Is Stock Photography Worth It? I Submitted 1,200 Photos to Find Out!

Adobe Stock vs. Shutterstock for contributors

I spent the last 30 days trying my hand at taking, uploading, and selling stock photography.

I wanted to find out if a total amateur with no experience could earn passive income from stock photography because I often see it mentioned as a top passive income opportunity.

In fact, I’ve recommended stock photography a time or two! I took on this 30-day challenge to see if I could put my money where my mouth is…

Today I’ll share it all:

• my photo-taking process
• my stock photo upload goal
• what sites I chose to upload to
• what went right and wrong
• tips and what I would have done differently
• and how much money I earned (if any!)

Note: My 2023 plan is to take on a dozen 30 day passive income challenges from scratch and show you how it went. So far, I’ve taken on YouTube, alternative investing, online courses, and now stock photography.

THE PHOTO-TAKING PROCESS

Truth be told, I’ve always been very interested in trying my hand at photography. Over the years, I often find myself going on walks just to take photos. And on trips, I’m that person taking way too many photos…

I was inspired to finally take on stock photography because we had a family vacation planned for Mexico. I brought my Canon M50 camera that I use for YouTube videos with me and came home with 550 photos or so. After editing, I deemed nearly 400 worthy of uploading.

I didn’t want my project to be a distraction on vacation so each morning I got up before the sun and went on hour-long walkabouts. I went all over the resort, the nearby beach, the golf club, the town, and more.

I looked forward to this daily. It was in no way a chore since I wake up with or before the sun most days anyways.

It was peaceful. I got steps in. I saw amazing sunrises. Zero complaints.

STOCK PHOTO UPLOAD PROCESS

By April 10th when I got home I was off to a good start and feeling super motivated.

Then I quickly realized the fun part was mostly over. The real work was ahead of me…

I won’t cover all the upload process details here (if you want more, read my mid-month update) but here’s the gist:

I had to edit each photo. Then I uploaded the photos to 2 different sites — I chose Adobe Stock and Shutterstock. Then I had to categorize, title, and tag every photo individually twice because I was submitting to two sites.

Tagging was easily the most tedious part. You can add up to 50 tags or keywords to each photo. I figured it was best to add 50 tags to improve searchability. Luckily you can add and edit tags in bulk, plus there are some AI tools to help, but it’s still very tedious and time-consuming.

STOCK PHOTO SUBMISSION GOAL

Mid-month I set a 1,000 unique photos upload goal to both sites.

I lost steam after I spent almost a week in the edit and upload process and I set a new adjusted goal of 600 on both sites.

After I finished the Mexico photo uploads, I shot around 100 photos in and around Seattle, Washington where I live. Then, I remembered I had roughly 100 great photos from our honeymoon in Aruba.

Presto — 600 photos accomplished!

But what about stock video…?

ONE BIG REGRET

One failure was I didn’t upload any stock video. I learned video is where the biggest opportunity is to make money but it didn’t work out.

I shot around 30 15-second videos on my trip and back home but none of them felt good enough to submit. My mistake was not using a mini or full tripod (or camera stabilizer) so all of my videos were shaky and nearly unusable even after editing.

Plus, when I compared my Canon M50 videos to random videos from my phone, I realized the iPhone would have been a better filming option from a quality perspective.

I digress. You’re here for the results…

ADOBE STOCK SUBMISSION RESULTS

Adobe Stock was a challenge. Of the 585 photos, only 32 got accepted.

Ouch.

Adobe also took longer than Shutterstock to review my submissions. In fact, 184 are still in review and have been for over a week. Plus, Adobe doesn’t provide any feedback so I didn’t know what I was doing wrong.

8% of my photos that have been reviewed were accepted. That means I will end up with around 50 accepted and listed when my final batch is reviewed.

Worth noting: several entire batches of 50+ photos were fully rejected early on. It was extremely demoralizing and it’s one reason why I decided not to submit 1,000.

ADOBE STOCK INCOME RESULTS

Did I make money with my 32 photos on Adobe?

Nope. Zero. Zip. Zilch.

It has only been a couple of weeks so there’s a chance I’ll earn money over time but I can’t imagine it’ll be more than a few dollars a year.

