Best Websites to Sell Stock Photos & Footage

 

 

If you are starting or considering to sell Stock Photos or Stock Footage online to make some creative, passive income you are probably asking yourself things like:

 

  • What stock agencies profit the most?
  • Should I upload to multiple stock websites?
  • What websites should I start with?
  • Is there a difference between Stock Photography and Stock Footage?

Well, CreativeInco.me is here for you!

 

The content of this article was recorded into the video above.

New Stock Agencies are being launched all the time, and though it is a good idea to diversify your income sources, it can be very frustrating wasting time uploading to agencies that will never get you a sale. That’s why it so important focus on the right stock agencies

With this article, my goal is to expose:

 

 

The stock agencies where I profit the most

I hate taking conclusions too early and assuming things are the same for everybody. After all, there’s a big difference in selling stock footage and selling stock photography. And that connects to what agencies will be the most profitable.

 

My Stock Footage Earnings:

On the Footage (video) side of things, I usually see that the best websites are Shutterstock, AdobeStock, and Pond5.

The image below was captured from my video and shows how Shutterstock is by far the most profitable one. I took the years of 2017 and 2018 to make that calculus.

 

Screenshot captured from my video: Stock Agencies that PROFIT the most

Adobe Stock is not that strong for me because it doesn’t allow editorial content – the biggest part of my content.

iStock/Getty could be something, if only their commission rate wasn’t so messed up – 15% for non-exclusive contributors. Plus footage sales for less than $1. Enough to make me give up on them.

There’s an article where I showcase my best selling files and how much they made in each agency, you can check that if you want to learn a little more with my own earnings.

 

Stock Photo Earnings

As mentioned before, things are very different between stock footage and stock photography. So we will take stock photographer Alex Rotenberg’s earnings into consideration. (Alex is the author of the Brutally Honest Microstock Blog and you should definitely check it out)

In this article, Alex broke down his earnings of April 2019. By that time he had a portfolio of 10,500 images on a total of 19 agencies which made him $896 that month (considering images only).

This is the breakdown of his April earnings (I took footage out of the calculus:

 

  • Shutterstock: 40%
  • iStock/Getty: 20%
  • Robert Harding: 18%
  • Adobe Stock: 10%
  • Alamy: 4%
  • Rex Features: 2.4%
  • 123RF: 1.5%
  • Dreamstime: 1.3%
  • BigStock: 1.3%
  • Pond5, Canva, Colourbox, DepositPhotos, Sign Elements: ~1.5%
  • Arcangel, Creative Market, Picfair, Storyblocks, Wemark: ZERO sales

It’s important to say that some are not really microstock agencies and will work in a different way (sometimes exclusive, sometimes Royalty Managed. I suggest you read his articles if you want to learn more about it.

Alamy is also a good agency to sell photography. Sales are not as frequent as they are in Shutterstock, but they’re known for getting the highest pricing sales. Many contributors have experienced sales above $100 there.

 

Google Trends

If you are already a student of our online course or subscriber of the YouTube channel you noticed how I’m a big fan of Google Trends.

This powerful tool allows us to compare how specific search terms are made along a given period of time. So I obviously compared how the most known agencies are being searched.

That is clearly not directly connected to how much you will sell on these agencies, but is still interesting data.

 

Comparing searches for “Shutterstock”, “Getty Images”, “iStock”, and “Adobe Stock” on May 2nd 2019.

This proves how Shutterstock is still the biggest player of the market having 57 points compared to Adobe’s 20, Getty’s 19 and iStock’s 14. All other agencies didn’t get anything close to these 4:

 

  • Shutterstock: 57 points
  • Adobe Stock: 20 points
  • Getty: 19 points
  • iStock: 14 points
  • 123RF: 5 points
  • Alamy: 4 points
  • Creative Market: 4 points
  • Dreamstime: 2 points
  • Storyblocks: 1 point
  • Pond5: 1 point
  • Deposit: 1 point
  • Video Hive: 1 point
  • Robert Harding: >1
  •  

 

What is the future for stock agencies?

And it gets more interesting once you analyze how the graph is evolving since 2004.

 

Notice how GettyImages used to be the biggest agency reaching a peak in June 2006 – pretty close to when they have acquired iStock.

But then Shutterstock arrived and from then on it is clear that things haven’t been so good. Both Getty and iStock went down in searches and that is also reflected in contributors that More than a decade ago. Shutterstock is the top payer for almost every stock creator.

There’s no way to prove it, but I’m pretty sure that contributors had a strong part on the iStock decadence. The iStock/Getty group became the most hated among contributors because of their lack of transparency, bad commission rates (15% for non-exclusive), and low respect for the contributor. So you can see how both companies started to go down in Google Searches.

