Selling Pictures Online

[ewhite11]

I was wondering if anyone had any experience or recommendations with selling photographs online. I have a friend that is a professional photographer and she is looking for a good site (that is reasonable) to put her pictures online, so with 'one click of a mouse' people can by a photo.

Thanks in advance

 

[tirediron]

Why wouldn't she want them on her own website? Based on my experience, discussions with other photographers and research, except for the very top end photographers, not a lot of money is made selling pictures on-line in the manner I understand you to be describing. Generally most people use either a purchased or subscription e-commerce package that they host under their own domain.

What you are describing is more like a stock photography site, and while they take care of all of the business end (generally) there's very little money to be made for 99.9% of the photographers who send in images, not to mention the oft requirement to forfeit your rights.

 

[Mike30D]

I was wondering if anyone had any experience or recommendations with selling photographs online. I have a friend that is a professional photographer and she is looking for a good site (that is reasonable) to put her pictures online, so with 'one click of a mouse' people can by a photo.

Thanks in advance

Most photographers do put it on their own site. However, there are lots of alternatives to this. I would have to say the top ones that are used by pros are http://www.collages.net, http://www.pictage.com, www.smugmug.com, and http://www.eventpix.com

 

[djrichie28]

I can't comment on most of the suggestions mentioned above except for Smugmug. Being a user myself I know that it is quite reasonable for hosting and processing transactions. A Pro account lets you customize your pages like it was your own site and sell your photos at whatever price you want. You can even register your own domain to your pages so it acts as a hosting service only. Then you don't have to worry about creating web pages that can process secure credit card transactions since they do all that for you.