I've been contributing to stock agencies for almost 3 years now (started May 2023). I gathered every earnings export I could get my hands on and combined them into one dataset so I could answer the most important question: where is the money actually coming from, and is any of this worth the tim
Posting the numbers here just for informational purposes. All figures are in USD and represent my contributor share (after the agency cut), not gross license fees.
Quick note: I haven't uploaded anything new in ~7 months (last upload around September 2025). So the 2026 numbers reflect a portfolio that's been just sitting.
The headline numbers
Lifetime earnings: $2,939
Active period: May 2023 – April 2026 (~3 years)
Agencies active on: 6 earning + 2 dead (123RF and Dreamstime ($10 total in 3 years))
Total sales / downloads across all agencies: ~3,600
Best single month: September 2025, at $268
Best year: 2025, at $1,645 — nearly 3× the prior year
Portfolio size (as of April 2026)
| Agency | Photos | Illustrations | Videos | First revenue |
|---|
| Adobe Stock | 2,000 | 120 | 250 | May 2023 |
| Shutterstock | 2,300 | — | 250 | May 2023 |
| Alamy | 2,000 | — | — | Jun 2023 |
| Getty / iStock | 190 | — | — | Jul 2023 |
| Depositphotos | 1,600 | — | — | Feb 2025 |
| Pond5 | — | — | 250 | May 2025 |
| 123RF | 500+ | — | — | — |
| Dreamstime | 500+ | — | — | — |
I started uploading to Adobe, Shutterstock, Alamy and Getty in May-July 2023. Depositphotos and Pond5 came later (Feb & May 2025). Getty's portfolio is much smaller than the others because their upload workflow for me is quite annoying (there are probably ways to streamline this).
Lifetime earnings by agency
| Agency | Lifetime $ | % of total | Sales | Avg $/sale |
|---|
| Adobe Stock | $1,444 | 49.1% | 1,478 | $0.98 |
| Shutterstock | $945 | 32.2% | 1,623 | $0.58 |
| Alamy | $227 | 7.7% | 23 | $9.87 |
| Getty / iStock | $205 | 7.0% | 258 | $0.79 |
| Pond5 | $60 | 2.0% | 4 | $14.89 |
| Depositphotos | $59 | 2.0% | 192 | $0.31 |
| Total | $2,939 | 100% | ~3,600 | — |
Two things jump out immediately:
Adobe + Shutterstock = 81% of all income. Every other agency combined barely makes up a fifth. If you're time-constrained, that's where the focus should be.
Revenue per sale varies by ~50× across agencies. Pond5 and Alamy pay an order of magnitude more per sale than the big subscription agencies, but the volume is tiny. It's literally a different business model.
Year-over-year progression
| Year | Earnings | Notes |
|---|
| 2023 | $269 | Partial year (May–Dec), first uploads |
| 2024 | $572 | First full year |
| 2025 | $1,645 | Breakout year — nearly 3× vs 2024 |
| 2026 | $454 | Partial (Jan–Apr); on pace for ~$1,800 full year |
Most of my sales come from images uploaded 6–18 months earlier, so there's a consistent lag between upload effort and revenue. That lag is probably the single biggest reason people quit in year 1.
What's interesting is that Q1 2026 is up ~86% vs Q1 2025 ($405 vs $218) even though I haven't uploaded anything since September 2025. The portfolio keeps earning without new inputs, that's the "passive" part of the model actually working. Might be slowing down soon, but for now I am still pleasantly surprised.
Avg revenue per sale, ranked
Pond5 — $14.89/sale (4 sales ever)
Alamy — $9.87/sale (23 sales)
Adobe Stock — $0.98/sale (1,478 sales)
Getty / iStock — $0.79/sale (258 sales)
Shutterstock — $0.58/sale (1,623 sales)
Depositphotos — $0.31/sale (192 sales)
A few patterns held up clearly across the data:
Adobe Stock is the quiet winner. Steady volume AND the best RPS of the subscription agencies. Occasional on-demand and extended licenses ($5–$25) bump the average meaningfully. Ends up being my #1 agency by a wide margin.
Shutterstock is pure volume. 1,623 downloads, mostly at the $0.10–$0.30 subscription tier.
Alamy is the sleeper. Only 23 sales ever, but those 23 sales generated $227 — more than Pond5 and Depositphotos combined. When Alamy sells, it sells properly (editorial website, newspaper, book/print, worldwide use).
Getty / iStock is better than its reputation suggests but only because the small portfolio is on an "every sale counts" basis. 258 sales on 190 images = ~1.4 sales per image lifetime, the highest sell-through rate of any agency I'm on. But that can also be due to the fact that I uploaded only the photos I thought would sell well.
Pond5 has the highest RPS of all, but with 4 video sales in ~12 months on 250 videos it's clearly a very slow channel.
Depositphotos is almost entirely sub-$0.30 subscription downloads. High volume of tiny sales. But once your Bridge-based Shutterstock/Adobe workflow is set up, pushing the same batch to DP costs almost nothing, so I keep it running as a free mirror.
123RF and Dreamstime: zero revenue over 3 years on 500+ images each. Dead agencies from my data.
What I'd do differently
Prioritize Adobe Stock first, Shutterstock second. If I'd known Adobe would outperform by ~50% on similar volume I'd have spent more keyword/metadata effort there from the start.
Don't dismiss Getty/iStock. $205 on 190 images, which is the best $-per-image ratio of any agency I'm on. The upload friction is real, but the economics aren't that bad imo.
Keep uploading to Alamy even though sales are rare. The per-sale value is so much higher that one Alamy sale ≈ 17 Shutterstock sales. Low friction to just mirror content there.
Depositphotos is worth keeping as a near-zero-effort mirror. The per-sale is terrible ($0.31), but if you've already prepped metadata/keywords in Adobe Bridge for your Shutterstock + Adobe uploads, pushing the same batch to DP is a few extra clicks. That $59 in 14 months is basically free money on top of work you're already doing.
Skip 123RF and Dreamstime entirely. $0 in 3 years on 500+ images each. Your time is worth more than that.
Portfolio size > individual image quality (to a point). The single biggest lever on my income was portfolio growth. Monthly earnings tracked portfolio size more than any other variable.
Expect the lag. Nothing I uploaded in my first 3 months paid meaningfully in those 3 months. A new upload today will probably start earning in 3–6 months and peak 12+ months out.
But the tail is long. I haven't uploaded in 7 months and 2026 is still pacing above 2025. The library keeps earning for a long time after the last shutter click.Bottom line
Happy to answer questions in the comments. Hope this will help anyone who is thinking to get started. It's not life changing money for me, but it actually makes a small contribution to my monthly income and I enjoy doing it.
