The same image is several products
One photograph can sell as a wallpaper, a print licence and a commercial licence at three prices. That is a licensing decision published as three listings, not a discount code.
Photography
Sell the file, not the login to your folder.
A photograph delivers itself the moment somebody pays for it. What you actually control is the licence you sold and how long the link stays open.
14-day free trial. No card required.
Full-resolution set
Delivered instantly
Delivered instantly
Payment received$420
How do I sell photos online?
Upload the full-resolution file to Crate, price it and publish it as a product. When a buyer pays, they get a private link tied to that purchase rather than an address anybody could pass around, and you decide how many times it works and when it expires. Sell the same photograph at more than one price by publishing it more than once with a different licence stated on each, since a desktop wallpaper and a print campaign are not the same sale. Bundle a shoot as one product when the set is the thing being bought. There is nothing to pack and nothing to count, so the tenth sale takes exactly as much of your time as the first.
How to start selling your photographs.
Getting started
Four steps, in order. Each one is a screen you can open on the first day, not a project.
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Upload the file you are actually selling
Full resolution, the version the buyer paid for. Watermark the preview on the page, never the file behind the link.
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State the licence on the page
Personal use, commercial use, editorial only. The licence is most of what separates one price from another, so it belongs in the listing rather than in a reply.
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Set the link limits
Choose how many downloads the link allows and when it expires. An unlimited permanent link is a file you published, not a file you sold.
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Bundle the sets
When somebody wants the whole shoot, sell the whole shoot as one product. One payment, one link, one archive.
What is different about selling photos.
What is different here
Every kind of product has a detail that decides whether the software fits. These are the ones that decide it here.
The preview and the file are different things
What the page shows is a watermarked, downsized preview. What the link delivers is the file. Confusing the two is how work leaks before anybody pays for it.
Delivery is instant, so the boundary is the link
Nothing is packed and nothing ships, so a capped download count and an expiry are the entire difference between selling a photograph and posting one.
There is no stock, so volume costs you nothing
The same file serves one buyer or a thousand identically. What grows with sales is the questions and the money, which is why the customer record matters more here than any inventory screen.
Your buyers are already in a thread.
Where you sell
Photography is discovered where the image is shown. Put a real product behind the post so the person who wants that shot reaches a checkout and a download instead of a message asking how to pay.
In your market that usually means Your store, Instagram and In person.
Every channel above runs off the one catalog you set up once.
Card, Apple Pay, Google Pay and bank transfer.
Getting paid
Buyers pay by card, Apple Pay, Google Pay or bank transfer and delivery follows the payment automatically, so nothing goes out on trust and nothing waits for you. Automatic payouts to your bank.
Money from card sales lands in your bank account on a rolling two-day schedule. Nothing to claim, nothing to withdraw.
- Card
- Apple Pay
- Google Pay
- Bank transfer
How the file reaches the buyer.
Delivery
Delivery is a private link created for that purchase, with a download count and an expiry you set. Replace the file later and the people who already bought can fetch the new version without you writing to any of them.
- The moment the payment clears, the buyer gets a link of their own. Nothing waits on you being awake.
- The link is tokenised and limited. It belongs to that order, it expires, and it cannot be forwarded around indefinitely.
- Upload a new version and the same buyers can fetch it again, so an update is a re-upload rather than twenty five emails.
- Large files are served directly, so a slow connection resumes rather than starting the download again.
What it costs.
One subscription covers the store, the catalog, the order queue, the customer records and the counter. There is no separate charge for selling in chat, and no charge per kind of product.
Priced and paid in US dollars. Every plan opens with a free trial and no card.
You have the price and the plan now. Standing the shop up is about fifteen minutes of work.
What you would actually use.
The product
Named plainly, and each one has a page of its own if you want the detail.
Selling photos, answered.
How does the buyer get the file?
Through a private link created for their purchase as soon as payment clears. It is not a public address and it is not an attachment on an email.
Can I stop the link being shared?
You can cap how many times it works and when it expires, which is what stops a link being useful to somebody who did not pay.
Can I sell the same photo under different licences?
Yes. Publish it once per licence, price each one for what it grants, and state the terms on the listing so the buyer knows which one they are buying.
Can I sell a whole shoot as one purchase?
Yes. Attach the set to a single product and one payment delivers the lot through one link.
What if I re-edit an image after selling it?
Replace the file on the product and existing buyers can take the new version. You do not have to work out who they were.
Can I sell prints as well as files?
Yes. A print is a physical product with shipping and a stock count, and it can sit in the same catalogue and the same order as the download.
Still have a question?
Every answer above was written by the people who build crate. If yours is not among them, the Help Center goes deeper, and a person reads what you send.
Selling something else?
Nearby
The same platform underneath, told in the language of the thing you make.