One of the biggest questions for many is how to make money from photography. There are many ways of doing it, such as photographing weddings, pets, portraits, or even products, but there are also ways to make money, such as stock photography. In this article, I discuss my experiences of using stock photography websites.
Over the past few years, I have signed up for several stock photography websites, such as Shutterstock, Getty, and Wirestock. My experiences using these stock photography sites has been very mixed, to say the least. While Stock photography may not work for everyone, there are plenty of photographers or even videographers who it can and will appeal to as a side hustle.
Committed
The key thing I have learned from stock photography is that if you want to earn a good side income from these websites, you need to be committed. The payouts from most of my images are incredibly low; some of my sales have only gone for as little as $0.07, which is pretty awful. In order to make stock more viable, you will need a large portfolio.
The equation is simple: the more images you upload equals the higher potential for more sales. Many dedicated stock photographers will have a selection of thousands and thousands of images out there on the market. If you only have 10 or 20 images, be prepared for a long wait to get sales and even withdraw the funds.
Many stock photography websites have a minimal withdrawal limit such as $100. If you are only selling an image for $0.07 at a time, you would need to sell it over 1,428 times before you can even withdraw that $100. Of course, not all images will sell for $0.07. Some will sell for higher amounts depending on the usage rights of that image.
This is absolutely where commitment comes into it. If you want to make stock photography work for you, then be sure to upload as much as possible and continue to do so. It is a very long process for little immediate rewards, but it could still add up in the future.
Competition
The reality is there is so much competition out there in photography. Every day, thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of images are uploaded to the internet. When uploading your images to stock, you will need to make sure that your titles, descriptions, tags, releases, and any other data are spot on. The more details you can add can increase your images' chances of being seen and then hopefully being purchased.
Some images or concepts will do better than others. For example, wildlife images such as the headline image are tough to sell in stock unless there is a specific event that creates a buzz.
Sites like Getty can help provide you with ideas of content to shoot by providing you briefs. The briefs by Getty are a call to action for you to create content matching Getty's requirements as much as possible. Getty may want images relating to "Back to School," so from this, maybe you will photograph stationery, school bags, or workbooks. With any luck, once you upload images relating to that subject, as long as you tag them correctly, you will see an increase in views and sales.
As you can see from the image above, there are always several briefs with Getty that can give you inspiration or creative ideas you can capture and upload. Depending on exclusivity contracts, you may be able to upload the images across several stock photography websites in order to increase your chances of sales.
Stock Video
Stock video, if anything, seems to be the way forward in the long run, as the amounts you can earn are potentially much higher than standard stock photography.
Every time I go out to do photography now, I try to capture video footage in different frame rates and focal lengths, with the idea of editing them and uploading to Stock websites. You never know what will sell, and your footage could even end up on television shows!
In Summary
So, is stock photography worth it in 2023? From my experience, not really. While I have had sales over the past few years, I am still nowhere close to even withdrawing my earnings. My portfolio needs to be much larger in the hope of earning more sales, plus I have to consider the time it can take to upload all those images, tag, and describe them all.
Some sites, such as Wirestock, will tag them for you, which can save time, but you may be limited on how much you can upload unless you pay for a premium plan.
There are much faster ways to make money from photography, but if you want to earn money in the long game and have thousands of images or videos to upload, then there is no reason why it would not be worth a shot for you.
On Shutterstock alone this year, I have made the combined total of $0.90. I will be sure to put that money towards my next camera purchase! Of course, I say that jokingly. However, it is very important to state you get out of it what you put in. If you put in the work, then hopefull,y you will see a good increase in sales, which will only benefit you in the long-term.
If you have ever seen a British comedy called Only Fools and Horses, you may know the quote: "This time next year Rodney, we'll be millionaires!"
Your Great Great Grandchildren will reap the benefits... oh wait, the images will be in the public domain by then :)
I suppose some images are better sitting on stock sites than on a hard drive doing nothing for eternity, and like you say, its a numbers game.
Very true!
"Many stock photography websites have a minimal withdrawal limit such as $10. If you are only selling an image for $0.07 at a time, you would need to sell it over 1,428 times before you can even withdraw that $100. "
Should be: Many stock photography websites have a minimal withdrawal limit such as $10. If you are only selling an image for $0.07 at a time, you would need to sell it 143 times before you can even withdraw that $10.
Good spot with the error, however I did mean $100, not $10.
Of course the effort against very little reward is not worth it. Besides, you'd have to be happy with a company making more money on your images than the you from your hard work just so they can host your images on their site. Not to mention the fact AI will soon make stock photography redundant anyway.
Also, I've heard from people who have had their stock images stolen and someone else passing them off as their own work.
Very good point regarding AI as I believe that some stock sites already accept AI images. Also, I've heard that as well regarding stolen stock images.
AI will allow people to eventually bypass stock sites, if they're not doing this already.
There is no money in stock photography any longer. Like all publishing, the only ones making money from stock are the agencies. You subsidize them by playing their game. If it makes you feel like a photographer to have 10,000 images on some website that you make no money from, well, so be it. But it doesn't quality you to call yourself a professional.
with AI technology my guess is that it would be easier for microstock agencies to search and identify bad actors using copies of the original owner's photos. As for profit, it is a numbers game, to more you have the more you earn, but it's a business model that is not very beneficial to the photographer that invests their time and money to produce these images. I think agencies should work more to attract more buyers and have the photos circulating smartly, now with AI tech should be easier. one thing that is lacking also is good analytics and metrics in the back office for the photographers and better tools for photographers to analyze their sales and work. Another thing that should be implemented is AI tech again to automatically tag, write descriptions and have gps data of the location, they should even create software that does that on our computers.