In the meanwhile, Shutterstock was growing constantly from 2006 to 2014, when the searches stabilized. And that’s probably because a new player joined the game –Adobe Stock.

Their growth since 2015 hasn’t stopped yet and that makes Adobe a very important agency for both Photo & Video. I really believe they’ll soon get closer to Shutterstock’s leadership.

 

Alexa Ranking

That gets clear when we use Alexa Ranking, another tool that can be used to analyze the most visited websites on the internet.

Here are their positions in the Global ranking:

 

  • Adobe.com: 64*
  • Shutterstock.com: 186
  • DepositPhotos.com: 940
  • 123RF.com: 998
  • iStock.com (or iStockphoto.com): 1.093
  • GettyImages.com: 1.790
  • Dreamstime.com: 1.562
  • VideoHive.net: 1.829
  • Alamy.com: 2.857
  • VideoBlocks.com: 3,984 (StoryBlocks.com is at 15,353)
  • Pond5.com: 6,151

It puts Adobe.com on the top because they use the “adobe.com” domain which is used for way more things than just Adobe Stock. That’s why they appear in the top 100 most visited websites. So you can’t really conclude that Adobe Stock gets more visitors than Shutterstock.

In this ranking, Adobe Stock and Shutterstock are clearly the best marketplaces. And they’re both good for Footage & Photography. Right now iStock and Getty get fewer visitors than DepositPhotos and 123RF, which I would say are better for selling photos over videos.

 

My personal advice

 

For photographers,

I would advise starting with Shutterstock and AdobeStock.

They have the best platforms, good reviewal times and will get you the biggest number of sales.

Shutterstock has a mobile app that lets you edit metadata and submit files from it. You can even upload pictures you took from the phone.

Then as soon as you get the taste of it, grow your portfolio to other agencies. Alamy would be the first one because of the high price sales I told you a little ago. Then I’d go to more agencies like DepositPhotos, 123RF, Dreamstime, and Pond5.

To then try all the other new or small agencies.

The best way to upload photo files to multiple agencies is by using Multi-uploaders like StockSubmitter or Xpiks. It’s not that hard to learn how to use and I do cover them in my online course.

 

For filmmakers,

I suggest this order: Shutterstock, AdobeStock, Pond5, and Storyblocks.

In general, that’s what I believe are the most profitable and also the easiest to deal with.

Video demands a whole different workflow and uploading through FTP. Not as hard as it sounds and I also cover the process in my online course.

I also got my eyes on other agencies like Vimeo Stock, Dissolve, and Film Supply, for high-end content. ArtGrid and Envato are also coming with quite interesting business models and might grow in the next years.

Just as in photography, I suggest you use a multi-uploader if you want to submit to multiple agencies. StockSubmitter works well too.

But for footage, we have BlackBox, a platform that submits your footage to 5 agencies at once. I wrote an entire article to help you learn more about it.

 

https://youtu.be/PZIiKTgJ6_Q

 

Thanks for reading

What about you? What are the most profitable agencies in your opinion? What do you think the future of microstock will be like?

Thanks for reading. Stay Creative.

 

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

my stock footage earnings (2013-2017)

Stock Footage – What I earned and what I learned.

On this article, I’ll bring you a full report of my earnings from 2013 to 2017 and the participation of each agency on the total income as well. I’m definitely far from being a big contributor, but I’m sure this data can help a lot of people choose the right direction.

Full 2013–2017 earnings Report

I sell my footage online since December 2012, when I only had a Canon T3i. Most of my files were refused, so I started with a very small portfolio (30 video files) on Shutterstock and Pond5. The info I had at that time showed me these two would be a good way to start my stock earnings.

Since that time I used to work on my stock portfolio once a year, I slowly started uploading my files to other microstock websites: Storyblocks (former VideoBlocks), DepositPhotos and iStock/Getty were the next ones. This is how my portfolio grew on the last years:

I reached 240 video files in February of 2017, so I believe it’s fair to say that was the official portfolio size for 2017.

Total Earnings for 2017

So by the end of the year, the sum of all my stock footage earnings was: U$1.690,80.

 

My 2017 earnings by each agency.

Alright, no complaints about that. Definitely, a good revenue based on a small portfolio. But I have to admit I was expecting a little more earnings when compared to 2016. I thought the increase of files in my portfolio would directly impact my sales. Take a look at my year over year growth.

 

My personal yearly earnings when summing Shutterstock, Pond5, iStock, Storyblocks, and DepositPhotos.
My personal yearly earning when summing Shutterstock, Pond5, iStock, Storyblocks, and DepositPhotos.