Based on my experience, I cannot recommend uploading stock to Adobe Stock for income (if you’re an amateur like me).

You may have better luck but you can see I clearly didn’t.

SHUTTERSTOCK UPLOAD RESULTS

I had a lot more success with Shutterstock!

I uploaded 576 photos. Of those, 260 were accepted. That’s 5 times more than Adobe. It’s a 45% acceptance rate, which I’m very happy with.

The only downside I see to uploading to Shutterstock is I did frequently hit an upload cap but I simply needed to wait 24 hours to submit more.

I really appreciated how quickly Shutterstock reviewed the images — usually within 24 hours instead of a week on average with Adobe Stock.

Best of all, Shutterstock actually provides feedback for each rejected photo. I want to share some of that feedback so you can learn and avoid my stock photography mistakes.

SHUTTERSTOCK REJECTION FEEDBACK

First of all, you can’t have any kind of trademark or intellectual property whatsoever. This photo got rejected for a visible brand name or logo (I still haven’t found a logo— though I’m sure they’re right):

I learned graffiti is considered intellectual property. Makes sense!

Some photos were rejected for missing model releases from people and landmarks.

Some photos were rejected for the main subject being out of focus — even when it was intentional and artsy in my amateur opinion.

Some photos were rejected for needing an English translation.

Some photos were rejected because they were under, over, or inconsistently exposed.

Some photos were rejected for noise and artifacts.

And finally, this is one of my favorite photos I took last month but it was rejected because I gave it a bad title. Apparently “Vacation travel in Loreto, Mexico” wasn’t descriptive enough. Fair I guess…

Most photos were only rejected for one reason but a few bad apples reminded me how amateur I really am with 3 or more rejection flags.

SHUTTERSTOCK INCOME RESULTS

Did I make money on Shutterstock during my 30-day project?

I actually did!

I was very excited when I logged in on April 26th and saw I had one download that was going to pay out $0.30.

I had 1 additional download a week later on May 3rd for $0.10.

I earned a whopping $0.40!

My goal was more than $0 so mission accomplished. It wasn’t a raving success but it also wasn’t a total disaster!

If you want to see the two photos that were downloaded you can view them on Shutterstock here and here.

Do I Recommend Stock Photography?

Even if I made $0 the project wasn’t a failure because it was a lot of fun. I have tons of amazing photos from our trip, it got me out of the house when I was back home, I got exercise, I definitely learned a lot and improved skills, and there’s a chance I actually earn some money over time!

Do I recommend stock photography?

Yes, but only if you have realistic expectations.

My best tips?

Try Shutterstock and a few other sites I didn’t try. Have fun with it. Focus on gaining skills, not money. And stick with quality, not quantity. Upload 20 to 50 of your very best photos to 4 or 5 sites and see what you learn and go from there.

If you do want to earn money, consider avoiding all the hassle I just described and stick with stock video only. Video is where you could really succeed, especially if you have people in them that are willing to sign model release forms.

As someone who is always looking for quality stock videos for my YouTube channels, I can tell you there’s high demand!

Final Thoughts

If you want to learn more, read my mid-month update (or watch the video) where I shared more about the project background, micro vs. macro stock sites, why I chose the sites I used, my strategy, and my top 7 tips I recommend to save you time and energy.

Otherwise, let me know what you think about my April passive income project. Was this helpful? What are your thoughts on stock photography for passive income after reading this? Do you have any questions?

If you have succeeded with stock photography, share a tip or two! I’d really appreciate it because I can see myself uploading more in the future.

But not in May…

That’s because I’m onto a new passive income project! But I need your help!

I have narrowed it down to 3 options: ETSY (digital templates), Medium (start over from scratch), and audio (ex: Audible). Give me your vote or idea in the comments and follow to see what challenge I take on next!

PS: Life is beautiful. Take more photos of it all.

Previous Passive Income Projects: Is YouTube Worth It? | Is Alternative Investing Worth It? | Are Online Courses Worth It?

Watch the video version of this article on my new YouTube channel here.

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Frankie Calkins (M. Ed) is a Digital Marketing Director by day. On nights and weekends, he’s an author, YouTuber, and course creator. He lives in the Seattle, Washington area. Contact: [email protected]