How Much Money I Made During My First Year Of Stock Photography in 2023
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- By: Peter Orsel
Stock photography has been around for many years now, and as a photographer you might either love it or hate it. About 8 years ago I gave it a first try, uploading 7 files to Shutterstock. I didn’t make any sale.
Late 2022, I tried to start again and took it more serious. Now I’m making a small monthly living out of it. How much can you make selling stock photos online? In this blog, I’ll walk you through my first year, including the viral $20,000-a-month TikTok claim I had to fact-check, and what my own numbers show.
In This Post
What is stock photography?
You might already be familiar with stock photography, but if you’re new to it, let’s start here. In stock photography, you supply files to an online database for licensing purposes. I’m saying photography, but you can make a living with videos, vectors, illustrations, templates and more. There are numerous websites to sell your content and in general it’s free to apply for the programs. My best-selling platforms are Adobe Stock, Shutterstock and Envato Elements.Â
Can I Make $20,000 USD by selling stock photos?
If you searched for this, you’ve probably seen the TikTok. There was this girl claiming she made $20,000 USD by selling stock photos, only using her iPhone shots. It seems like a shortcut to quick money, but I’m here to tell you: this girl is a scam.
Of course she has an ebook where she sells her exact secret, and that’s probably the way she gets her money at this time. When people ask her details or confront her, they get blocked.
This particular girl only shares two or three photos she got most of her income from. Multiple people have searched for these photos on Shutterstock and Adobe Stock, the sites she claims to mainly use, and didn’t find them.
Based on my sales numbers (and the average person in the industry), it would take around 400,000 quality photos to make this amount of money in a month, or a much smaller number of highly targeted photos for specific industries.
Read below how much you can make if you start in stock photography now.
How did you start in stock photography?
After traveling full time for a couple of years, you can imagine that my hard drives were packed with photos. The best files go to Instagram. Some to my stories and some to my feed. Other photos end up on my blog, but the majority ends up on my hard drives. I knew about stock photography, but all photographers I knew were telling me to stay away from it. It’s a lot of work, no rewards, and you need to upload a lot to make a little bit of money.
Obviously I wasn’t too keen to start this journey, until I saw an Instagram friend making a decent living with his stock footage. The best thing? This guy was doing the exact same thing as me. Traveling full time, taking photos, and apparently selling them online. “That’s what I want,” I thought. I put my ego aside, knowing that I would probably end up earning only $0.10 USD per sale. The first months were tough with only a couple of dollars of income, but I knew I had to keep pushing to start seeing results.
What files are selling best?
If you take a look at my portfolio on stock websites, 90% of my files are photos, 10% are videos. About 98% is travel-related, the others are just random shots that I thought would sell well. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t.
In general, my drone content is selling the best. I try to keep my edits as natural as possible, as I feel like that’s what potential buyers are looking for. News agencies are usually not looking for the crazy edits. They want a realistic view of a certain spot.
My biggest individual sales have come from videos. On Shutterstock, I sold two videos in one day for $30 USD each. A month later a video got sold for $22 USD. In terms of photo files, my best-performing photos gave me a revenue of about $30 USD per photo for the full year. These files have been downloaded about 50-80 times.
Below you see my best-selling photo of 2023. A typical example of a file that I probably wouldn’t use myself. The reflection in the water and the overexposed boat made me feel like this was a failed shot. However, I tried uploading it anyway.
This is the reason that I just keep uploading files, even though I’m not completely happy with the shot. You never know what others are going for, and if your file gets pushed by the algorithm of stock agencies, it might end up as a bestseller.
How much did you earn in stock photography in 2023?
Of course you want to know how much I made. And you probably wonder how much money you can make selling stock photography.
During my first year in selling stock files, I uploaded about 4,500 photos. Not all of them got accepted. A platform like Dreamstime is basically accepting anything, while Shutterstock is very picky in accepting files. Out of the 4,500 files, only 3,800 got accepted on Shutterstock.
It took me about 8 months to upload these files, and I would usually do it when I had no other work to do. Until June 2023, I had about 1,800 uploaded files. After that moment, I uploaded 2,700 more over a time span of 3 months.
Uploading files takes me about 4 days per 1,000 files. Sometimes I’m very motivated, sometimes not at all. It starts with selecting the files, and giving them an easy edit. After that, I upload them to my distribution software, where the keywording starts. After giving all my files their necessary titles, descriptions, and keywords, I send them to the platforms. Accepting the files can take from one day up to 3 to 4 weeks.
Given the fact that I uploaded 4,500 files, you could say that I spent about 14 full days uploading the files and probably another 2 to 3 days figuring out all the platforms and setting up my accounts. This paid off in a total income of about $1,900 USD in my first full year of stock photography. And the best thing? These files are still generating money today.
To know how much I earn per upload, I write down the earnings of a certain month, divided by the total number of files in my portfolio that month. This way, I get a realistic overview of the average revenue per file that I upload. Take a look at the numbers below. As you see, the average revenue per file is usually between $0.04 and $0.06 per month. If I take a look at my 2023 average, I’m earning exactly $0.05 USD per file per month.
