In this video, I talk about my past experience with shutterstock and Adobe Stock (Fotolia) after the first year on both platform. In summary, the average earning per download on Shutterstock was $0.38 per download ($67.17 over 177 downloads) and for Adobe Stock, it was $1.02 per download ($59.35 over 58 downloads). Photography is a hobby of mine and I didn’t spend much time getting started in stock photography. I wasn’t expecting any income. This was more of an experiment to see what photos would sell based on photos I had on hard drives and based on creative project ideas that I wanted to photograph over some weekends.
Even though I made it to level 2 on Shutterstock in Mid September of this year, I did not see a significant increase in earnings. The most common earning per download was still $0.10. The question is: is being a Shutterstock contributor still worth it in 2021?
There are two ways of looking at it.
1) As a person selling your art (your photos being your hard work that you captured, edited and keyworded)
2) Already did the overhead work and since I’m uploading to other stock agencies, I might as well upload to Shutterstock as well.
In the video, I mention some of the benefits of using Shutterstock like the quick review process, ability to sell mobile photography, editorials and commercial stock photos. $0.10 seems super low for any piece of art and I will admit, the feeling of receiving 10 cents for an image is a little depressing. On the other hand, it is 10 cents you normally wouldn’t make if it was just sitting on a hard drive. There is a sense of satisfaction that once this overhead work is done, you could be earning a couple of dollars a month and you wouldn’t need to actively maintain those photos. My dilemma is- If I am spending the time to keyword and uploading the other sites, should I just upload to Shutterstock as well? That overhead work is done already. If I look at this past year, if I only had the photos on Adobe Stock, I would only have half the income from this experiment. It wasn’t double the work to upload to both.
In this video, I am also looking for feedback from designers, visual artistic and marketing people at companies that use stock agencies and platforms. Do companies have multiple subscriptions to multiple agencies and platforms? Do you only search for photos at one site that your company pays for or do you look for the perfect photo over multiple site. For photographers- Which platform and stock website do you prefer and why? What are your experiences on the other sites? What are your average earnings per download? Do you agree with my mindset of uploading to Shutterstock if you already put in the effort of keywording and editing the photo? There are a few perks of using Shutterstock like quicker review times, ease of use for app for even mobile photography, a combination if editorial photos, and commerical photos.
Feel Free to leave a comment or question!