Adobe Stock: Get paid for photos

What is Adobe Stock?

Adobe Stock is a division of the giant software company, which is one of the biggest names in multimedia and creativity software. The site enlists freelance photographers to upload their images and sell them through the site.

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How it works

Creators register with the site and upload their photos. Adobe stock attempts to sell them to newspapers, websites, advertisers and others. When photos sell, the site promises to pay photographers 33% to 35% of the amount it collects.

Discounted subscriptions

However, Adobe Stock makes its photos available to buyers largely through discounted subscription plans that give users the ability to upload between three and several hundred images a month. That means that photographers who sell through the site are likely to earn between 33 cents and 3.30 for any individual sale.

Volume is key

If your photos prove popular and are uploaded frequently, Adobe Stock’s volume can still produce decent royalty payments. But to compete with the thousands of other photos on the site, your art needs to be extraordinary.

That said, Adobe Stock does not limit your rights to sell your photos elsewhere. So you can consider the site just one of many stock photo options in your quiver.

Recommendatons:

If you want to sell your images as stock photos, your best bet is to sign up with many stock photo firms. That’s because you’re not likely to make a fortune on any individual sale. However, you might make a reasonable amount of continuing income by selling through all the stock photo sites.

Some to consider: Foap, Alamy and Shutterstock. GettyImages is also worth considering, but we’d steer you away from their exclusive licenses. You can sign up with Shutterstock here.

You may also want to upload photos to print-on-demand shops, such as Society6 and FineArtAmerica. Both of these sites encourage you to use your images to decorate everything from coffee cups to puzzles. They make the products; you just earn a royalty on every sale.

You may also want to read our blog post: Make Money with Photography

Want to try Adobe Stock?

Here’s a link to the Adobe Stock site

What their contributors say:

PetaPixel earned a royalty of 25 cents. (Adobe appears to have hiked its minimum royalty rate since 2017, when PetaPixel’s post was written.)

From G2.com

As a photographer that regularly submits to Adobe Stock, I am hard pressed to make much profit on any of my photos. Most buyers have the subscription model which means I only make 99c each time a user purchases any photo.

I have been on both ends of Adobe Stock, as both a buyer and a seller. I am a photographer and I choose to sell some of my images on Adobe Stock. It is competitive; there are many other stock image platforms available. But as a seller, this is more of a disadvantage for me, as images sell for a lower price than on some competing platforms.

10/26/2021