I have become partially reliant on microstock in recent years.

It has helped me to do some things in life I would not be able to do without it and I have a full time job - and I'm not talking about splurging on indulgences here. Rising costs and cost-of-living pressures has eroded my day-job discretionary income quite significantly.

Some people still make a living from microstock and I have to say you have my sincere respect. Clearly you have worked hard and smart to achieve this.

Others, like myself, have microstock as a supplementary albeit necessary side-income. Others have microstock simply as a hobby and making a bit of extra income, at whatever amounts, is like a small reward.         

My microstock income pays for all trips and provides me with guilt-free upgrades.

Wish it could provide for more but it is what it is in 2024.

I am working hard to make stock my full time income again. I am a carer and need a job that works from home. Even doing workshops is risky, because I might have to cancel at short notice.

I still know enough people with a full time income from stock, but of course they have been producing consistently and most of them do high quality people stock.

Before I restarted my journey in Sept 22 I did several weeks of intense research over all agencies what is missing. I found so many huge wide empty gaps, that I am confident i can keep adding content for 100 years.

The biggest gaps are in video but also with regular photos there is so much missing. Then I started learning ai and now I can also add illustrations and image content that would be difficult to create with normal methods.

I am also optimistic that designers will always prefer to save time by checking agencies first, plus having legal reassurance over using free image sites, taking their own pictures with a mobile phone or spending an afternoon with endless prompting.

Adobe is my main agency at the moment, but I do want to get back into normal video for everyone and also 20% normal photo content for most agencies.

We will see how it goes, this year is usually 100% more per month than last, next year will be the real challenge. I need 30-40k, ideally 45-50 from all agencies combined.

If I am ever free again, I would like to travel more and add editorial content.

I now have 6k files on Adobe, to make it work I probably need at least 30k. Or 20k very, very well researched and targeted files.

For new themes, people, halloween, futuristic content...I usually need 3-4 seasons to really understand what customers like to buy. The process is slow but quite steady.

eta

Over all agencies combined it looks like I will be reaching 12/13k this year.

I don't think I will be able to double it again next year, but hope to get a minimum of 15k and it all goes well maybe 18k. By 2026 I hope to be over a steady 20k, but it is difficult to predict this far out.

Until then it is an exercise in being very careful with money and cutting down on costs everywhere.

Microstock,or maybe I can just say Adobe,because for me everything depends on how things will go on Adobe.

I had a life full of satisfactions and I have lots of good memories,everything was going great,then suddenly everything changed,due to facts beyond my control,and I started in microstock.....

your choice, but i don't think going exclusive is a solid strategy, especially if you're looking to microstock as a major source of income.

one of the major factors beyond your control is the fate of individual agencies - what do you do when your extensive portfolio disappears or diminishes due to a company's decline (eg exclusives with SS)
l
it's comparable to investing all your retirement funds in a single stock.

For me stock $$ finances Photo Gear and Electronic Toys. 

IMHO if someone wants to live from stock, it might not be possible anymore even with full time work.  Must do stills and video;  must shoot all kinds of things, not just what he/she enjoys.  Must do AI, illustrations, etc.  Contribute to many agencies, not just Adobe.  Superior metadata knowledge,  Photoshop proficiency, List goes on.  10 or 15 years ago it was different story, but not anymore

Jade the TikToker that makes 20.000 / month licensing crooked iPhone images will probably disagree though.

I'm in a good situation where I have my full time job -remote plus traveling for meetings once every 2 months).

So for me, my salary pay the bills, and stock pays traveling and new equipment.

I'm officially based in Berlin(Germany) but I have been traveling almost 24/7. I mostly spend a month traveling and then ca a week home. And yes, it is not traveling 24/7 when you have 'normal work'. I do my work, and then in the afternoons I go out do some sightseeing, take photos, enjoy the life and then spend the nights editing them and putting into stock.

Not a ideal for everyone (I'm single, no responsibilities at home etc).

But this is all thanks to stock. As I said - my job pays my bills, food etc. But traveling and all those extras in life are thanks to stock photography.

And yes, as some of you already said - it brings money if you treat it as a business and not as a hobby.

You might be laughing but every time I travel I make an extra list on google maps where do I want to go (exactly with street etc) where do I want to take photos, I research what has been already posted, what is missing - i have been doing this for years, so the process is not time consuming (maybe one evening before the trip).

Plus AI -again, you might be laughing - I have an excel sheet with all the key holidays but as well some funny celebrations, and I try to produce some AI for those occasions. But this is for me a fun time to spend an evening with calendar and AI and see what I can create.

