I know many people who do stock as a full time job. With still increasing income. So yes, it is absolutely possible.

From what you are writing it sounds like you are absolutely refusing to move beyond what has worked for you in the past.

If you are doing stock full time, you can easily do something else instead of nature and landscape.

Do model released shootings, studio work, do localized food, most importantly -  do video.

If drone video is currently the best the way for serious video income, do that.

You are simply resisting any improvement to your sales. You cannot blame the industry if your income is not growing.

There are some factors nobody can influence like the crash at Shutterstock and pond5 because of agency incompetence.

So go and upload where the money is.

Do you have a getty house contract? A contract with stocksy? Or any of the other premium brands?

I know "the wall", I have hit it before in my previous stock life.

The way around that is to explore new genres and new agencies.

Start working with people, there is so much content missing. I would love to do more with people, but I am currently mostly housebound for family reasons.

Find yourself some acting students or happy retired people looking for some side income.

There is so much you can do.

People AND video is really empty, hardly anyone does great people video content.

I am sorry, but for people doing stock FULL TIME as their total day job, maybe even with assistants, it is absolutely not unusual to produce 500 files a month.

How else will they make the money? These are the people with professional ports over 100k files, maybe even more than 200k if they have been doing this for 20 years.

Doing stock as a side hustle to your main job is a completely different situation.

I find the information presented very impressive and interesting, but I have to admit it is the first time ever I hear someone saying that 30k a year was reliably reached for a long time by uploading only 400 files (or less) a year.

Maartje van Caspel is the only one I can think of that for a certain time on istock was one of the top 5 exclusive artists with only around 1000 ultrauseful files and probably had a reliable income of at least 6-10k a month. Perhaps at some time even more.

But she is unusually gifted and today no longer does stock.

Everyone else who has a revenue of over 10k a month, which is what you need to keep a business with a team going, they certainly upload a lot more than 400 files a year or 100 videos a month.

But whatever some people with apparently out of this world unusual talent was possible in the past...these days are gone forever and will never come back.

I do believe video has a lot more options, simply because there is very little video available. Even if you just do shots with a mobile phone, you can still carve out a niche for yourself and have very little competition.

Less than 60 million files versus over 1 Billion over all agencies combined.

 I will certainly try to process my videos much faster.

But to really make reliable money in video longterm I need to do a very thorough analysis of the video market, which takes time and lots of test shots. And at least two years of ciollecting lots of details.

I can do photos that will sell reasonably well (I think) for specific genres in my sleep. But also in photo there is still a lot to learn and subjects to explore I have never done before.

Same for illustrations, I can now do ai illustrations, but I still need to learn about the illustration market. I have learned that oil painting style is not very popular...

What I keep hearing about video is that drone shots are very lucrative.

But I don't think that this year I will have time to learn a new tool and new genre.

Eventually I will get there. I will find a video genre that works for me and brings reliable longterm money.

Thank you for all the insights, it is fascinating.

I always mean original creations, that then get distributed to various agencies. If 100 fresh clips can increase income significantly, I should absolutely do much more.

The crash at SS and also at pond5 is not the fault of contributors or too many videos etc...there are still less than 60 million videos over all agencies combined. "The horde" of copycats is not yet coming for video.

I haven't really uploaded many videos because for me this means I also have to do a lot of active research.

My current videos are usually just some clips from daily life, usually food or editorial of events like German carnival, and also some travel clips.

That is not really a "strategy to success" the way I do it with images.

And for me videos also sell more slowly then photos, the first sale often takes more than 2 years.

So again, thank you for the inspiration to get going and process my videos.

eta

sorry for engaging the troll before. I have now added him to my ignore list.

eta2

rank improved a bit

@pacesetter

yes the downfall of ss has left a big gap that other agencies cannot compensate for now. But that is not the fault of the producers and with the getty takeover there is some hope prices and sales volume can rise again.

But you still have a full time income as a basis and can gradually increase video production.

Perhaps try some new genres that are easy to do but haven't uploaded before. Little clips from daily life or once a week one dedicated little shoot in something new.

