EASILY Make a Fortune with Stock Photography in 2023 ? 

If you want to learn how the business and industry of commercial photography works, head here www.tinhouse-studio.com/product/the-business-of-photography-v2-0/

full time stock shooter since mid-1988; joined agencies starting 1993; haven't a clue what is meant by "SYNDICATION stock photo agency"

Back in the day.... (why do I start every post like this). I signed with a fancy boutique stock agency in '94, gave them around 100 images, a mix of 4x5 and medium format chromes. Of those 100, 4 sold like hot cakes for years, mostly to ad agencies and book publishers. These 4 images would bring me around $75,000 over the course of about 10 years. Then, sometime around 2005, one of the big guys bought the boutique agency and my residuals dropped to around pretty much next to nothing. Once the big agency told me I needed to pay them to keep showing my work, I'll ended my contract and pulled the images.

I used to make extra income from stock photography but now it doesn’t exist anybody who thinks they can shoot pictures and put into an agency and make money from it is dreaming! Those days are long gone!

It's probably worth it for the absolute beginner. A lot of "I've tried stock photography for the first time" blogs/vlogs frequently mention having the majority of their photos rejected from the most lenient websites because their photos were out of focus or overedited. They also come to the realization that there's hundreds of millions of pictures of clouds and flowers and they need to find out what's trending now or what always sells.

A guy I known that does stock/syndicated video says the hardest part is picking the correct metadata for the picture/clip. e.g. suppose you get a picture of a bridge you need metadata that inspires buyers. Don't say a bridge but the "way to your next fortune". Its not what the image is in as much as what it inspires

This is an example of youtube photography videos I don’t like. A dude sitting in front of a camera talking… it should be a podcast… then he accurately describes how to not make money which we all already know… and then makes very vague references to how he does make money. No explanation of how to get work through an agent or agencies, no explanation of how syndication really works or how to get into that, and same type of vague descriptions of press photography, with vague examples of celebrity photography… so apparently one suggestion I gleaned from this was to join the paparazzi. No thanks. I feel like there’s already plenty of content on RU-vid talking about “how great I am” but with little useful content. Just throwing videos up there to try and trip the algorithm… not much authenticity or educational value.

Excellent video mate! I always wondered about this.

Love the b roll in the end!!!!

I appreciate the truth telling. I am currently trying to use stock photography as something of a 'crash course' to uplevel my skills. It is frustrating though...I look forward to getting better.

Tin House University - thank you Scott for doing what you are doing

Great advice Scott.

Great advice…as always!

Love the cat in the Timelapse at 8:41 - Looking chill and classy.

Very informative, Thanks

$30 is a ton of money for me. After working as a teacher for 27 years and making 56k at my peak. 60 hour weeks for 56k vs making $30 a month residual for 3 hours of work is a raise.

I'm late in the game with stock photography and realised the bubble has burst. I shoot exclusively stock in New Zealand as the orgnaisation pays 50% commission. I get out as much as I want to put in. It's a great passive income for me and it's nice waking to an extra $200-$400 here and there.

Interesting video archiving sounds good :)

I once found a mass produced photo calendar which listed every image being from a stock site. I looked up the site and found the photographers only made $25. They did not even name the photographers.

Great information 👏, can you suggest best mobile editing video app for stock fotages ?

hi , interesting video. Sorry I don't understand waht you mean with get a syndication? Or sell to an archive? do you have some companies as an example to better understand it?

I sell travel and culture stock through my own web site and through one agency that still pays better than most of the other ones, even though the income is considerably lower than when I started. I think of it as passive income. It just sits and spins until a buyer comes along. Most of my stock is point and shoot and I question myself as to why I do it all the time. I kind of can't help myself. So I figure putting it up as stock is better than keeping it only on my hard drives. I never submitted to stock agencies when I was analog, only when I switched to digital and taking photos became a free for all ... not having to buy film or pay for processing was a big hinderance to doing any photography in the analog days.

I am a hobbyist and don't mind it as a side hustle to just try to get something back without a ton of effort. I don't have a driving wish to be a pro so the stock is satisfying enough for me at the moment.

I did ok a few years ago shooting a custom stock library for a client who had several partner companies and wanted some consistency across them. But those opportunities seem rare.

Another good video matey.Very good info. I still make around 10-12k (£) per year over 10 different stock sites. Its taken 7 years to get here, and its happened by dumping all unused / unchosen images that i shoot for clients here. I wouldn’t personally specifically shoot for stock, but if its “money for old rope” i highly suggest doing it. Slow burner, long term high earner. Peace❤

I think one thing I struggle with is even knowing how to find said agencies. Like … it’s so exclusive how do you know where to even look?

Hi! On which website were you selling your photos for 1000 and 2000 GBP?

Stock Photography is a volume based long term game. It make no sense to evaluate after one year. You need at least 1000 images online and grow that number with a least 100 a month. Then your sales starts taking off. And you have to keyword properly and shoot what is in demand. Just my 5 cent ... BTW: my "BAD" beach photo sold 1200 times in 4 years and have earned alone $1000 until now.

Good points there about regarding all these as business decisions. Time is money, and you also don't get the time back. Editing and tagging thousands of photos for stock agency sites only to get a meager return is probably not beneficial to most. But it certainly is appealing to the casual shooter. By the way, you resemble someone quite strongly, in my opinion, especially in the eyes area. Any relation to James Popsys?

Yep! that makes it a hard subscribe from me!

I understand that using a stock site would cheapen your value, but what if you set up as a different name/company and use 'good enough' work, not your best, not your portfolio pieces, but images that would sell..... got to better than having these images sat on a hard drive doing nothing?

you must see stock photography as investisment like stock market , you regularly upload assets online and then you cumulate the dividens over the years , the trick is to have an optimized workflow so you don't waste hours and hours fo rit

But you're the best!

