Whether you’re expanding an existing blog or starting one for the very first time, it can be a highly effective vehicle for driving digital photography sales. If you have high-quality images sitting unused on a hard drive, it’s easy to start earning money without making a big investment or relying solely upon microstock sites. All you need are the right tools for the job.

Blog Sales Versus Microstock Sites

There’s a lot to be said for the convenience of a quality microstock site. You upload images, and collect your earnings. You don’t need any startup funding, or any expertise in online sales. Unfortunately, those convenience features can come at a high price.

First and foremost, you’ll never collect the full revenue from a microstock sale. Depending on the terms of the individual site, you may receive a percentage of each sale. This means you’re immediately lowering your earning potential, which makes the overwhelming size of a microstock site another liability. When the value of each image is reduced, you’ll need to sell more of them to make up the difference. When there are dozens of other photos in the same category as your own, you’re then competing with other photographers who also need to sell more images to earn a profit. You must be able to stand out from the competition in order to make a sale, but your photos may not even be accepted if there are too many of similar subjects.

Running your own webstore can be just as convenient as a microstock site, with none of the in-house competition and none of the split profits. You can even turn your blog into a sales portal when you work with a high-quality eCommerce platform like PayLoadz.com. Payments will be instantly processed through trusted names like PayPal and Google Wallet, while your images are hosted securely and immediately delivered to buyers after completing a transaction. All you have to do is promote your brand, add new content and focus on growing your business.

How Marketing Helps You Sell Pictures

Maintaining your blog is already a good practice for marketing, which is vital to the success of your online business. Remember, no one can by your images if they don’t even know your brand exists. You’ll also need to think beyond blogging if you want to expand your existing reach. You can gamble on prepaid ads or sponsored social media posts, but you’ll need startup funding you can afford to risk. Or, you can eliminate the need for risky investments with affiliate marketing.

Better eCommerce platforms bundle affiliate network access with their sales tools, which allows you to essentially pay for marketing on commission. You only share a small portion of the proceeds from sales your affiliates actually generate, so you’re only paying for advertising when it works. Strategic, low-cost marketing strategies like this can help you turn your blog into the perfect venue to sell pictures you’ve taken.