Internet becomes a place of opportunity to earn money. If you are a photographer and have an active community then it can be a great way to funnel your passion into a business.
We know, you are thinking that we are joking. No, we are not making fun with you. By selling your stock photographs, you can earn a handsome amount of money. Our suggestion is that, build a multi-seller photography business site. This will help you to earn money along with your photography community.
How Stock Photography Become an Opportunity to Earn?
The Internet is an open space for earnings. For photographers, the stock photography business can be the key source of earnings. Stock photography means the supply of photographs licensed for a certain purpose. Buyers mainly buy the license of the photos to serve their purpose.
Market Opportunities for the Stock Photography Business
You may ask how stock photographs become an opportunity to earn? The reason is that it is really very easy to buy a stock photograph for doing certain work rather than hiring a photographer. In this digital era, everyone needs pictures to share thoughts ideas in digital media. Those who need stock photographs on a regular basis are listed below,
- Marketeers
- Web designers
- Entrepreneurs
- Musicians
- Bloggers
- Many others
So, you may now see the opportunities in the stock photography business.
Should You Launch Your Multi-seller Photography Business Website?
Multi-seller photography business already ruled by so many big fishes like Dreamstime, iStock, Shutterstock, Bigstock, and 500PX. Furthermore, it is really easy to earn money from their site. Anyone can signup on their site and start selling the way they want. But you may ask why do we influence you to build that kind of site? Here is your answer,
Benefits of Doing Business through Existing Big Marketplace
Everything has its own pros and cons. At first, let's look at the advantages of doing photography business through those sites,
- They already have their own customer base.
- At the beginning stage, it's not needed much more money and time.
- The risk is very low if the plan not works there is no harm.
Demerits of Doing Business Under those Big Fish's Shelters
Disadvantages are as follows,
- You have to compete with so many renowned pro photographers within the same place.
- It takes so much time to become popular.
- The marketplace will not give you flexibility on how will you want to showcase your stock photos.
- They have their own pricing matrix which you must have to follow.
Finally, hopefully, you get the idea about the challenges that you face in those marketplaces.
Advantages of what you get from your own multivendor marketplace
Now let's have a look at the benefits you will get while you have your own multi-seller photography business website.
- You have your own freedom of choice.
- Customized showcase creation.
- Integrating Marketing strategies.
- You have the ownership to control everything.
- The sense of flexibility, excitement, and independence help you to grow your business.
How can You Build Your Multi-seller Photography Business Website?
Building a multivendor marketplace and maintaining that site may seem quite a tough task to you. But, trust us, it's not that difficult. Here is an easy process for you to build up your multi-seller photography business place. You don't need to know the coding to maintain your site. The steps are as follows,
- Buy a domain name and get web hosting.
- Install and set up WordPress.
- Activate WooCommerce.
- Set up Dokan multivendor marketplace plugin.
- A Suitable WordPress Theme for Your Multi-Seller Photography Business Site.
Step-1. Buying a domain name and get web hosting
The first step is to choose a domain name for your stock photography business. Just a minute. Are you unfamiliar with this word? Ahh, maybe not. But we just give you a brief of what is domain?
The domain is an IP address or a name what your customer types in their web address bar and that appear in their search page. So it's important to pick a simple & lucrative name for your photography business site.
To find the availability of your desired domain name you can check it on several websites. Like Name.com and many more. If you want to buy a domain you can get that service from bellow sites,
Let's talk about hosting now. Getting hosting service means buying a server or storage where your photographs will be stored. It's very much important to get a secured hosting service. Otherwise, your site becomes slow, or become vulnerable. You can get secure hosting service from HostGator. Or you can try the above-mentioned service providers. They also provide secure hosting.
Step-2. Install and set up WordPress
Let's face it, no one would be interested to spend a huge amount of time and money to build a photography business site by HTML and CSS from scratch. So, therefore, we at weDevs recommend you to install WordPress by some simple clicks.
WordPress's CMS(Content Management System) is very much intuitive. It enables you to operate your site without doing any code. Based on W3Tech Statistics, 31.3% of all websites are currently using WordPress CMS.
You have your domain and hosting service, now it's time to install WordPress. If you have no idea about how to install WordPress, follow the direction below.
Get the answer to your inner queries, visit: How Much Does It Really Cost To Build A WordPress Website?
