Best Stock Photography Platforms: How to Get Started & Make Money with Stock Photography
This post is not sponsored.
The world of stock photography can be very complicated and overwhelming because the barrier to entry can feel more difficult to understand than it should.
That being said, I’m going to cut through all the noise in this post to help make it very clear how you can get started with the least amount of effort, so that you only focus your time on the platforms that are worth the investment!
With that in mind, photographers and contributors typically have a problem with stock photography submission platforms and agencies for one of three reasons.
First, the platform offers terrible earnings. Second, it has no traffic or customers to even generate sales, and finally, the interface is old, complicated, or, in other words, hard to navigate.
Therefore, I highly recommend sticking to only the trusted platforms that I’ve outlined below because I spent an extensive amount of time testing and trying all the popular and not-so-popular platforms to give you an idea about where it’s best to sell your work!
How to Get Started in Stock Photography?
The last thing you want to do is sign up for my recommended agencies below and start submitting your work agency by agency. However, stock photography has made this as convenient as possible with platforms that allow you to submit your work to multiple stock photography agencies at the same time!
Best Stock Photography Submission Platforms
Without a doubt, the best stock photography submission platform is Microstock.plus. Under the other big three submission tools, I mostly listed why you shouldn’t consider them, because they are all reasons that only further make Microstock.plus better.
No Money Taken Out of Your Earnings!
FTP Uploading
Amazing Copy & Paste Feature for Similar Submissions
Includes Photos & Videos
Includes All Major Stock Agencies
You Control/ Your Personal Stock Agency Accounts (no big company account like under BlackBox or Wirestock)
Organized Earnings that Let You Know When its Time to Withdraw
Convenient One Click Links that Take You Right to the Agencies where You’re Selling
BlackBox takes 15% of your earnings on every sale forever!
Your files are uploaded under a big BlackBox account on the individual platforms, meaning that you have less control over your work and earnings once submitted.
BlackBox only accepts video, NO PHOTOS!
BlackBox does not include some key agencies for selling your work!
Wirestock takes 15% of your earnings on every sale forever!
No FTP Uploading
Your files are uploaded under a Wirestock account on the individual platforms, meaning that you have less control over your work and earnings once submitted.
Wirestock does not include some key agencies for selling your work!
Xpiks is good for keywording, but this alone doesn’t make it worth it.
Xpiks requires you to manually submit your stock photos or videos with each individual agency after uploading them with Xpiks. No other submission tool does this because they are automatically submitted with each agency the first time you hit submit.
Xpiks requires you to download their software.
Stock Photography Submission Platforms Explained
1. Microstock.plus (Photo & Video)
While my list above makes Microstock.plus seem perfect, it’s as close to perfect as it comes in the world of stock photography.
Microstock.plus Cost
Yes, Microstock.plus is free to use, but that comes with limited monthly submissions. If you want to submit more than 33 submissions per agency per month, that’s when Microstock.plus requires you to pay. However, what I love about Microstock.plus is that you can over submit on your free 33 submissions in one month, and your file will simply move to a “pending” status that will automatically submit at the start of the next month without you having to do anything. You can close it out and forget about it.
Like any submission tool, Microstock.plus is a lot of work when you’re just getting started. During this time, you will probably run out of submissions many times over if you’re starting with a big library, but the auto submit feature for “pending” files cannot be beat!
Lastly, it may appear that Microstock.plus charges storage fees, but they are easily avoidable. Paying for storage is only on the Microstock.plus platform. Once your file has been accepted with an agency, you can delete your files off of Microstock.plus to avoid the fee. This will not delete your files off of various stock agency sites.
FTP Uploading
It’s amazing that Microstock.plus supports FTP uploads, but in my experience, it’s really only useful when uploading video files. I recommend FileZilla so that you can upload multiple video files at once directly to Microstock.plus. Other than this, the simply drag and drop browser feature is more than sufficient for photo uploads.
Copy & Paste Feature
I didn’t think I would like this feature as much as I did, but it’s a game changer for saving time on metadata for similar files. You can copy and paste everything from one file to another and then simply change the little things like the title or description while most other stuff remains the same.
It’s because of this feature that I don’t recommend deleting all files off of Microstock.plus when you’ve submitted them just to save on storage space.
Microstock.plus Agencies
Microstock.plus is the best submission tool for including the most amount of stock agencies that you can submit to. However, there’s really only a handful of agencies that you should consider, which I’ll get to later.
While most of the other submission platforms support the same large agencies, Microstock.plus is the only platform that supports StoryBlocks, which is a key agency for videographers. More on this later.
As I mentioned under the bullet points, Microstock.plus runs off of submissions to your own personal accounts to the various agencies. This means that at the end of the day you control your accounts, you control your files, and most importantly, you control your money! The same can’t be said about BlackBox and Wirestock, which I’ll get to next.
2. BlackBox (Video Only)
While it may seem like I trashed BlackBox a lot in the bullets, BlackBox does have one key feature that can allow it to be the most passive form of stock submission on the market. That is if you’re only interested in selling video.
