r/stockphotography

A $60+ sale on one image plus $40+ from Data Licensing is always a great way to end the month on ShutterStock.

Shutterstock earnings from about 10 yrs ago. I had a run like this for about 5 yrs then overnight the algorithm changed.

Hi! My name is Andrea. I've been doing photography for a little over a year. Here's some of my photos. Any advice?

Thank you.

I’m facing a lot of rejections for "similar content" on Adobe Stock. Does anyone have advice on how to fix this? For those selling AI-generated content, where do you get your prompts? If you use AI to generate them, what specific instructions or frameworks do you use to ensure the results don't get rejected? I’d really appreciate some guidance.

Any clue why this happened? It got rejected at the same time several other Mt. Rushmore photos got accepted, so I’m really confused

Good afternoon all,

I've been submitting to Envato for circa three years. It's not my best performing platform by any means, but every now and then I get a nice little $50 payout.

Which isn't terrible considering how fussy they are with the approval process. I only have 400 items for sale which is slightly over 10% of what I have approved and selling on ShutterStock (3500+ assets).

I have also been publishing videos to Envato, but not having any luck with sales at all. I'm not a huge fan of the "pick your own price" feature. As it creates uncertainty when submitting assets. Of course you want to make more, but you know somebody out there is undercutting you and likely making more sales as a result.

Is anybody on this sub having some level of success with selling stock video assets on Envato?

Almost everything I've submitted has been accepted. However I've only made a handful of video sales in the last 3 years.

I'd love to know any tips or tricks to get more sales on this platform.

Thanks in advance.

I never invested a significant amount of time crafting the titles and mostly followed Adobe guidelines. They allow up to 200 characters, so I did what felt right to me.

While Adobe recommends a maximum of 70 characters, my bestseller image with 236 downloads exceeds this limit by a lot (183 characters). So I reviewed my full dashboard, sorted by downloads.

The clean, concise works that I was so proud of for adhering to Adobe's best practices have a download count of 0-40. Same niche, same quality of image. This pattern repeats itself in 7 of my 10 most downloaded images.

So, I asked myself what has been working well on longer titles that leads to more sells?

The lengthy titles all had concepts. Things that people search for. The short ones merely described what was in the frame in detail. The most fascinating discovery was that each of the three shorter titles in my best selling’s tab contained a concept in it.

When considering it further from an SEO standpoint, it totally makes sense

Buyers do not search for "a foot made of grass." They search for a symbol of sustainability. Buyers do not search for "therapist taking notes while man talks." They search for mental health support

I still think short titles have advantages, and Adobe is not entirely wrong in its recommendation. Longer titles break across two lines and are not fully readable. But they are way too vague in their guidelines. The suggestion of only describing what’s visible in the image is just half of what it takes.  Cutting the meaning out to keep the title pretty was costing me real downloads because they didn’t show up where people are searching.

The Solution?

I came up with a structure that connects what Adobe recommends with what's actually been working for me: describe what you see + what it means. 70-90 characters total.

Examples from my own top sellers in that range:

- "Factory inspector in lab coat writing on clipboard quality control and compliance audit" - 87 chars, 129 downloads

- "Therapist taking notes while man talks during counseling session mental health support" - 86 chars, 103 downloads

- "Close up of relaxing back massage therapy session spa wellness treatment for relaxation" - 87 chars, 55 downloads

First half is what's literally in the photo. Just how adobe want it.  The second half is what somebody types into the search bar because they need an image for an article or website. Both halves are doing different jobs. Drop either one and the title most likely underperforms.

I ended up implementing the idea into my Chrome extension Autokeyworder, to automate the process, but the underlying idea works just as well manually.

What does your data say? Are you seeing the same patterns?

Hey, I found this account on istockphoto.com... is this fucking normal???

https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/charming-indonesian-boy-takes-a-break-from-play-to-hit-the-books-with-some-serious-gm1270135492-373199832

https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/teddy-time-a-playful-young-boy-plays-with-his-huge-teddy-bear-gm1270724477-373576296

https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/young-indonesian-boy-in-his-scout-uniform-gm1219261959-356586922

https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/a-barefoot-young-boy-in-india-practices-his-guitar-in-his-bedroom-gm1177141284-328505073

I am receiving mail in this account but the balance in the main account is showing zero, does the payment approved mean I will definitely receive the payment? Or is it something else please help 🙏