Step-3. Activate WooCommerce in your WordPress site
WordPress sites have no built-in feature of enabling e-commerce service itself. To get the facility you have to install and activate the WooCommerce plugin separately. Don't worry, WooCommerce is a free WordPress plugin that provides you an e-commerce facility.
Very easy to install WooCommerce. Just follow- Admin Dashboard > Plugin > Add New > Click search > Type “WooCommerce” > Install Now > Activate.
If you find any difficulties to install WooCommerce you can visit here.
After successful installation, you have to configure your WooCommerce. Configure it as per your requirements.
Having trouble with its terms and conditions? Failed to get a clear understanding of their Setup Wizard? Then go through this documentation.
Step-4. Make your e-commerce site to multi-seller photography business site by Dokan
When you activate WooCommerce on your site you can sell your stock photographs. You have to upload stock images from the backend dashboard. But our final ambition is to make a multivendor photography business marketplace like Shutterstock or 500px.
Dokan multivendor plugin gave you the privilege to make a complete multivendor marketplace of your own. Your vendor can upload stock photographs from frontend by Dokan. To activate Dokan you have to follow a similar process just like WooCommerce. Furthermore Dokan Lite its totally freemium plugin. If you are interested to check out the premium packages of Dokan Multivendor Plugin, visit here.
Follow the lead- Admin Dashboard > Plugin > Add New > Click search > Type “Dokan” > Install > Activate.
Dokan has its own configuration wizard. You have to do it according to your need. For better understanding, you can see the video tutorial of Dokan setup process below or follow the complete documentation to activate Dokan.
Initial earnings method from your multi-seller photography business site
Dokan helps you earn by having commission from registered sellers or vendors in your site. You have the full freedom of how much you want to set your commission. You can set the commission rate in the very beginning of the Dokan setup wizard. Or you can just set it later as per your requirements.
For in-depth knowledge about commission setting process go through this article at your convenience, How to Earn with Dokan Plugin Using Different Vendor Commissions.
Step-5. Select A Suitable WordPress Theme for Your Multi-Seller Photography Business Site
You made the structure of your marketplace. Now its time to decorate your marketplace. We recommend our Dokan theme for your multi-seller photography business site. Activate that or you have full freedom to choose other Dokan Multivendor compatible themes. There are 60+ Dokan Compatible 3rd party themes available in the market.
Congratulations. You have successfully built your multi-seller photography business site. Now send an invitation to your photography community to sell their stock photographs on your photography business site. They can easily register from the front-end of your site. If you forget to give that privilege just follow vendor registration guideline to enable that feature.
Now here are some tips and tricks on how you can make your site more lucrative. As well as you will get the business growth guidelines.
How can photographers make their store?
Anyone can register as a seller in your marketplace from the homepage. They just need to click on the sign-up button and select them as a vendor. Following that, they have to fill up the necessary field and submit. But immediately they cannot upload product in their store. Their request is on the pending status.
Now the admin of the store will have to give them permission from the backend. Only, then they can upload the product to their store for sale. To activate it follow the following steps.
Admin Dashbord> Users> All users> Select the newly added vendor> Edit> Scroll down and select “Enable Adding Products” from Selling tab> Update User
Special note: You can give privilege to your sellers to upload products immediately after registration. It'll be very helpful to you. You can activate this feature from Dokan's selling settings menu.
If you want to verify your sellers you can avail our Dokan Professional package. This plan consists of many more attractive and life-saving premium features.
Individual seller get a single store for them in your multi-seller photography business site
Our Dokan plugin gives the facility to create a single store for each seller. They can customize their store based on their choice. Though as an admin of your photography business site you can control and manage the vendor activity from the back end.
To help the customer you can show your seller list or store list in the menu bar. It will add extra value to your photography business site. By this privilege, your customer can go through any seller as per their own preference.
To add a store list in the menu bar follow the below steps.
At first go to your Admin Dashboard > Appearance > Menu > Select Store list > Add to menu > Save Menu
Premium facility for the Sellers or Vendors
Through the Dokan multivendor plugin, every seller gets an individual dashboard. With this feature, they can easily track their records of selling, earning, etc. Which is totally unavailable in other photography business marketplaces. So this is kind of a USP(Unique Selling Point) of Dokan plugin.
To learn detail about the dashboard, follow this link.
Also Read: 15 Best WordPress Photography Plugins.