Yes I got that email as well. It is intentionally ambiguous and I don't think they mean actual pixel by pixel duplicats in my own port.

I think they are going after people who upload the exact same images to several different ports. Or the people that buy a "ready made" set of ai images, fully keyworded... but are not aware that the same set is being sold to hundreds of people.

And maybe also the near identical ai images that are being constantly uploaded because people use the exact same prompt on the exact same image generator.

Or they feed adobe bestsellers into the generators for near exact duplication.

I do think in principle it is a good move, but I am concerned.

Even with the best intentions...if there is a hunter duplicate algo software, who knows what it fines???

I also have many similar or identical titles - Easter bunny with easter eggs...if they get flagged because of similar titles, my port might die...

Yes, I am very confident that I can return to something between 2-3k a month on average. I would love a steady 4k, but I cannot make that projection now, I can think about how to achieve that once I reach a reliable 2k.

My main dilemma is that I am not producing/uploading full time, because I am a family carer. That just sucks a lot of time and energy out of me.

Most days I spend from 8-2pm on the computer, then family work from 2-7/8pm and then maybe 1-3 hours on the computer again, depending how tired I am.

Sometimes I can squeeze in a full day, but not always and on that day I also have errands to run.

So, let us say I have 60% work capacity.

Last year I made on average 800 dollars a month and added 4000 files mostly to Adobe.

So this year I would like to reach a minimum of 1000 average, ideally 1200-1500, depends a lot on the end of year sales which are often more than 50% of my yearly revenue.

January 25 was 60% more than Jan 24. Feb 25 will also be at least 60% more. And just for Adobe actually 80% more  compared to February 24.

In absolute terms the months will be around 750 dollars (over all agencies). Again not enough to live from but the increase is very good.

I currently have 7900 files on Adobe.

And istock, video overall, more for blackbox have all still not been "activated" because I am still processing so much content for Adobe.

But this week-end I have my first editorial/ carnival shooting for the year, together with a stocker friend. And I am working on organising camera content shared shootings with others, mostly centered around food. I would like to build up a nice "real authentic daily life" food video port with a clearly visible German/localized twist.

Lately I have been doing a lot of research on video and it is even more open than I thought.

I just need to get into the habit of processing and uploading my videos. The average for video sales is around 8 dollars on Adobe, around 15 on pond5. istock is very erratic and I still have very few videos there.

Stock is a job I absolutely love to do, I can also still do it into my retirement and my current pension is tiny anyway.

And it fits in perfectly with any family demands. Once the ports are activated and running i could even be ill for a few weeks and still have an income.


---



So, let us say just from Adobe I would like to have a reliable 30 000 downloads a year. At a baseline of 70 cents rpd that would be 21k just from Adobe.

This could be achieved with 30 files selling 1000 times each.

Or 30 000 files selling once each.

If 2025 has 40% more downloads than 2024, then  on Adobe alone I should be able to reach nearly 1k a month average for this year.

Then there is the question how much I can activate other places, although the real financial increase will probably start coming next year, not this year.

etc...

So my current plan says i will probably reach my target in 2 years and should see a very good increase this year.

Now...how do I survive until then...well, I am looking into many options, especially lowering running costs.



Biggest risks on Adobe


- the crazy hunter killer algo that could deactivate my port at any time without me doing anything criminal or wrong. I think it is absolutely horrible that Adobe keeps hanging that threat over our head.

- the copy cats, mostly ai copycats

Since I am going for a long tail portfolio with mostly very niche images that I expect to sell 1-3 times a year, not 100 or 1000 times a year, i hope my port will not be so attractive for duplicators.

I will do a lot of localized camera content which is difficult to copy from people in other countries. (like the local carnival, localized food etc..)

Hiding successful files, especially video, on places like Blackboxglobal where my total port is not visible under my name.

Also the very long Adobe queue helps, especially for seasonal content. By the time my holiday files are approved it is too late for the copy cats, their files won't reach easter or christmas in time for this years season.

Greeting cards anyway have so much competition even with a large ai volume it is very hard to get into that market. I have the algo advantage because I have an old portfolio...


