Is selling images via site like Shuttershock and Alamy worth it?

snerkler

snerkler

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Toby
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I've recently been considering selling some of my images online using sites like those mentioned in the title and was wondering if it's worth doing, or whether you get so little it's not worth the effort?

Is there a better way to sell online?
 
Funnily enough I was just chatting to a friend about this last night.

About 10 years ago I uploaded a whole back catalogue of images to various stock photography websites.

A really awful photo from years ago of the cranes at Harland & Wolff in Belfast has been sold over 10k times. It's awful image, embarrassing to look back on now, way oversaturated colours a huge vignette etc. All the bad stuff photographers do when they are newbies. :D It has been sold for use on everything from keyrings, mugs, t-shirts, postcards. large gallery style prints etc.

Have no idea why anyone would pay money for it.

I also have another photo of a local flute band that has also been sold thousands of times.

Even then with maybe 40k odd sales in total the income from it has been quite small and probably not worth the hassle of uploading them in the first place.

Does always give me a giggle when you see what people buy the images for.

One lady in Scotland orders 100 Christmas cards every year with the photo of the local flute band on them. Have no ides why anyone would want a Christmas card with a photo of a flute band on the front or why she would want to send the same card every year. :ROFLMAO:
 
f/2.8 said:
Funnily enough I was just chatting to a friend about this last night.

About 10 years ago I uploaded a whole back catalogue of images to various stock photography websites.

A really awful photo from years ago of the cranes at Harland & Wolff in Belfast has been sold over 10k times. It's awful image, embarrassing to look back on now, way oversaturated colours a huge vignette etc. All the bad stuff photographers do when they are newbies. :D It has been sold for use on everything from keyrings, mugs, t-shirts, postcards. large gallery style prints etc.

Have no idea why anyone would pay money for it.

I also have another photo of a local flute band that has also been sold thousands of times.

Even then with maybe 40k odd sales in total the income from it has been quite small and probably not worth the hassle of uploading them in the first place.

Does always give me a giggle when you see what people buy the images for.

One lady in Scotland orders 100 Christmas cards every year with the photo of the local flute band on them. Have no ides why anyone would want a Christmas card with a photo of a flute band on the front or why she would want to send the same card every year. :ROFLMAO:
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I guess this will be subjective? My thoughts are even if I can make a bit of pocket money I wouldn’t have had before then that’s OK, but if you’re only going to get a couple of quid over a year then it’s pointless.

And who doesn’t love a flute band :LOL:
 
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Alamy used to be good, and three figure commissions not uncommon with a respectable volume to go.

But now, their commission is a lot more, and they sell for peanuts so I rarely upload unless I've a passing moment with nothing else to do.
 
I think the people that make a good go of it, tend to be pretty committed treating it like a full time job and uploading 1,000+ photos a year min with targeted keywords.

I thought about it once and was approved with getty - but couldn't be bothered in the end.
 
In short NO, complete waste of time that only enriches the 1% of the 1% and further sinks the market through your hard work that could be put to a much better use elsewhere
 
In relation to selling images online, if they have people in them (e.g. Motor Racing drivers) do you need to get consent? Also are you allowed to post images to sell that were taken at events such as F1, Moto GP, Goodwood FoS or would you need consent for these too?
 
snerkler said:
In relation to selling images online, if they have people in them (e.g. Motor Racing drivers) do you need to get consent? Also are you allowed to post images to sell that were taken at events such as F1, Moto GP, Goodwood FoS or would you need consent for these too?
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With the stock photo sites policy varies, on Adobe you wouldn't be able to sell that without a consent form most likely but e.g. Shutterstock that would go through as an editorial with certain conditions of use attached - there isn't much difference in how much they would pay you it is usually peanuts like $0.10 but odd ones do sell for much more.
The key thing alluded to above is that unlikely images sometimes sell many times over and if you have already got them why not upload if you have time.
Video clips are still making reasonable money and if you know what you are doing and have a fast upload speed you can upload short clips in 5 minutes or less.
You can expect at least $20 as a rule for video clips. I use BlackBox for video and about 100 clips have made 10x more than 500 stills on Shutterstock.
Again it is the same handful selling multiple times.
Another area to consider is short shelflife newsworthy clips there are agencies specialise in that too e.g. Newsflare.
Sooner or later most of us happen to be near some kind of incident with unexpectedly good access such as a fire or road crash.

