How to Build a Stock Photo Website

1. Determine the categories of photos you will be offering on your website. Also, decide what type of site you are going to have: one in which you sell your own photos, or one in which you offer your photos for free and then have others place ads on your site to obtain revenue (Google's Adsense is a good option if you go this route).
2. Select a mechanism to take and process orders securely, if you will be directly selling your photos from your site. This protects both yourself and your customers. Paypal is a good option for processing payments online.

3. Brainstorm to determine your website's design. If possible, create a template on paper or in a program like Adobe Photoshop or GIMP before you move on to creating your actual website in a website design program.
4. Choose a website design program to create your website. There are several programs on the market that make creating your own website much easier and don't require you to know HTML coding. You will need to study how to use these programs if you have never done so before.Dreamweaver and Expression Web are two useful programs to build your website. They will enable you to develop a highly professional looking website where you can add various elements, such as multimedia (like videos or flash animation).Keep in mind that you will need to consider the size of the website you are planning to create. This is important in terms of storage capability for your photos. Also, remember to optimize your photos for the web. This means making sure the image file you load is no larger that it needs to be.
5. Select a hosting service for your site. While there are free hosting service plans, if you intend to have a large site that will require a larger amount of bandwidth, then you will likely need to purchase a plan that fits your website's particular requirements. Tripod offers both a basic free package, as well as several paid plans in which to choose.