With BlackBox you can sign up as a contributor and find your self a custom curator to do all of the painful time consuming work that comes with the world of stock photography. Your curator can edit your video, do the uploading, the key wording, etc. all while you simply send over a folder filled with a bunch of messy unedited raw video files to your curator for them to handle. Yes, you curator is going to take a large chunk of the earnings, but for the amount of freedom you achieve with this method, it’s definitely worth it.
If you’re interested in learning more about this, I encourage you to watch this video made by a friend of mine who talks about this exactly. He’s very successful at using this method, and he swears by BlackBox.
Lastly, it does take a bit to get accepted as a contributor on BlackBox, meaning that you will have to show yourself as a skilled/ qualified videographer, but this does speak to good industry standards.
BlackBox Cost
A never ending 15% fee on all of your earnings doesn’t sit well with me. This is on top of the unavoidable fees that each individual agency like Adobe, Pond5, etc. already charges. Then you have to factor in hiring a curator if you decide to go that route and you’re looking at three fees before you even get your cut! The sole fact that you don’t pay Microstock.plus extra fees is what puts them ahead of BlackBox.
BlackBox Agencies
The fact that BlackBox only allows for video already limits the number of agencies, but on top of this, all of your work will be submitted under a generic BlackBox account and not yours. Look at the artist in the photo below.
That means no control over your work directly through each of these agencies like Adobe or Pond5, which also means no direct access to your money! It has to go back through BlackBox so that they can take their cut before you get yours.
3. Wirestock (Photo & Video)
Wirestock should be a big no in your mind for some of the same reasons as BlackBox but more.
Wirestock Cost
Just like BlackBox, you are subject to a 15% fee on all of your earnings, which is completely unavoidable for as long as you use Wirestock. The reason they are able to get away with this is the same reason as BlackBox; all of your work will be uploaded to various agencies under a generic Wirestock account, meaning your earnings go from the agency to Wirestock to you.
Wirestock Agencies
Wirestock includes most of the need to know agencies that I talk about below with the exception of StoryBlocks.
No FTP Uploading
In this world of stock photography, it’s really quite trash to not support FTP uploading. If you don’t understand why this is important yet, you will if you get into larger files, like video. There’s no match for using a fast secure FTP uploader to put your files directly on the correct server instead of going through a browser window.
4. Xpiks (Photo & Video)
Xpiks should also be a big no, and read below under agencies to see why.
It may just be me, but I’m not a fan of having to download an external program to do what other submission tools are doing online but better. It’s not like by taking your browser out of the equation because you still have to visit each individual agency to manually submit your work with Xpiks and extract your earnings. It’s just unnecessary to me and having an FTP program like FileZilla is already standard practice in this industry so as a photographer, I don’t want another program on my computer.
Xpiks Agencies
Other than me complaining about the external program, the fact that you have to visit each agency separate from the Xpiks program to manually submit your work is the biggest red flag. No other stock submission tool in the industry makes you do this. On Microstock.plus, your work is submitted automatically soon after you hit submit or automatically through the “pending” feature that I talked about earlier.
Best Stock Photography Agencies
Past what submission tool you choose to use, and I hope you see how Microstock.plus is the best, it’s all about where you choose to sell your work.
As I said in the first paragraph, the most common things that contributors complain about are terrible earnings, the platform has no traffic/ customers, and the interface is old, complicated or in other words, hard to navigate.
Take it from someone that signed up for every agency on Microstock.plus and tried them for a year to say that the only agencies that you should sell your work on activated on my account in the photo below with the exception of StoryBlocks.
1. Pond5 (Photo & Video)
Pond5 is the best agency across the board for contributors, especially for video. In my mind, there’s not a single other agency that even comes close to how good Pond5 is doing at supporting their contributors.
Some notable mentions are:
Best/ cleanest online interface for managing your account, like withdrawing earnings and finding individual files
Great earnings per download!
High traffic/ customers
Accepts photo and video
2. AdobeStock, Dreamstime, & DepositPhotos (Photo & Video)
All three of these agencies are similar enough to talk about as one, and combined, they pretty much set the industry standard for what stock photography is today.
Some of the notable mentions are:
The best traffic/ amount customers in the industry, especially Adobe
Fair earnings per download, AdobeStock could really step it up though
More frequent payouts on these platforms because of their high traffic
It’s worth mentioning that all three of these platforms have subpar interfaces for their contributors compared to Pond5, especially when it comes to searching for an individual file that you uploaded. This was a pain on all three platforms when I once needed to remove very specific images.
Dreamstime 'Disable Limit'
All said, I now have a special mention for Dreamstime, which is starting to make them one of the worst agencies in my mind. Control over your work, whether you want to sell something or not, is one of the most crucial parts of selling your work. However, Dreamstime has made it insanely difficult to remove files once they’re uploaded, and it’s not as simple as deleting your account altogether. You actually can’t delete your Dreamstime account unless you’re files are deleted first.
That beind said, Dreamstime has what they call a “Disable Limit”, and it’s essentially a way to prevent you from removing your files from being sold. This limit is so strict that you won’t even be able to come back and delete more for months after initially reaching the limit!
