WordPress is a good content management system that you can use for building any site. Including the ones photography-related. With a proper WordPress theme you can build your own stock photo website to sell your quality photos.
Commonly, most photographers prefer to sell their quality photos on a stock photo website like Getty Images and Shutterstock.
However, selling photos on that kind of site has never been easy due to the applied high standard of each site.
Don’t be broken easily if your photos are rejected by any stock photo website. There many other ways to have your self in front as a photographer. Like I said, you can build your own stock photo website to sell your quality photos with WordPress. The crucial thing you have to do is selecting the proper theme.
Here are some recommended themes that you can consider.
1. Stock Photography
Let’s start with this one. Stock Photography is something you need when you are looking for a professional WordPress theme to build a stock photo website. The theme features nearly everything what websites like Getty Images and Shutterstock have. You can sell both photos or prints. This theme offers a handy search bar on the homepage where your visitors can explore your collections.
On the detail of each photo you will have an Add to cart button to enable your readers buy your photos easily. The theme has also been optimized for mobile device with a smaller screen. Other features include color styles, metadata, unlimited gallery, slideshow, LightBox plugin and support for EXIF data. Stock Photography is sold for $399.
2. Stocky
Stocky is one of the best WordPress themes for building a stock photo website. With this theme you not only can sell your own photos but also help others to promote their quality shots. If you regularly visit Pixabay.com you will find this site similar to it where there is a handy search bar at the top of the front page to ease your visitors discovering something they need. Stocky has also been optimized for mobile devices which is very important in the current era.
Before spending your dollars for this theme you can probe further by login to the vendor page using offered demo account. One of the cool features of this theme is a Lightroom Keywords to Download Tags plugin that will extract the Adobe Lightroom keywords from your featured images and use them as archival tags in your WordPress install. Stocky is sold for $62 for regular license. Combined with Easy Digital Download, you will get the most out of this theme.
3. Flashlight
Flashlight comes with 5 different gallery options which you can choose to suit your flavor. The theme is also great to showcase your works and let anyone who impressed to buy your beautiful shots. Your consumers will be able to choose the sizes of the images they want and add them to cart with a single click just like regular online shops. They can also preview each photo in a full screen mode.
One of the interesting features offered by this theme that not all similar themes do is SEO. A SEO optimized theme is crucial if you plan to drive visitors from search engine. Other features of Flashlight theme are EXIF data display, Ajax Contact Form, Password protected posts and galleries and a lot more. You need to spend $59 to get this theme.
4. Phomedia
With some built-in premium features Phomedia is also a great theme for showcasing your photos and let them (your visitors) buy the ones that impress them. Phomedia comes in a white, clean interface. This theme would be a great choice for any professional photographer to spread the personal brand online. The Add To Cart button makes it easy for the visitors to buy the photos you offer.
The handy features the theme has includes FancyTransitions Slider, Coin Slider, Piecemaker Slider, Animated Sortable Gallery and a lot more. This theme is priced $50.
5. Gaïa
Another great theme for building a stock photo website. Gaïa comes with a number of photo-related features to help you creating a better stock photo website with ease. Offering a responsive design to fix screen resolution problem, this theme has also been optimized for search engine. You can set whether to provide your photos as free or paid items. If you wish it, you can also apply watermark to your photos. Your visitors can share their love through a love button, similar to Instagram’s.
Priced $59, Gaïa also comes with a MailChimp and WooCommerce integration. Other useful premium features includes Sliders & Galleries, Sticky Menu, Video Backgrounds, Unlilmited Google Fonts, Social Sharing and a lot more.