To sum it up - if I wanted to stay at home, not travel, eat basic food then yeah stock money would be enough. But thats just exiting - if that's enough for some then OK.

Luckily, I have a job that I like, that doesn't collide with stock (and thanks to traveling is kind of supporting and adding to my stock journey) I enjoy this lifestyle.

Before 2020 I have been working in retail and for 8 years I couldn't see my family for Christmas (they are in Poland and I emigrated to Berlin) so I really enjoy and appreciate the freedom i have right now. And that's thanks to stock as well.

I have been on Adobe since 2016. Started with photos of my dogs and trees and sky and flowers in my parents garden in the middle of nowhere. So yes, going from lame photos to good income is possible if you treat it as a business (I don't say you have to travel the world, but do the research, upload the right photos, good titles, good keywords etc)

Quote from: Injustice for all on August 31, 2024, 07:51

Microstock,or maybe I can just say Adobe,because for me everything depends on how things will go on Adobe.

I had a life full of satisfactions and I have lots of good memories,everything was going great,then suddenly everything changed,due to facts beyond my control,and I started in microstock.....

your choice, but i don't think going exclusive is a solid strategy, especially if you're looking to microstock as a major source of income.

one of the major factors beyond your control is the fate of individual agencies - what do you do when your extensive portfolio disappears or diminishes due to a company's decline (eg exclusives with SS)
l
it's comparable to investing all your retirement funds in a single stock.

mine is a choice that I thought about well,I started with many agencies,I have many inactive ports,which are there,and perhaps in a distant future I could go back to upload again,but I definitely won't be returning to most.

First I have to think about being successful on Adobe,then I can think about the rest,anyway if I can't have a decent income on Adobe I don't think I can do better elsewhere,and then if Adobe Stock fails,imagine what happens to the other agencies.

in my opinion it is the best strategy,because it allows me to work in the best conditions,take care of keywords,produce more,better understand what sells best on Adobe... etc.. don't underestimate the advantages of working only with Adobe.

now...August is over is math time!

or maybe I should say mad time! 

100%.

I don't think Adobe wants a huge shitstorm of angry graphic designers and photographers badmouthing Adobe all over the internet and recommending a switch to affinity photos. They are not stupid.

Keeping us happy is good for their business, Adobe is the only agency where we are also users and customers. Plus many of us have the client contacts to keep recommending Adobe to buyers.

Look at how Shutterstock lost clients after their disaster.

They even bought several agencies and client contracts for over 500 million dollars...and still the volume of customers and downloads has gone down.

How do you even do that???

And imagine if they had kept their royalty system and invested 500 million into marketing and a deeper connection with the buyer/client groups?

I am quite sure Adobe likes us happy. We are a great marketing tool and like to bring people to buy from our Adobe ports.

Believe me, they care. Especially if we start deactivating files and ports...millions of files suddenly missing??...they care...

This is a huge company, they don't want bad internet press.

Not sure why prices should change, why is ai  worse than all those places with free content??

What could be worse than free??

I mean the majority of image users, never buy from agencies anyway, they either steal outright on the internet or use something with a cc license or the free sites.

Ai wastes far too much time, plus you need to have a good visual mind. If you don't know what you really want then ai cannot produce it for you. You need a good understanding of how visuals work to get the most out of ai.

What I do see coming is that agencies might actually start to pay more for images with a real model release.

Or if you have a port with 12k model released files then agencies pay out 5% more for those files.

Because the number of people working with real models, that might indeed go down.

But real people content will always be needed, plus the ai training machine needs them too.

So real people and real content will increase in value IMO.

Ai is just another medium, like adding video or illustrations. I don't see why it should make stock cheaper.

It adds more variety content and broadens the collection.

Gradually all agencies will take ai, but Adobe now has a very serious head start.

Believe me, they care. Especially if we start deactivating files and ports...millions of files suddenly missing??...they care...
....

What I do see coming is that agencies might actually start to pay more for images with a real model release.
....

But real people content will always be needed, plus the ai training machine needs them too.

So real people and real content will increase in value IMO....

even a few million desertions by a tiny group of discontented artists won't matter much to any agency's bottom line.

but the real entry for AI is replacing model released images - why pay for an editorial, model released image when you can get an AI image with people who you don't need a release for?

already I have AI variations on my digital images that sell better, likely since they're not limited by being editorial. And that's with today's AI engines. they'll only get better! why would agencies pay more for a dying category, when buyers don't care about 'realism'.

