The following are the two important steps to sell photos on Shopify:
- Find niche market
- Build audience base
Before jumping to these steps, you should be aware rights and protection of the photos you sell
The following legal terms will help you protect your photos from getting stolen and explain you the rights you can have to sell photos on Shopify:
- Editorial Use: It gives you the right to use in blogs, magazines, newspapers and other publications.
- Commercial Use: It gives you the right to advertise and promote a product or service.
- Retail Use: It gives you the right to create and sell physical products, like, posters, prints, arts, photos, etc.
- Exclusive and Non-Exclusive: Exclusive use means if someone has obtained license can only use the photo. Non-Exclusive use means that anyone can get a license and use the photos, and is also cheaper compared to Exclusive.
- Public Domain: It has got no prohibition and can be used for commercial, editorial and personal purpose.
- Creative Commons: You are allowed to put conditional usage of the work until it is not restricted by law.
- Royalty-Free: Under this, anyone can purchase a license and use the photos for unlimited time and duration.
- Rights-Managed: Under this, you will get a one-time license with distribution limitations. For additional usage you will need to purchase additional license.
- Rights of Publicity: The subject of your photos is restricted with certain rights. So you need to get a right over the subject to use photos commercially.
To know more about license of photos selling in US and copyright laws related to it, you can click here.
Now let us again come to the steps to sell photos online
Before obtaining license, you should know your target audience to sell your photos to:
- Find niche:
You should be consistent with your style or design of photography, so you are able to pitch your target market. Also target audience can help you understand the demand for the product or service you are going to sell. You can also evaluate demand with the help of keyword research to find out the search volume.
- Build audience:
Nowadays, social media sites like Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr can give you a large platform to build audience. In fact, there are also many, photo sharing sites, which will help you get connected to other photographers and sell license to use your photos.
Be it any business, you’ll have to build and expand networks to reach a wide audience and get a growth in your business.
