Can you make money selling stock images on sites such as Alamy?

Chris1977 · Jul 15, 2017

Can you make money selling stock images on sites such as Alamy or Istock. I have about 50 photographs on Alamy for a couple months and I have not made a single sale. I think the photos are pretty good quality. I guess my question is does anybody make money selling stock photography anymore or is there just to much competition?

Light Guru · Jul 15, 2017

Selling stock photos is hard. Because they sell for pennies these days, that means you only get a fraction of a penny for each sale. You have to have a TON of photos available so your 50 is nothing. they also must be well tagged and be images that are in the most sellable categories. My guess is your images are not.

KmH · Jul 15, 2017

Do your 50 photos have people in them?
Are your images offered for RF or RM licensing?

Those few that do make money don't make much money, and if they make money they have way more than 50 images on each stock site, and their photos have people in them.
Alamy says they only have technical requirements and no content requirements before they will accept a photo, but they don't much care if your photo sells or not.

Yes, the market is massively over saturated with photos and as Light Guru mentions some genres of photos sell much better than others.

Chris1977 · Jul 15, 2017

No people in the pictures. Mostly landscape photos or animal pictures. Selling Royalty free

smoke665 · Jul 15, 2017

Sure, if everyone else quit putting their images out there, I'd make a killing!!!

Overread · Jul 15, 2017

You'll make more money going to a local town fair or market event or heck even just an auction and selling a single framed print than you will make on stock today. The stock market is basically dead, even the big owners of the companies managing photography stock are just waiting for it to collapse in on itself. By devaluing photography so much its basically made it impossible to work in any more. Those who are making money are those who have vast libraries of photos already; those who have marketed themselves; who have iconic photos and who are just plain darn lucky.
And they are in a vast minority.

If you're not going to sell anything else for anything else then it won't do any harm, but chances are you just really won't make anything from it.

Derrel · Jul 15, 2017

Stock photos market has some secrets to it....look into the "old" book written by a highly successful stock shooter, and then research the new-era issues and problems...

This market is a dead-end compared to what it used to be! The days of $75 and $150 one-time use and $350-$500 one-time cover use shots for small-time publicatyions are long,long gone! All of that "easy money" that existed back when it cost .$.89 to make every image...gone.

Tzhere are billions of images being shot every year now...

Stock images are worth $.17 to $.39 now....sheesh...

More money in soda and beer bottle collecting than in stock image sales.

smoke665 · Jul 15, 2017

Derrel said:
More money in soda and beer bottle collecting than in stock image sales.

Hadn't thought of it this way, guess I need to start riding the ATV when I go out shooting, that way I could collect cans along the way!!! At least I'd be able to say I was making money at my "hobby". LOL

Derrel · Jul 15, 2017

Ride that ATV down fraternity row on Sunday mornings around 5 AM...loads of money, just littering the ground!

vintagesnaps · Jul 15, 2017

Apparently not... Alamy isn't a US company I don't think (even if they may have a US office) - their phone number is an overseas area code. Not sure how that would affect US copyright being able to protect your photos that you put on their site. And royalty free is probably the worst way to go for the photographer. Look at the Terms & Conditions to see what you're agreeing to.

KmH · Jul 15, 2017

The USA is a signator, along with most other countries on the planet, of the international Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works which enforces a requirement that countries recognize copyrights held by the citizens of all other parties to the convention.

No people = no sales and RF means little to no money.
http://www.alamy.com/contributor/how-to-sell-images/understanding-stock-image-licensing/?section=6

benhasajeep · Jul 15, 2017

Derrel said:
Ride that ATV down fraternity row on Sunday mornings around 5 AM...loads of money, just littering the ground!

That's no lie. I was a Delta Sig living in the house for a couple years. In Michigan where I grew up. Bottles and cans had a dime deposit. We had an agreement with local homeless / bums. That they could have all the bottles and cans after a party. If they stayed away during the party. And IF they cleaned the entire property. We would wake up the next morning and the yard would be spotless, all the tools hung up in the shed nice and neat. All the trash in bags and in the trash cans!

Chris1977 · Jul 16, 2017

smoke665 said:
Sure, if everyone else quit putting their images out there, I'd make a killing!!!

That's a bit discouraging but thanks for the advice!

smoke665 · Jul 16, 2017

Chris1977 said:
That's a bit discouraging but thanks for the advice!

Sorry but the online image sales remind me of the "click" revenue you can make by posting ads on your Web site. The only ones who make any money are the promoters.

Derrel touched on it briefly earlier, there was a time when there was a cost associated with producing the images you put out there. Just think for a minute would you have put those 50 images online if you knew it would cost you $50- $75 to do so. Now anyone with a relatively inexpensive digital camera can be a creative artist putting 1000's of images out there at little if any cost.

The ones I feel sorry for are the photographers that actually made an income from it in the past, but are now forced to take pennies for their work.

The digital age has been a double edge sword for many opening up photography to the masses with a cell phone, but unless you have a really good image or one of a kind, chances are no one will pay for it.