Hello,

First post here on that forum  . Use to deal with Blackbox Guild (got 1500 shots), but I understand that's really bad for me as wirestock could also be. Loosing a lot of money and my power as contributor.
I'm a filmmaker from France, and like @cobalt I'll try to make a living out of it. As he said basicly in each of his message, I think that stock is not dead. May be stock photography is way to hard. But in video you can still make a living if you're good and produce content on a regular basis.

My idea is not to rely on 1 plateform. Basicly I'm on subscription plateform (artgrid got around 400 shots) and I'll try to get to filmsupply, storyblock also in the subscribed world. Stocksy would be great also.
My purpose is to go on P5 (yeah ballzy haha), videohive, and a lot more like dissolve, filmpac... Using Xpiks app. Because if one plateform close, then buyers will go somewhere else, and I should not lose much incomes.

So from what I read here and there, the biggest mistake is to think that SS, Adobe are still the biggest and the one to be. I guess that's not true anymore. The thing is I even considere going on plateform like freepiks. But that's making me cry somehow, I guess I'll never do it because I'm a creator and I don't want to devaluate my job. But I'm thinking about this kind of new business models anyway (I've seen that blackbox is uploading on freepiks, so I already have some stuffs on it), as some are using AI.

The idea is this also :

it is not about the bottom line, it is about customer reactions.

again, if you beliebe ai will destroy the stock market, you can and should readjust income streams.

personally i see huge opportunities and i am trying to improve my skills every day.

I also want to get better at shooting. And stock footage would help me achieving that goal with the possibility to write documentaries and to shoot video clips for friends, for crraftsmen/women which couldn't have a pro filmmaker without my stock incomes.
I'll live with a low income at the beginin. But I still rely on some other gigs that I don't want to lose anyway.

The final world for me here is : diversifying  . That's not only applying it to stock, but to other shooting type.

I guess to succed, we need to shot exclusif and non exclusif content, to upload on subscription / per clip... we need to get some jobs externally, like shooting for travelling company, or any company out there... Always in video for me.

Thank for your words here, it's really helpfull to begin into the business.

Ahh and btw, I got around 6 or 7K$ yearly already for the last 3 years. I haven't uploads much.  really big mistake !

Hello,

First post here on that forum  . Use to deal with Blackbox Guild (got 1500 shots), but I understand that's really bad for me as wirestock could also be. Loosing a lot of money and my power as contributor.
I'm a filmmaker from France, and like @cobalt I'll try to make a living out of it. As he said basicly in each of his message, I think that stock is not dead. May be stock photography is way to hard. But in video you can still make a living if you're good and produce content on a regular basis.

My idea is not to rely on 1 plateform. Basicly I'm on subscription plateform (artgrid got around 400 shots) and I'll try to get to filmsupply, storyblock also in the subscribed world. Stocksy would be great also.
My purpose is to go on P5 (yeah ballzy haha), videohive, and a lot more like dissolve, filmpac... Using Xpiks app. Because if one plateform close, then buyers will go somewhere else, and I should not lose much incomes.

So from what I read here and there, the biggest mistake is to think that SS, Adobe are still the biggest and the one to be. I guess that's not true anymore. The thing is I even considere going on plateform like freepiks. But that's making me cry somehow, I guess I'll never do it because I'm a creator and I don't want to devaluate my job. But I'm thinking about this kind of new business models anyway (I've seen that blackbox is uploading on freepiks, so I already have some stuffs on it), as some are using AI.

The idea is this also :

it is not about the bottom line, it is about customer reactions.

again, if you beliebe ai will destroy the stock market, you can and should readjust income streams.

personally i see huge opportunities and i am trying to improve my skills every day.

I also want to get better at shooting. And stock footage would help me achieving that goal with the possibility to write documentaries and to shoot video clips for friends, for crraftsmen/women which couldn't have a pro filmmaker without my stock incomes.
I'll live with a low income at the beginin. But I still rely on some other gigs that I don't want to lose anyway.

The final world for me here is : diversifying  . That's not only applying it to stock, but to other shooting type.

I guess to succed, we need to shot exclusif and non exclusif content, to upload on subscription / per clip... we need to get some jobs externally, like shooting for travelling company, or any company out there... Always in video for me.

Thank for your words here, it's really helpfull to begin into the business.

Ahh and btw, I got around 6 or 7K$ yearly already for the last 3 years. I haven't uploads much.  really big mistake !

Fotolia, they lost a huge percentage in 4 weeks, customers were livid. That was when they took our content without asking us and put it into their 1 dollar store, including all the Fotolia exclusive content. You can read up on that history on msg. But they did reach out to us, gave people an opt in or opt out and those keeping their files on 1 dollar then got an additional royalty as compensation.

Shortly afterwards they were bought by Adobe and we never had any problems like that again. Adobe really goes above and beyond in having a team that talks to us.