Biggest overall risks

 - a deep recession because of world political nonsense, especially the orange menace madness coming out of the USA.

Again a reason why I would love to have more European centric content, I think our markets will grow closer and maybe become even stronger in the coming trade wars.

- I become ill and cannot produce or work, or my caring situation becomes even more demanding/full time. But you cannot plan that anyway, i can just try to stay healthy and organize our lives carefully


etc...

So...I obviously spend a lot of time analysing and wondering - can it still work??

And I think for my very personal case, somewhere between 20 years experience, good research skills AND old ports with good algo positions, yes I think it is possible with very hard work.

Also having lower costs because I own my little home. If I had to pay rent, especially in this location, it would be impossible, but since i only pay around 600 a month for utilities, fees and taxes as an owner, it works.

So..with a lot of personal details...I genuinely believe it is possible IN MY CASE.

Which doesn't translate to everyone and especially not to total newbies just starting out.

I had a very mundane and boring file that sold over 800 times in its first year, then 600  the second then 300 last year. This year will probably be a lot less, because it had very few sales so far.

I uploaded many more files for the genre but they had very few sales. It is also not a rare subject, millions of similar files. I just got lucky with that.

Maybe there are people who can plan 1000 dl a year files, I certainly can't.

So I am trying the long tail strategy, trying to find small niches with few similar files and then hope to get 1-5 sales a year reliably.

Still too early to tell if this strategy works.

On Adobe, if you look at the bestsellers it seems to be ai png that does well.

eta



A little improvement.

Good, long  story Peter. But even Cobalt who is doing a seriously effort doesn't get further then like $100 a week (at least last week it seems like that). Maybe $200 0r $300 a week when luck is her way? That is not enough in the western world we live in to get bills paid. Unless you have wellfare on the side and don't report income.
Maybe ZeroTalent has enough income to come by (haven't heard from him for a while now though). But otherwise it seems pretty useless to pursue a living from Microstock no matter what history there was how we got to this point in time.

Last year my average was around 800 dollars a month, from a few hundred to over 1600 in a month. And only my Adobe port was "activated", the rest was income without uploading for nearly 11 years. (except eyeem, but they are currently dead)

On Adobe my port grew by around 4000 files to around 7000 by end of 2024.

I have only been active again, since end of 2022. So basically two years and my adobe port was around 1400 old files when I restarted it.

I think that is a good result.

January was around 750 over all agencies, now with istock results. 58% more in total than Jan 2024.

So...no, I have not yet reached 3k a month.

But for the situation I have no complaints.

Stock is not dead and I am confident I will reach my goals.

But I can't reach them in 6-18 months.

If I had put that effort into a faceless youtube channel, etsy sticker shop, coloring amazon books, chatgpt quickbooks...or a weightloss youtube channel...how I lost 40kg with no drugs and no surgery...maybe I would earn more.

Or just selling french fries and burgers...

But I like this job and want to get back to a higher income.

However for portfolio size, what kind of income do people expect for now 7800 files on adobe and a few old ports?

You are all welcome to earn more

eta

I am documenting my journey, because people keep saying it is impossible to grow and earn more. Yet, here we are.

This is just adobe. Beginning to look quite nice. I still need a lot more, but...

eta2

for a reliable 3k a month over all agencies I will certainly need at least 30k files.

or 20k very smart files.

And probably at least another three years.

eta3

When I reach a reliable 12-1500 I will probably stop documenting.

I doubt anyone would break their nda to share with outsiders.

But there is this article that gives some insights. While it  only mentions a part of the team, from what I understand many others also left/were encouraged to leave who opposed the brillant new management.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/chinese-censorship-or-work-elsewhere-inside-shutterstock-s-free-speech-n1144211

""The culture that we want to build is also one where when leadership makes a decision, we move on. We commit, and we move on," Pavlovsky said at the Dec. 10 internal meeting."

I guess that was not just a strategy  for free speech issues.

Now down to 3620

That is great to hear. Not surre I ever had that on adobe.

my rank is now correct at 3390

dropping, dropping, dropping

now pos 1820

It�s a start.

You will move up very quickly with more sales.

my weekly dropped to 1290