For the great majority it is only ever going to be a bit of extra pocket money.
For example I get paid by paypal and leave the $ in there as a rule to buy odds and ends on ebay or whatever.
 
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4wd said:
With the stock photo sites policy varies, on Adobe you wouldn't be able to sell that without a consent form most likely but e.g. Shutterstock that would go through as an editorial with certain conditions of use attached - there isn't much difference in how much they would pay you it is usually peanuts like $0.10 but odd ones do sell for much more.
The key thing alluded to above is that unlikely images sometimes sell many times over and if you have already got them why not upload if you have time.
Video clips are still making reasonable money and if you know what you are doing and have a fast upload speed you can upload short clips in 5 minutes or less.
You can expect at least $20 as a rule for video clips. I use BlackBox for video and about 100 clips have made 10x more than 500 stills on Shutterstock.
Again it is the same handful selling multiple times.
Another area to consider is short shelflife newsworthy clips there are agencies specialise in that too e.g. Newsflare.
Sooner or later most of us happen to be near some kind of incident with unexpectedly good access such as a fire or road crash.

For the great majority it is only ever going to be a bit of extra pocket money.
For example I get paid by paypal and leave the $ in there as a rule to buy odds and ends on ebay or whatever.
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Thanks, so with certain sites you can restrict usage so they’re not used for commercial purposes?
 
A couple of things.

Certainly, unexpected photos often outsell the ones you suspect would make a tonne. A friend of my in laws (Paul Harris) has photographed the great and the good of the Hollywood glitterati for years. I once asked him which photo he'd made the most money from and it was a shot of the FA CUP that he had on Getty.

But speaking from the other side (I work in an ad agency and we often use stock imagery), it's all changed massively in recent years. It used to that we had to choose between Rights Managed (RM) shots or Royalty Free (RF). Rights managed were more expensive, and negotiations were entered into about usage. i.e. UK only campaign, magazine print but not posters, corporate booklet etc. The more exposure it got, the more you paid.

Royalty Free was always cheaper, but normally of worse quality. Trite imagery, unimaginative themes, often repeated, undistinctive.

As creatives we used to love to commission original photography. The next best option was RM, and as a last resort it was RF.

Pretty sure clients only ever looked at the cost and their list was the exact opposite.

Unfortunately, "everyone's a photographer now" and clients no longer see the value in original shots. Most product stuff is now CGI as they can easily change labels for different markets or change angles if they have to).

They have driven the change and now everything on Getty is Royalty Free.

I guess this means that by the time the stock library has taken their cut and the photographer's agent has their cut, there is very little left over for the tog.

I've thought about doing it in the past too, just on the off-chance, but have never got beyond thinking about it due to the likely returns.
 
No! Unless you know exactly the kind of images people want for their sites and plug those. You really need to be dialled into what sells and what doesn't. Otherwise you're wasting your time as the commission per image is now so low. I've sold via Fine Art agencies but Shutterstock was a waste of time for my kind of images.
 
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snerkler said:
I've recently been considering selling some of my images online using sites like those mentioned in the title and was wondering if it's worth doing, or whether you get so little it's not worth the effort?

Is there a better way to sell online?
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Hi Toby, you have some amazing images, have you tried selling direct from your website?

I sell using shootproof but it's linked to specific events and getting traffic to the website is supported by the event organizers. I doubt it would be worth it for general images unless you had a way to bring lots of potential buyers to view. I've not tried the stock sites as I fear I've missed the boat on that.
 
I forgot to add to the above, when we're searching for imagery, we'd tend to avoid Sutterstock and Alamy (historically, they had worse shots). Instead starting with Getty, then maybe sites like Stocksy.
 
TimHughes said:
Hi Toby, you have some amazing images, have you tried selling direct from your website?

I sell using shootproof but it's linked to specific events and getting traffic to the website is supported by the event organizers. I doubt it would be worth it for general images unless you had a way to bring lots of potential buyers to view. I've not tried the stock sites as I fear I've missed the boat on that.
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Thanks Tim, I appreciate your comments. I've not as I'm not tech savvy when it comes to things like SEO and directing traffic to my site.
 
snerkler said:
Thanks Tim, I appreciate your comments. I've not as I'm not tech savvy when it comes to things like SEO and directing traffic to my site.
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tech savvy maybe helps. As I've heard from people's experiences, it's hugely time-consuming too. I may be thinking about it entirely the wrong way though. To my mind, events are much easier, people have the motivation to come and look and the organizers are happy to direct them to the right place.
 