If you care about having complete control over your work, I would consider skipping Dreamstime. The “Disable Limit” alone makes them one of the spammier choices.
3. Alamy (Photo & Video)
I have never had a lot of sales on Alamy because it doesn’t seem to draw the same amount of traffic, but when you do make a sale, earnings are some of the best in the industry. Absolutely sign up for Alamy because there’s no harm in letting your photos sit out there, even if they don’t sell very often.
4. Pixpa & MostPhotos (Photo & Video)
These two are similar agencies in that I think they are very take it or leave it. Earnings are great on MostPhotos and meet about the industry standard on Pixpa.
Pixpa has a terrible interface for navigating as the contributor, but everything submits, tracks earnings, and works great otherwise straight from Microstock.plus.
On the other hand, MostPhotos has a much more friendly interface, but it requires you to manually submit each photo individually from inside of MostPhotos (like Xpiks) after first submitting from Microstock.plus. If you’re a busy photographer, this may not be worth your time.
5. StoryBlocks (Video)
StoryBlocks is not the worst because it’s number 5. It’s truly one of the best platforms!
Like BlackBox, StoryBlocks is not easy to get accepted to StoryBlocks. It’s a video only platform that specializes in selling high-quality video to their clients, which is one of the reasons it’s one of the best platforms. On top that, it has one of the best and cleanest interfaces like Pond5, and you’ll be compensated well for your work.
Worst Stock Photography Agencies
If an agency has a website that looks like it hasn’t been updated since 2003, then stay away. I’m not kidding when I say there are some out there like that such as PantherMedia ScanStockPhoto, or Crestock. These trashy sketchy platforms are not worth your time.
Other than these, there are a few more that look professional and clean but are sketchy none the less. These are the agencies that I highlight below.
1. Shutterstock
SHUTTERSTOCK! There’s a reason why contributor after contributor signs up for Shutterstock but closes their account right after their first payout, which is impossible to get to for most contributors.
On the surface, Shutterstock looks like one of the big ones. One of the agencies that you should trust and sell your work on because of their clean looking homepage. However, they’re pretty much robbing you as a contributor in terms of your earnings, and then when your 15 dollars in and just want to close your account, you’re stuck because you can’t get a payout until $35.
If you value your photography at all to earn more than 10 cents a download, stay away from Shutterstock!
2. iStock / Getty Images (EyeEm)
iStock and Getty Images are two of the most corrupt stock photography agencies in the business. Probably even more so than Shutterstock.
Treat them both as the same company because they are. The only difference is that on Getty Images, you can’t legally sell your work on any other platform or they have the right to sue you! It’s called exclusivity.
On top of that, you’ll earn even less than 10 cents a download. I think I made $0.07 once.
As a side note, treat EyeEm as the same as iStock and Getty Images. EyeEm uses what they call “Partner Agencies”, but all this really means is that they’re selling your photos on iStock and Getty Images from their platform. It’s really tricky coverup to steal your hard work.
3. Cavan Images (Photo & Video)
Cavan Images is worth a special mention to talk about how terrible they are. Cavan is not found through any submission platform like Microstock.plus because everything has to be done manually image by image through Cavan only. This is because they act both as an agency and as a submission platform (more on this later).
If that’s not bad enough, they will pay you literal pennies for your hard work while raking in the majority of the profits for themselves. It’s sort of like BlackBox or Wirestock where they take your profits first before you see them.
What I think is most shady of all is that Cavan Images comes across like a clean and professional agency like Pond5, but in the background Cavan is secretly submitting your photos to sketchy agencies like Getty Images. Yes, Cavan acts as an agency themselves where you could buy and sell directly through them, but they also sell through partner agencies that you’ll likely want to avoid. And if you choose to turn off the partner agencies in the settings, then you’ll see no traffic/ sales whatsoever because Cavan Images is not a big player in the industry.
Seriously, Cavan Images is a big red flag. Avoid Cavan at all costs!
Other Agencies
There are a few other agencies like 500px, 123rf, CanStockPhoto, or YayImages that look like good clean professional stock photography agencies, but what all of these and more have in common is terrible earnings and terrible traffic.
Seriously, don’t waste your time with any other agency than the ones listed above. I covered all of the need-to-know agencies to actually do well and make some money in this industry.
As for the rest of the agencies that you will find as options on Microstock.plus, don’t pay any attention to them. They all have terrible traffic, terrible earnings, and terrible interfaces. Stick with the ones above.
Selling Your Work Yourself!
If you value select shots of yours more than the profits you would make on any stock agency, I recommend selling your own files as digital downloads. Obviously, you need to have your own website to sell your own work like this, but it’s without a doubt the best way to have total pricing control over your most valuable content.
For example, photos that I took on Denali are photos that are absolutely worth more than a few pennies, based soely on the time, effort, and money spent to get them.
The one downside is that you need to draft your own legal terms and agreement, and beyond me telling you that you need to do it to protect yourself, I cannot say anymore to help you.
If you choose to sell yourself, be smart, and do your homework. You need to protect your work!
If there’s anything else on this topic that you’d like to see me talk about, please comment below!
