It hard to believe that I have spent almost 18 years in this industry now and have amassed an enormous spreadsheet of data about earnings and agencies over the years. I must have been bored today because I created some charts of the earnings across the various agencies in 2020 and now in 2025 to see what lessons I might learn. Here are the two charts:



Clearly the big winner is Adobe Stock and Shutterstock is falling pretty rapidly, but what is most disappointing, I think, is how the smaller agencies have become pretty irrelevant and we are now much more at the mercy of a few large agencies and their policies. I used to think that having images with Dreamstime, 123RF etc. spread the risk a bit, but that is becoming less and less useful over time.

The full article is here if you want more details.  https://backyardsilver.com/top-stock-agencies-for-photographers-in-2026/

Steve