WordPress iSell Photo plugin allows you to sell photos/prints/images from your WordPress powered site easily. It gives you the flexibility of creating a digital photo store in WordPress without using a single heavy-weight and hard to setup plugin.
Plugin Description
WP iSell Photo plugin utilizes the built-in gallery feature of WordPress and helps you turn your simple photo gallery into a powerful e-commerce WordPress photo gallery.
Plugin Features
- Sell photos from your WordPress blog/site easily
- Setting up the iSell Photo plugin DOES NOT require advanced technical knowledge
- Increase your conversion with one-click PayPal checkout
- Create beautiful e-commerce photo selling gallery on your WordPress blog
How to Create a Photo Gallery in WordPress
WordPress allows you to manage all your images from the media library. You can insert these images to a post/page and create a photo gallery very easily.
Step 1) First, create a new post/page on your WordPress dashboard.This is the page where you will display your photo/image gallery.
Step 2) Look for the upload/insert media files option in the editor.
Step 3) Now select the photos/images from your computer and upload them to the media library. As you upload each photo, you will see a Gallery tab which contains the uploaded photos. Switch to that tab once you are ready to insert the gallery into your current post/page.
There are some options that you can configure for the gallery you just created (under the Gallery Settings section).
- Link thumbnails to: a) Image file b) Attachment Page – you can either link each thumbnail to its URL or the attachment page (the page/post you are currently editing)
- Order images by: a) Menu order b) Title c) Date/TIme d) Random
- Order: a) Ascending b) Descending
- Gallery columns: 1 – 9 ( Number of thumbnails in each row)
Step 4) Finally hit the Insert Gallery button and the gallery will be automatically inserted to your current post/page.
You can edit the gallery at any time by clicking on the gallery icon (It looks like a rectangular image in the visual editor). Alternatively you can also customize the shortcode for the gallery. You need to switch to the HTML editor to do it. You will see a shortcode like the following:
You can learn more about customizing the WordPress gallery shortcode here
How to Sell Photos Using the iSell Photo Plugin
iSell Photo Plugin Demo
We are going to convert your WordPress photo gallery into a photo selling gallery using the FREE WP iSell Photo plugin. The photo selling gallery will look like the following. This will allow your users to purchase a photo/print by clicking the “Buy” button below each photo/print.
Download the iSell Photo Plugin
You can download the WP iSell Photo plugin from here.
iSell Photo Plugin Installation
- Go to the Add New plugins screen in your WordPress admin area
- Click the upload tab
- Browse for the plugin file (wp-iSell-photo.zip)
- Click Install Now and then activate the plugin
iSell Photo Plugin Configuration
Now that you have set up a photo gallery, you can turn it into a digital photo store to sell photos easily. You just need to configure some options in the General Settings of the WP iSell Photo plugin before you can start selling photos. Go to Settings->WP iSell Photo (on your WP Admin Dashboard). It will take you to the Settings page of the iSell Photo plugin.
You need to configure the following options in this settings area:
- PayPal Email Address: Your PayPal email address. This is where the money will go to when someone purchase your photos
- PayPal Currency Code: The currency code (example, USD, GBP etc). You will accept money in this currency from your customers.
- Currency Symbol: The symbol for your chosen currency (example: $). It’s for display purpose only.
- Return URL: The URL where your customers will be redirected to after a successful payment. This is also known as the “Thank You” page.
iSell Photo Plugin Usage
Go to the post/page where you already have an existing WordPress gallery embedded. Add an additional amount parameter to the gallery shortcode and specify the price via this parameter. For example:
Now, each image of this photo gallery will have a Buy Now button with a price of $5.00. Basically, you are saying that I want to sell my photos for $5.00 each (you can obviously use whatever amount you feel like).
You can also customize the look and feel of the Buy Now button. Simply include a button parameter in the gallery shortcode and specify the text that you want to use in the purchase button. For example:
The above shortcode will create purchase buttons for your photos which will have the text “Buy it Now”.