My big mistake

I did a mistake by betting all my chips on Shutterstock. If you go back to the first graph I showed you’ll notice Shutterstock was the only stock agency on which I really uploaded new footage/photos. Since I had never analyzed these earnings as close as I’m doing now, I thought Shutterstock was the main and only source of this “creative income” (I was also very lazy)— but I couldn’t be more wrong.

Take a look at my 2016 income share, when Pond5 and Deposit had my total portfolio, StoryBlocks had 75% and Getty/iStock had 20%.

earnings per stock agency in 2016 (footage + photography)
What each stock agency represented on my 2016 earnings.

On that year, Pond5 was even better than Shutterstock! Videoblocks and Deposit also had better impacts. So that’s a big lesson I learned — I will diversify my portfolio to other websites.

There’s still a lot of lessons I learned when analyzing my best sellers, but this will be a subject for the next time.

If you would like me to keep writing/recording this reports/insights, please let me know! This is something I love doing, but knowing there’s someone reading and interested is the gasoline I need to keep making it public!

My 7 Personal Bestselling Stock Footage Files 

On this the second article (and video), I will showcase my 7 best selling files, the earnings of each one, and all lessons learned as well. I’m writing this to attend a request on my last video.

If achieving creative income through Stock Footage and Stock Photos interests you, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter and YouTube.

I’m sure every microstock contributor with at least a few sales already noticed there’s no correlation between his/her favorite files and the ones that sell the most. While I was doing the analysis I noticed how wrong my first predictions were.

Many of the files you believe will sell a lot may never bring as many sales as many files you despise.

My 7 Top Sellers on Shutterstock, Pond5, iStock and other microstock sites.

01. Space travel

This group of Space Flight simulations made on After Effects is by far my best seller. So far, they made me U$1.898. (50% from Shutterstock, 40% from Pond5, 10% from DepositPhotos, approximately).

You can start selling your photos and videos today with this link: http://bit.ly/newcontributor

These are actually the only files I got that were entirely made on After Effects (and makes me want to that again). They were originally made for a church service opener that later I adapted to sell. It’s quite a nice effect, but I never expected they would do so well and I’m so happy I did submit them.

This is a precious lesson for me: leave no file behind.

02. The Brazilian Flag

On second place I have this slow-motion shot of the Brazilian flag. This file alone made me $914 (approximately, 90% from Shutterstock). It was shot on a Canon 60D and is not even in Full HD. So there’s a second lesson: start with what you got.

It was shot in 2014, a few months before the World Cup in my country. This is a strategic one, of course. So learn to identify this kind of opportunity that happens close to you. I also submitted other soccer related files in that year that made good sales.

03. Curitiba Bus

In third place comes this editorial pack of my city’s public transportation. 5 files combined made me $714. Storyblocks brought 20%, while Pond5 and Shutterstock represented 40% each.

Apparently, the city where I live in, Curitiba, is a historical reference in public transportation. So these ones might work very well for documentaries.

Lesson to learn? Explore unique subjects close to you. Many other clips of local touristic points also sell well. Maybe I don’t get to sell the famous Rio de Janeiro landscapes, but I can definitely build some authority on my city’s icons. This works well if you live in a city that’s not so mainstream.

04. Aerial Amazon

Next, we have this aerial shot of the Amazon forest. With this shot alone I was able to sell $602. This one is strong on Pond5 (80%), while Shutterstock had 13% and Storyblocks had 7%. If I combine the other images I made on this trip to the Amazon, the total would easily go over $1000. Which I believe is enough to cover the trip costs I had.

Lesson: Make good use of your travelings.

05. Labrador Dog

Here’s a funny one. These were my first approved files and were actually nothing but a test I made with my dog. $357 earned. 40% came from Pond5, and 30% from Shutterstock and iStock each.

Lesson: Commercial value can be found much closer than you think.

06. Car Mirror

Another interesting case. A shot of a sunset on a car mirror. No sales on other agencies, but $230 on Shutterstock.

Lesson: Take your camera with you.

07. Public University

This is a public university in my city that for some reason sells a lot. $228 earned on this file alone. Also one of my first files (Canon 60D, I guess). I have no idea what people see on it. It’s one of those files I was almost giving up on. There’s even a shake on the end I forgot to cut.

The original file was shot during the night with a very bad camera and conditions. So I tried it again with a better camera and lens a couple of years later. No sales. Go figure…

Once again, start with what you got. But start!

I’ll stop here but there’s still a lot of curious cases I could talk about. It’s interesting how many files I despise sell better than the ones I am proud of.

What about you? What are your funny best sellers? Feel free to put them in the comments below. I guess this is a way we can learn a lot from each other.

If you would like me to keep writing/recording this reports/insights, please let me know! This is something I love doing, but knowing there’s someone reading and interested is the gasoline I need to keep making it public!