With this data, I can estimate my future earnings per upload as well. I know that uploading 1,000 files will result in about $50 USD extra per month
$1,900 USD in one year might not sound like a lot of money for the amount of work I put into it. Besides that, I had to spend about $200 USD for my distribution software to get the files online. But it proves that there are still ways to make a living out of stock photography, even if you’re new to the industry.
What platform sells best?
Out of all platforms where I made money, this is how my earnings were divided in 2023.Â
- Adobe Stock: 31,3%
- Envato Elements: 29%
- Shutterstock 21,2%
- iStock 8,5%
- Blackbox 2,2%
- Pond5 1,72%
- DepositPhotos 1,65%
- 123RF 1,54%
- Alamy 1,39%
- Dreamstime 1,17%
- Freepik 0,35%
As you can see, I earned about 90% of the $1,900 USD with my 4 best platforms. A lot of other platforms didn’t reach the minimum payout yet, so the money is still on the account.
If you’re new to uploading on stock websites, I would suggest starting with Adobe Stock, Envato Elements, Shutterstock, iStock, and Blackbox. The first four work pretty much similarly, as you upload your files directly to their platforms. Blackbox is the exception. Blackbox is a platform that distributes your files to a couple of agencies, like Adobe Stock. It only works for videos, so you can’t use their service for all platforms.
Interview at Alamy
One of my highlights of this year was getting noticed by Alamy for an interview. This didn’t result in more sales, but it meant something to get some recognition from a big agency like that. To read the interview, click here.
Alamy is a unique platform that generally pays more per sale than other platforms. On their forum, people say that you make 2-3 sales in your first year, about 10-20 in your second, and after that you’ll make heaps of sales.
In my first year, I made 3 sales (around $26 USD) on Alamy, but let’s see how it goes in the years to come.
Update: We’re a couple of years ahead now, and I can’t confirm these people were right. My Alamy sales haven’t taken off, and in 3 years of time, I still haven’t reached 10 sales.
What's your plan for 2024?
All in all I’m very happy with the results of my first year in stock photography. If you’re wondering how you can make money with travel stock photography, I’d suggest reading on here, where I share how it’s still possible to start with stock photography these days.Â
For 2024, my goal is to upload 5,500 files, making it a total of 10,000 files online. In terms of revenue, I’m aiming for a monthly income of $500 USD out of stock sales. Let’s see if we can get there!Â
So, how did that turn out?
I didn’t hit either goal exactly. I uploaded far fewer new files in 2024 than planned, and my average monthly income landed under the $500 mark. But the portfolio kept earning regardless, which says more about consistency than about any specific number I set out to hit. I’ve since published full breakdowns for 2024 and 2025, plus an ongoing stock photography earnings page that tracks every year, until today, in one place.
About Me
6 Responses
Hi,
I am interested in uploading photography to these sites too, thank you so much for sharing your experience. Which distribution software did/do you use to get your photos ready for upload?
Thank you –
Cindy
Hi! Thanks for your comment. I used Microstock+. It has it’s pluses and minuses, there are more platforms available! This one isn’t the easiest to understand, and that’s why I did the course that gave me a walkthrough through everything. 🙂
Hi Peter:
I thoroughly read your two blogs on making money from stock photography. I must appreciate you have really nailed it down. Till date, I got a clear “NO” from tons of photographs for selling on stock photo websites. But I think you have been very honest on how to do it and most importantly, what to expect.
I have a question if you can answer when you get time.
I am a full time travel blogger and intermediate-to-pro wildlife photographer. Do you think these stock photo websites are good for selling wildlife photos (including birds) as well. I have about a thousand of them and they’re damn good, at least I feels so 🙂 Also I click 30-40 new each month.
Look forward to your response. Thank you once again for such nice blogs.
Hi Rahul, that’s an amazing comment. Appreciate it a lot! I honestly think the competition in animal and wildlife photos is huge. I personally look at what to shoot like this: what’s in demand, what’s not available yet, or what is available but can I do better? I noticed there’s not a lot of drone content available, but people really look after it. Same for 4K 60fps video footage of many travel subjects (beaches, nature, wildlife etc.). I focus on uploading these kind of images and videos.
Your photo of a certain bird can be amazing, but how many of that type bird have been shot and sold? See it like a photo of the Eiffeltower. You can take the best photo in the world, but to stand out between the other 1000 people selling their Eiffeltower shots, it’s hard to gain attention.
On the other hand, if you consider yourself as a good wildlife photographer, why not stand out with your travel blog and help people leverage their skills in wildlife photography? I notice a lot of great photographers are out there, but their blog isn’t ranking the best or having the best UX design. If you stand out with your blog, people will see your photos, you can use affiliate links or even place ads on a website. I hope this helps!
Wonderful article! This was so incredibly helpful! Does your income accumulate every year more and more? Or would it be up and down. And how exactly do you find out what is popular/needed and what is not? Would you just pick a subject and have to sift through thousands of photos/vids until you can make a judgement call? Thanks!
I am terribly late to replying to your message hahaha. But I still have to update the full 2024 post! My income has doubled in 2024, and in 2025 without uploading anything it’s been still pretty steady. I don’t really shoot based on popularity, but if there’s some topics that get a lot of attention (climate change for example), it could be beneficial to shoot more shots related to that. But again, I don’t shoot with a stock photo priority, I shoot based on what i like and I try to sell that as I have it anyway 🙂