😲😲😲😲😲😲😲😲😲😲😲

whattttttttttt

legendary comment on that Reddit

Absolutely it is and I see lots of misinformation in this thread by people who do not do stock or just dabbled in stock and forgot about it and gave up. I didn’t give up! I love stock photography and I am currently living solely on my stock photo and video income right now because I am in between jobs. I can live on this and I live in the USA

First, I have very large portfolios on all the agencies. Adobe and Shutterstock are my big earners with Getty/IStock falling just behind them. My Shutterstock portfolio is over 20,000 photos and it’s between 15,000-20,000 on the other sites as well (it’s different because some do not accept editorial, some only take some “types” of editorial, etc). I sell on 9 different agencies.

My portfolio has a wide variety of photos. For example, today on Shutterstock, I sold these photos (this is only half of them for today – I do not feel like typing out every photo i sold lol – I sell between 30-50 photos just on SS a day) Being willing to photograph everything and anything is huge in this industry:

My dog at the beach

A monkey

A temple in India

A pic of a CD-ROM game from the ’90s

A bridge in Wisconsin

Vegas hotel

Plate of spaghetti

Photo of me jumping at a beach

Flowers

Airport check-in terminal

Photo of a wig

A waterfall from Glacier National Park

Bag of oreos

Prices for each photo range from ten cents to $14.10. “Ten cents!??” – you say? Yes, 10 cents but that small change adds up. What was the $14.10 photo? It was the bridge. And it is not a good pic – taken at high noon in harsh sunlight. In fact, my “best” pics (IMO) do not sell. My s****y pics sell. My crap sells and gets published into books and my beautiful landscape photos collect dust. Why? I do not know.

I’ve started “late” – I started in 2017. This is considered very late in the stock world, but I do just fine IMO. I mean, I could’ve written your post in 2017 and gotten discouraged by people online and I would’ve never made the thousands I have over the last few years.

I say I sell 60% editorial / 40% non-editorial. Editorial SELLS. People will buy photos with non-released people in them as editorial and they can and do sell. I sell stuff with brand names/logos/etc. This goes for video too.

For released photos, I do model releases for myself, my mom and my sister. They do not sell as well as editorials or commercial photos with no people in them. However, I am currently featured on a billboard 🙂

Stock isn’t “woman laughing with salad” anymore. I don’t have any photos with white background. Maybe this stuff sells, IDK, but I don’t take these pics because I don’t want to.

Bottom line – YES there is money to be made but it is a lot of WORK. You CANNOT expect to make money with a portfolio of 50 pictures. This is a NUMBERS game, through and through. Most of my photos I never took just for stock – most of them I took PRIOR to joining the stock agencies (that’s how I have such a big portfolio). I typically don’t shoot just for stock (but I do sometimes). I shoot for myself, on vacation, etc. And if they sell, they sell. And they DO.

I thought about it in the past but never joined in. I had thought the model release process was just too difficult to deal with, esp. with all your past photos where you don’t have releases. But sounds like you can sell them as non-release, which i didn’t know?

best stock photography websites for making money?

I would say, not worth it.

problem is Shutterstock is cheap af. like $0.10 per image or less usually. Adobe Stock is growing rapidly, Alamy also pays better, although less sales. iStock/Getty also

definitely still going but less pay and more competition like everything else online