There are no good eCommerce options for photographers
I’ve been doing some research lately on an idea I had to start selling some images directly to potential customers and clients. I used to do this before with Photoshelter, but I stopped using that platform. The more I’ve been researching the topic, the more I’ve come to realise that there really aren’t any good platforms out there for photographers. It’s actually pretty frustrating, but also an opportunity for any enterprising developers.
What is the problem?
E-Commerce used to be relatively simple, but over the past 10 years or so, there have been many changes around the world regarding selling online, specifically regarding taxes. The most famous of which is the EU VAT Moss system, but this is far from the only one. Now many other countries around the world have these kinds of laws too.
Platforms like Photoshelter, which were designed by an American company, have never been updated to deal with these laws, and so make it extremely difficult to use properly. I contacted them about this years ago, and they just didn’t care.
Other platforms all have the same issue. In an ideal world, you would use what is called a “merchant of record” service. This includes sites like Gumroad, which I currently use. These companies are basically the store— selling your product for you and then paying you royalties. They handle all the sales tax and VAT requirements, but for a fee, of course.
Other services like Squarespace Commerce are getting better, allowing you to collect taxes but don’t automate the VAT remission and aren’t the sellers, you are. However, this has become so complicated that I don’t recommend it, especially if you are freelance. If you have a company and a full-time accountant versed in these matters, then maybe it is something you can manage, but I really do not recommend it for individuals.
Having spent about a week searching now, I still can’t find any service that is designed for selling imagery or licenses that is a merchant of record. They simply don’t seem to exist. There are platforms that one could connect via APIs if any of the platforms sought to do so - but they don’t seem to understand the problem. I emailed several, and all of the ones I contacted didn’t seem to understand the problem, or the fact that they were technically breaking the law, or more appropriately, people using their service would be.
What are the solutions?
So, the simple solution would be to limit sales to your own country. That would mean you only have to worry about local taxes, and depending on the types of images you want to sell, this might actually be preferable. Simple, right?
Think again.
I tried numerous selling platforms, and none of them would let you limit sales to one country. You could probably get WooCommerce to do it, but that would be quite complicated, and WooCommerce isn’t ideal either.
Even if you want to sell prints and limit the sales to one country, it’s not easy, although actually possible with some creative workarounds. In this case, you can set up shipping and limit it - but even this is confusing to the customers. It’s really quite amazing at how far behind the existing services are.
But such and such sells images from their website?
The other problem is that many people are either unaware of the law or just ignore the laws. I have seen stores from several high-profile photographers who just completely ignore the VAT and sales tax laws. This is kind of crazy, especially for known people. You may think you won’t get caught, or they have no jurisdiction over you, so no worries, but that’s a giant risk to take.
Is there any good news?
At the end of the day, you can use platforms like GumRoad that allow you to sell and act as a merchant of record, but these are not designed for selling images or stock licenses. You can do it, but it’s complicated and time-consuming. Alternatively, you can use an agency like Getty or Alamy, but this requires getting accepted, and not all of these are easy to get into. You will also only get a small fraction of the price charged. This is particularly bad if you go the micro stock route. With most of these agencies going down the AI route now too, it may not be something you want to submit to either.
I know this is a bit of a doom and gloom post, but I do think there is an opportunity there for someone to make a platform for photographers that acts as a merchant of record but also allows users to sell directly to customers. If I’m missing something and someone knows of such a service, please let me know in the comments below.