I am sure Shutterstock had a similar experience, but since customer complaints probably bother them as much as producer complaints, they just went ahead into their demise.

So customers started switching to Adobe and SS keeps losing client contracts even if they buy entire agencies...how do you even do that?

There well also some other shitstorms. Port deactivations or removing content has been the small producers tool that is more effective than years in court. It really annoys customers if they finalise their projects and suddenly content is missing. It is an extreme measure, but actually happens naturally when producers lose all trust and feel ripped off.

Which is why so many agencies introduced rules that now make it difficult to deactivate files.

---

- ai competing with commercial/editorial

There has always been limits on editorial, so if someone came along and took a street scene with a cute couple in the foreground model released, it would probably outsell the normal editorial image.

ai can produce images with people yes, but even if you tell it to create cute couple in paris" it will not be in Paris anyone who knows Paris will see the difference.

In principle ai can produce people from anywhere. I am trying to do some content with elderly people from around the world and I don't have to fly to different locations to hire models. However...they still need to sell...and I think that is because if you want something authentic you will always prefer the real photo.

So you are saying you have new competition not just from people doing a model released shooting at your favorite editorial location, but now there are ai images, simulating that location with fake people, did I get that right?

If customers don't care about reality for advertising, then I can see that as fresh competition.

There are producers with images in malls, contcert venues, cinema, who obtained a model release for their shootings which gave them a distinct advantage because few people have that.

Now anyone can produce images with people in a fake cinema.

So yes, exactly those areas face competition from ai.

The question that I would ask myself - is it worth doing this kind of ai yourself?

Because you know the locations in reality, you can produce better ai because you will know the details.

This also translates to normal photos.



- If you do a search on Adobe for "breakfast germany" you get all kinds of German food stuff, lots of sausages...but on the first page of my page search only a premium image from Westend61 had a real German vibe to it.

I have to admit I was suprised, it really is not difficult to systematically decorate your table, your balcony, your office desk and make a nice looking very german breakfast, even with all the regional variations. With or without people.

But I couldn't find a producer who did that.

So now I have a new project, just make a nice breakfast table once a week and take photos and videos. No ai.

Once I get into that breakfast theme, I might start to expand with ai images. First from different regions on Europe or the Middle east that I know, maybe a little from the US, the places I have been to, but I might also try breakfast from vietnam or india, once I have done some research. Including ai people.

But I wouldn't just rely on the prompt, I would actually look it up what a breakfast in vietnam really looks like. Maybe find some vietnam cooking blog or youtube channel for inspiration or a documentary about daily family life.

Then with that in mind, I would try to produce content.

This would be my way of working for a project with ai if I had no personal knowledge of the genre.


Ai will allow people to create competing content while not having to travel and without paying models.

However working with real models you can produce a huge coherent series.

With ai it is just single images. Perhaps one day we can license avatars to create our own stories with avatar people, but right now that is not possible.

Personally I believe the answer to the threat of ai, is to make your own ai and get your royalties for the content that was stolen for ai training like this.

All my greeting cards are part of their system. Now I make new cards with ai for compensation. And because I know my genre well, I will get better sales than people who just prompt "beautiful easter card".


We will have our own answers to the challenge of ai. Personally I believe it is an interesting creative tool and opportunity.

@cobalt:

Also microstock contributors are such a small minority of Photoshop users, that Adobe likely doesn't even care about making them angry.

Theres a whooping 23 million Photoshop users per month

One big thing it would be nice for people to call "AI" for what it really is "S.T" - "sophisticated theft". "AI" (aka "ST" machines) simply steal & 'blend' images/videos/etc into "models" that they then "re-blend" into new items). But its basically just theft

They are not. They learn just like human and create from scratch (filtering from the noise, not sampling or something), just like human. That's why it called training

Quote from: cobalt on September 02, 2024, 00:29

...

in previous shitsstorms agencies lost a serious percentage of content, often very very good content. it is not about losing a few sunsets and hotdogs.

which agencies lost such large amounts?  SS is doing fine despite feeble attempts to 'take them down' by a few dozen artists
 

SS, FT, IS, any of them are not moved or swayed by big or small or highly popular content providers, leaving. Yuri went exclusive with IS for some time. Other than that, Agencies do not have back door deals, in normal operations, to keep or pay big producers. They don't get anything different from the rest of us. Africa Studio deactivated their account on SS, nothing changed. They came back. So much for protests.

Was it really that many? A few dozen? Maybe people clicked on a petition, but the actual group that was serious, wasn't many people.

  They didn't lose cheeseburger king. I can't speak for hot dogs?