How can photographers upload stock photos to their site
Basically, WooCommerce only gives you permission to upload products from the backend. But don't worry our Dokan multivendor plugin also allows vendors to upload the image from the frontend.
Photographers must log in with their account. Then he/she will have to go to the product tab. Click on add a new product. A popup window will come. There they will have to add a Feature Image. They should upload a very low sized photo of their real image. Then fill all the necessary fields. Here they can upload a single image by clicking ‘Create Product' button. If he/she wants to add multiple photos at the same time then they will have to select ‘Create & Add New' button again to repeat the process.
After clicking Create Product button the photographer is redirected to an additional page. There he/she had to select the downloadable option. Then scrolling down he/she will get a new menu of a downloadable option. Then select add file. Here they will have to choose the real image that they want to sale.
You may have a question, why anyone would have to do so many things? The answer is simple. All these things are for security reasons. Without doing this anyone can download your real image from the site. Now the real image only appears when the buyer will pay for it. The vendor can control the download limit from their end also.
Benefits of product review before publishing
After uploading a product by the vendor, and admin can hold it in the queue for reviewing the photo. After the completion of the review, the photo gets published once it meets all its terms and condition. Also, if an admin wants then he/she can select the vendor as a trusted one. Once they do this, then this vendor can publish their product directly.
It's totally up to you what you want to do. But we suggest keeping the review option at the initial stage. Otherwise, anyone can destroy the brand image of your photography business marketplace.
All the image is published, it will be automatically get showcased on the ‘Shop' menu. It works as your photo gallery for your Photography Business site.
Buying and Selling process of your photography marketplace
In your multi-seller photography business site, anyone can sell their stock photos. But as you are an admin of your site you have the ultimate power of whatever you want to do.
Now the most important part is on board. Buyers can easily buy the stock images from your site. They just need to select the cart button and the process automatically gets complete by Dokan. Buyer has to review the cart and then click proceed to cart button. Buyers will get a new page and there they will have to fill up some necessary fields in order to purchase photos by paying through PayPal or other popular payment methods.
Cash withdrawals by the photographers
When a buyer successfully completes his payment then he can get the download link of the real stock photo. After a successful download of the product, the cash will be seen available in the seller's account for withdrawing. Then the seller can request to withdraw the earned amount from their dashboard to admin. As an admin, you can set the minimum limit of withdrawal for the vendor from your backend.
Bonus tips to customize the Dokan theme specially for making a photography business-friendly site
This part is optional to build your photography business marketplace. Here we are sharing some awesome customization tips for our Dokan theme.
Add Slider to the Homepage
To make your marketplace more lucrative you can add a slider on the homepage of your multi-seller photography business site. It makes your site more attractive. Follow this link to activate slider in your homepage.
Hide the default product category menu list
Once you install the Dokan theme you will get that menu. But if you are not interested to show this on your site you can remove it easily by adding a simple code in additional CSS field. Just simply copy paste the below code in the CSS field and its done.
Code is:
aside.widget.dokan-category-menu {
display: none;
}
Follow the gif found any challenge,
Customize the menu list of the vendor dashboard
If you want your vendor dashboard to look simple yet organized then you can customize the side menu bar by activating Dokan Menu Hider Plugin by Nayem. Normally, while you are selling stock photographs then there is no need to show the ‘order' option on the dashboard. You can hide this by this awesome freeware plugin.
Add lucrative gallery in your photography marketplace
Our recommendation is to use our default shop showcase feature. But if you want to add eye-catchy gallery like other marketplaces, then you can choose 3rd gallery plugins. There are so many other awesome gallery plugins available in the market. Photo Gallery by Envira has WooCommerce compatibility but you have to get their premium package. Otherwise, you will have to the hassle of adding photos from the backend.
You can show the Envira gallery in our Dokan theme as well.
Follow this: Admin Dashboard > Plugin > Add New > Click search > Type “Envira” > Install > Active > Create Envira Gallery from their menu > Copy shortcode > Publish as a new page
Wrapping up
Finally, you are done with your own multi-seller photography business marketplace. You can't imagine how much happy we are, that we help you to start your own business. Thanks a lot for staying with us. If you find this article any way helpful for you or your business then feel free to share your thoughts with us.
Note: All the beautiful stock images used in this tutorial are free to use. Special thanks to Unsplash.
Start Your Multi-Seller Photography Business Site's Journey With Dokan