Just because this piqued my interest, I signed up for Getty.

Here's the process for ref...

You have to download the Getty Contributor app.
You then upload 3-6 sample images to the app and they will assess them. Not sure if this is a creative decision or an IQ/QC decision. Either way it’s a bit of a faff, as I had to compress my shots to send them to my phone to upload.
Wait to be accepted.

Once you are (took me about 24 hours) you can start uploading images on your PC. If you've been good and tagged your images in LR first, then fingers crossed you won't need to add any more tags.

You need at least 5, and weirdly, it only accepts those 5 if they already exist. For example, it didn't take sunrise, but would take sunrise - dawn.

You can add others though, and it’s advisable to do so. Be both specific and general.

I know I’ve looked for shots in past with a specific term and been convinced the shot doesn’t exist, only to have someone use slightly different terms and find it in seconds.

Once uploaded them they need to be approved. That’s as far as I’ve got so far.

I suppose the worst that can happen is nothing sells and I've wasted a bit of time.

Looks like you get 15% for images. Or, if you give exclusive rights to Getty, then it’s 25%
 
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I put some stuff into a couple of photolibraries many years ago and did make a few sales . Both have now ceased trading but I still get a small payment through one from DACS But repro fees have plummetted since then so I just haven't bothered. You do all the hard work like uploading and keywording, and the library takes the biggest cut of an already very low fee. But there are still photographers making money teaching other photographers how to make money from stock photography.......
 
I got into Getty years ago via their Flickr affiliation. I upload intermittently and get a steady trickle of sales but it is a trickle. Occasionally a big sale, I got an image on an M&S biscuit package several years ago, but never very much when they take the lions cut.

I have a couple of images of deer in my local park that sell continuously to web sites for some reason but it is always peanuts.

I have a regular job and it’s nice to see a company use my image and get some beer money once in a while.
 
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Well, I've almost exhausted my 'back catalogue' if you can call it that.

Threw a lot of stuff at them, and so far had over 500 accepted - with about the same amount still under review.

Plus some videos.

I even had some accepted from my first digi-camera (a Pentax Optio 550) which only just scraped in to the 3MP requirement (mainly due to me being an idiot and accidentally saving all the images from that camera at something like 70% quality), plus a few from my iPhone.

It seems fairly inconsistent with some of the reasons for rejection. some came back saying this would be better in editorial, and then submit to editorial and it gets rejected. Some recognisable buildings were accepted, others weren't. And some where there was the merest hint of a person, were rejected as they said they were recognisable, Some with obvious street signs were accepted, yet others weren't with the reason being that you can see the street sign.

And any event where yoiu have to pay an entry fee for, were rejected, even if there were no people or brands visible (for instance a sign saying PIT ENTRANCE from the F1 race at Spa).

We'll see if anything comes of it, but I'm not sure how they all ended up on iStock rather than Getty - maybe they move to Getty if they get more hits?

What I would say, having gone through it is that you can save yourself a lot of time and effort by making sure the description in every photo before you hit submit, shows city, country, date, before going on to describe the image.

I'll let you know in a year if it was worth it (for me).

If I get a little beer money off the back of it, then great, and if not, then really all I've wasted is a couple of days of my time.
 
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Two categories maybe:
-generic photos, each with a low chance of selling but you might less lots
-photos that are of specific interest to individuals but you will only sell one

for the first category if all you need to do is upload then why not try. If you have to add descriptions to each one then that's a lot of effort.
for the second category there are fewer options. I have some interest in this one http://arethere.photos
 
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So reading up with regards to selling on Alamy, I now understand that images of a building, taken from the street or within a ticketed area, such as a zoo or museum, needs to be licensed. Is that correct? I was understanding that there was no reasonable right of privacy in a public place and assumed that extended in this instance. Could this cause problems?
 
The images don't need permission in the UK as we have 'freedom of panorama'. However, that's not going to stop stock agencies requiring them to cater for the global market.
 
DemiLion said:
The images don't need permission in the UK as we have 'freedom of panorama'. However, that's not going to stop stock agencies requiring them to cater for the global market.
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So as I am unable to limit the market to UK, those that could cause an issue need to be removed?
 