I sell little bits of stock over the course of a year which pays for things like server or subscription fees. It's a niche (horse racing) which I only do because I live next to a race course and it's the end result of me having a nice day out practicing with my camera - I've never considered it an excellent source of income.

3 grand for a week's work. I work a regular job and do photo and video on the side. That 3 grand would be more than suffice for 2 image sales for me. Please do share where you sold them for that? I cannot get those results with the generic stock sites I share on

This is a difficult one to answer, I have images on a stock image site made Zero pence, I have sold my images as fine art in frames at local galleries. Where I would make money is at craft fairs. However, the cost of a pitch and commission to pay over to the venue is steep. So I would have sell a lot at high prices to make it worth while. Because I am selling prints I would have to have a lot of stock, therefore high print cost, and there is no guarantee my images will sell !

One of the poster boys for an agency I currently work for claimed to have bought his house with stock photography income, the secret to his success was 1. Location 2. Not spending a penny to get those images

I’ll just say that passive income requires a lot of work. There will always be a lot of work up front. With the low margins you have to keep a lot of plates spinning.

It’s worse than you mentioned 😂 the most known micro stock agencies pays as little as 0.01p for some images. I’ve used wirestock for a lot of my test shooting just upalod it and they keyword for you and then take a cut but it is a paid service now so I don’t do it anymore. Not worth it for me to do the keywording myself. I’ve never heard of syndicated though. Where would someone go to do that?

I agree … I started with stock only because for my friends and family every picture was a good picture… at least some agencies used to say “over edit “ “not sharp” “subject not clear” Now … I know a bit more photographers and I get some real advice about how to improve, but the first steps where there

It's all good to say that selling an image for $1,000 is better than selling one for $1. And if you have finished with a shot and upload it to two sites and one sells it for $1,000 and the other sells it for $1, you think the first is definitely better. But if that first site sells it once and the second site sells it 5,000 times, it's a different story. Having said that, as someone else posted, the bubble has burst. I started doing that in 2006 where I sold my first image for $0.25. I now have over 50K images on a dozen sites and make enough to pay for all my equipment and send us on several nice vacations a year. And if I quit tomorrow, the earnings would continue for years and years, diminishing slightly over time. If I were starting today, I wouldn't even consider it as you are already competing with hundreds of millions of images.

If I might add, To get really good sales from selling stock photos you pretty much have to do market research and get perfect photos to the market, otherwise your photo will be lost in the ether of the internet. And that's a LOT more work than just one week's. And you still won't get a guarantee of sales.

In the good old days, stock libraries used to be a good thing, and personally I was making between 6-10k a year, but gradually that has decreased to maybe a coffee per month. I have industry mates who are now getting that from their drone material but then, that's only a matter of time also, when its over saturated. Better off finding your niche and milking it to the max...:)

The big stock agencies are making record profits, increasing every year; yet they are paying the contributors less and less!

Would be really great to hear more about those syndicates from you. I personally love to shoot much higher quality images than stock and in much lower quantity, but I don't have any agencies here in the country I live in. If it is however possible to get in contact with those syndicates online - it's actually a pretty interesting opportunity.

Video stock is a load of balls. Wasted my time loading up 40 of my sweetest clips- wish I had seen THIS video before I wasted my time.

Evergreen in terms of content or stock photos is something that retains relevancy in the years to come. ie holiday shots would be evergreen as we celebrate the same holidays every year. Passive income (there's no such thing as income without working) is income generated beyond the scope of the work you put in. For example you make a RU-vid video or take a photo for a stock site, that video or image makes you money over time multiple times then that is passive income. As it continues to do so over the next couple of years that would imply that it is evergreen content in that it has retained relevancy. Hence evergreen content is the best form of passive income as it continues to stay relevant generating you income beyond the scope of the work you've put into creating it.

The problem with stock photography is the sheer amount of it out there (and thus the number of people chasing the same thing) and the number of people happy to give away their 'work' for free which has had a knock-on effect on, for example, news media wanting to credit you for an image rather than pay anything. I had a load of images and video/b-roll of the flooding in my town last week and was approached, via twitter, buy a national media outlet wanting to use some of my images in return for crediting me for it. I said yes as long as the credit was my website address, which they refused (having worked in print news media for 20+ years I kind of knew they wouldn't go for that). Yep, I'll help you make money but don't you bother to help me in return 🤔

Hi wondering if you could clarify what/who Syndicated Agencies and Press Agencies are? Familiar with Stock Agencies but not Syndication & Press Agencies. Thank you. Really appreciate the information you provide for the Commercial photographer.

I am confused why you would make a video about selling photos and not tell us or recommend the best platforms?

Photography isnt dead. You just soon wont be able to tell whats real or A.i.

The same thing will inevitably happen with RU-vid and social media influencers... Just do good work for people who need it. Not to say I am not loving your insights - I do, but the saturation vs perceived value equation will eventually kick in.

This video in response to an article ...which appeared on petapixel ???? Which an American Tog .. Made a complete balls up and lost a ton of money ? because he assumed folks would make a donation for the pics On another note bagged myself a 5DSR

Back in the day you could make decent money with stock, but then they dropped the payouts to 10 cents per photo! They constantly invent new ways to screw contributors over.

Make lots of money from stock? Be born into the Getty family….

Hard pressed to find real photos these days it’s all AI crap lol

Stock photography will be dead in one year. Midjourney and DALL-E will put them out of business. Mark my words. AI is shockingly good.

Photoshop with AI is better

Market saturation--most photo markets-- is only countered by more innovative or creative work.