessly changed how I looked at photography. Getting paid for your photos is now accessible to everyone thanks to EyeEm – it’s a game changer.
Here’s the photo –
What are your tips for others to start selling?
For someone who wants to start selling their photos online I have three short pieces of advice –
- Don’t be afraid to put your images out there, the quicker you start the more chance you have of being seen.
- Use natural filters or be subtle; your photo should still look like a photo.
- Geo-tag your photos (or add the location in the tags), it makes them easier for the buyer to search and find.
Anything else you’d like to share with the community?
Don’t judge your own images too harshly.
Sometime last year I took a photo and though it was so boring that I didn’t share it online. A few months later I uploaded it to EyeEm, played around with some of the filters and released it into the wild. You can imagine how surprised I was when I found out that it was featured on the EyeEm blog week 48.
The same applies to selling your images on EyeEm. The photos that sell aren’t always images that are loved by the community; the first photo I sold still has only two likes on EyeEm, just two!
Don’t be so hard on your images, just because you or the community doesn’t think that the image is interesting or exciting doesn’t mean that buyers will too. Give your images a chance and start selling!
Thank you Brett! Those answers are great. Watch out… for the blog post to be published 🙂
So there you go, I hope these tips help you to realise just how easy it can be to sell your photos online through EyeEm Market. The key is to keep using EyeEm, uploading new images every time you have them and then add them to the market. You just never know who might want to use your shot.
In case you missed it, be sure to check out the How I Sold My First Photo On EyeEm blog post which also includes several other EyeEm photographers who also share their insights.
My question of the day is; if you are not already selling your images online, what is stopping you? And if you are, are you having much success?