Talk to whomever you filed the images with. Usually you'd be allowed an editorial only licence.
 
Does that relate to any worthwhile amounts of money? I've only dabbled in this with Shutterstock with a dozen images or so, and not reached a threshold for payment. Probably my images are unwanted but also the rates are pretty poor. But I know someone on TP has made a decent side income from pictures of EV charging points (as I recall).
 
By the looks of it, it equates to a whopping $17.61.

Although if I'm honest, I'm not sure I've actually ever received that money.

There seems to be a complicated tax procedure to fill out - including getting some form of international tax reference number as the payments come from the States. I started doing that, but have not gone through it all as I keep forgetting.

I did it not because I was expecting to be able to retire, but more to see what the process involved. But it would be nice to get the payment.

What I've learned from it is this:

1: Your initial interactions and uploads will be a ballache if you're anything like me. Historically I didn't have Lightroom and didn't do much, if any, processing. I certainly didn't add tags to anything.
2: None of it feels particularly intuitive. I've managed to upload pics with completely the wrong titles - and you can't delete them once they're accepted.
3: Your most viewed/downloaded shots will probably surprise you. My most popular is a shot of some daffodils followed by a street sign, then a shot of a carousel.

1686741586344.png

4: Now that I know a bit more about how the getty system works, I process all my images by adding the year, the month, the location to the whole album, then adding specifics to individual shots or groups - even if I don't think they're worth uploading. I want to create the habit and it's a lot easier to do at this stage than to upload and have to do it.
5: Upload them in 'similar' batches if you can. Because if someone clicks on your photo, then it will say 'photos from the same series' and give people the option to view all the others you took/or uploaded into one album.
5: Is it worth it? At first I'd say definitely not as it was huge task. I had years and years of images to sort through, decide if they were worthy and then upload and add tags. now, it's a matter of minutes to upload a new batch, so I just think "Why not?"
 
I'm still to sell an image, but guess that likely says more about my photography skills than anything else! I take the time to caption and keyword and not had any rejects so guessing it is more about taking the time to read and supply trending pictures more than numbers?
 
Tulipone said:
So as I am unable to limit the market to UK, those that could cause an issue need to be removed?
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TBH - submit them and they'll tell you whether or not they'll accept it.

It seems weird WRT buildings. All UK castles are not accepted - I know this as I had some rejected.

Some buildings have their own IP and they will not be accepted.

I had some with the BT tower as the only visible (and recognisable) building (rather than as part of a panorama) and I thought I'd have issues, but they were accepted. Despite it having the BT logo clearly visible and having had other shots rejected because they had a logo in them.
 
lindsay said:
Does that relate to any worthwhile amounts of money? I've only dabbled in this with Shutterstock with a dozen images or so, and not reached a threshold for payment. Probably my images are unwanted but also the rates are pretty poor. But I know someone on TP has made a decent side income from pictures of EV charging points (as I recall).
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It can seem a bit pathetic with their $0.10 sales but every now and then you can get a much more substantial amount with no real explanation.
(on shutterstock) I recently sold a photo of electric car charger for $147 and a photo of coastal village for $70 last months payment was about $175. But that is easily highest ever.
Video clips are usually at least $17 each and can easily be over $50.
If you keep at it and upload stuff you have anyway it is still worth doing as a little sideline.
I tend to leave the payment in paypal account and blow it on more photo odds and ends.
I upload videos to blackbox and have a limited amount wirestock and adobe too.
Shutterstock is best by some margin but even though I don't like them one bit wirestock are currently #2 on total sales

They seem to have a list of certain historical sites which can't be accepted but shutterstock at least will accept almost any thing you might think copyrighted as 'editorial'.
In fact 'illustrative editorials' are among my best sellers this is basically pictures of almost any object either as new or in use - someone might buy to illustrate their own product or web page.
 
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Indeed, my only sale out of my few images on Shutterstock earned me $0.23, but hey, it's a sale!
More and better images, who knows - your results @4wd prove it works sometimes
 
4wd said:
In fact 'illustrative editorials' are among my best sellers this is basically pictures of almost any object either as new or in use - someone might buy to illustrate their own product or web page.
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That's true enough - very often our clients don't have their own products shot the way we want and won't pay for a shoot.

Though I'd never considered doing it.
 
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