If you want to use an image for the button you can do so by specifying the URL in the button parameter. For example:
If you have any issue with this plugin, feel free to leave a comment below.
Thanks for the great plug in…this is my first website and I am stumbling by pretty good…but 2 questions.
1. When you hit buy it now, it goes to paypal and enters my paypal address where the buyer should have theirs. Can this be fixed?
2. Is there a way to individually price the photos in the gallery…they all have the same price at this point, but they should be different…can’t figure how to do that…thank you!
@laura, PayPal automatically fills out the email address based on the cookie that was saved on your computer (probably because you have used PayPal from the same browser before). There is nothing wrong with it. On your buyer’s computer they will see their PayPal address. If you delete your browser cookies and visit PayPal you won’t see the email address anymore.
Unfortunately there is no way to set a price for each photo individually. This is because in the gallery shortcode you can only specify something that will be applied to all the photos of that specific gallery.
Hello…
Great and simple, but a fact is that image is always available and linked: there is no payement conditioned delivery on my side …Bug or feature ? Thanks.
@Pierre, We tried to keep the plugin lightweight for now. If we see that many users are interested in selling photos we might come up with a better version which will have the automatic delivery option.
Regarding image link, In the gallery menu there is an option to link each image to its attachment. You can try that to hide the image link.
Thanks for wonderful plugin
I would like to know does this plugin work with nextgen gallery plugin? Because I would like show slide show for images.. And yes one more thing is their any option to show variation in cart like 8in X 9in=$127, 10in X 12in = $150..
Please help
Hi, unfortunately it doesn’t have the integration option with NextGen gallery plugin. It doesn’t work with variation either (it’s a very light-weight photo selling plugin).
Hi, I like the ease of setup of the isell photo plugin but i’m looking for a way to create a list of size options to buy my images. For example, instead of just a buy now button, is it possible to have a drop down menu with say a5, a4, a3 and a different price for each? or do i need to look at a different plugin?
Thanks for your help
Hi, it’s not possible to have a different price for each photo. You will need to set a specific amount for the whole gallery. The size variation is not available either.
Hi, thank you for a very nice plugin. I have just installed it and I have noticed that when I click on the photo to enlarge it and right click then people can still download it. Is there a way to prevent it?
Hi, It’s built on the WordPress gallery so It cannot control if the URL of the image will be shown/hidden.
wow. This is very excellent and wonderful plugin. I use my website. Thanks you very much.
HI,
I am planning to send prints to the buyer. I was wondering if I automatically receive the address of the buyer when they click the buy button?
Thanks,
When a user clicks the “Buy Now” button they get redirected to the PayPal site. After the payment PayPal will send you notification of purchase. The plugin doesn’t send you any kind of notification containing the address of the buyer.
I’ve added products, added a gallery, and set the amount & button parameters. The Buy it now button is not showing up, nor is the $ amount. How do I add products to a page? I can manually add each image with a link to paypal, but I need the buttons to show up too. What am I doing wrong?
Hi, what product are you talking about? iSell Photo plugin doesn’t have any option to add products.
I realized that if i do not specify the fee the gallery will not show up in my posts.
Is there a way/ bulk action to insert the amount that i want to charge all at once into all posts? I have more than hundreds of posts and it is impossible to do it one by one. And if I don’t do it the images don’t show up. Or is there a way to apply the plug-in to individual posts? thanks.
How do you change the enlargement size? Right now mine is coming up 900×600?
Thank you
Doug
this look like exactly what I was looking for. everything works. Click the pay button and goes to paypal. But I must be doing something wrong because you can simply click on the photos and it pops up on another page where anyone can just right click and download it without paying. Also I havent actually finished a transaction with it. Is there a popup download box to retrieve the photo after payment is made?
ok I tested it and there is no file. How do you get the product to the person that orders?