What are the Best Stock Photography Platforms to Get Started & Make Money?
This post is not sponsored.
The world of stock photography can be very complicated and overwhelming because of the number of agencies, and the barrier to entry can feel more difficult to overcome than it actually is.
That being said, my goal with this post is to cut through all the noise to help make it very clear how you can get started with the least amount of effort, so that you only focus your time and effort 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:
The platform offers terrible earnings.
It has no traffic or customers to generate sales.
The interface is old, complicated, or, in other words, hard to navigate.
Therefore, I highly recommend using only the trusted platforms that I’ve outlined below because I spent an extensive amount of time using all the popular and not-so-popular platforms in order to give my best and honest opinions about where 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.
That said, the world of 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—and yes, the importance of doing so simultaneously cannot be overstated!
What are the Best Stock Photography Submission Platforms?
The best stock photography submission platform is, without a doubt, 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 the better choice!
No Money Taken Out of Your Earnings!
FTP Uploading
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 it’s Time to Withdraw
Convenient One-Click Links that Take You Right to the Agencies where You’re Selling
2. BlackBox
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!
3. Wirestock
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!
4. Xpiks
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 might make 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 complete over 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 and forget about it.
Now, 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 paying once just to get your files online at the beginning is not that big of a barrier.
Finally, 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 larger video files.
That being said, I recommend FileZilla, so that you can upload multiple video files directly to Microstock.plus at once. However, if you only plan to submit photos, the simple drag-and-drop browser feature is more than sufficient for smaller image files.
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 with 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 categories remain the same.
Microstock.plus Agencies
Microstock.plus is the best submission tool when it comes to the 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.
Finally, 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.
2. BlackBox (Video Only)
While it may seem like BlackBox isn’t worth the effort based on my thoughts above, it does have one key feature that can allow it to be the most passive form of stock photography on the market. That is, if you’re only interested in selling video.
With BlackBox you can sign up as a contributor and find yourself a custom curator to do all of the painful, time-consuming work that comes with stock photography. Your curator can edit your videos, handle the uploading, manage the keywording, and much more—all while you simply send over a folder filled with messy, unedited raw video files for them to take care of. Yes, your 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 the video linked below. It was created by a good friend of mine who has been very successful using this method, and he swears by BlackBox!
YouTube: How to Find a Blackbox Curator?
This last thing to mention is that it takes some time to get accepted as a contributor on BlackBox, as you need to demonstrate your skills and qualifications as a videographer. However, I see this as reflection of good industry standards.
BlackBox Cost
BlackBox makes money on a never-ending 15% fee on all of your earnings. This is on top of the unavoidable fees that each individual agency charges, like Adobe, Pond5, and others. Then, you have to factor in hiring a curator if you decide to go that route, and you’re looking at three separate fees before you even get your cut!
BlackBox Agencies
The fact that BlackBox only allows for video already limits the number of agencies, but on top of this, all your work will be submitted under a generic BlackBox account and not yours.
That means that you will have no control over your work directly through each of these agencies, which also means no direct access to your money! It has to go back through BlackBox, so they can take their cut before you get yours.
3. Wirestock (Photo & Video)
Wirestock should not be considered for some of the same reasons as BlackBox, and so much more.
Wirestock Cost
Just like BlackBox, there is a 15% fee on all of your earnings! 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 and then to you.
Wirestock Agencies
Wirestock includes most of the need-to-know agencies mentioned below, with the exception of StoryBlocks.
No FTP Uploading
In the world of stock videography, it’s quite unacceptable not to support FTP uploading. If you don’t understand why this is important, you will if you begin uploading larger video files.
This is all to say that 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 not be considered, which I explain in more detail under the agencies listed below.
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 already doing online—but better. It’s also not as if Xpiks is taking the browser out of the equation because you still have to visit each individual agency to manually submit your work from Xpiks.
This is to say that the desktop program is just unnecessary, especially since having an FTP uploader, like FileZilla, is already standard practice in this industry.
Xpiks Agencies
Other than my thoughts about the external program, the biggest red flag is that you have to visit each agency separately from the Xpiks program to manually submit your work. No other stock submission tool in the industry requires this, which is why I default to Microstock.plus. With Microstock.plus, your work is submitted automatically as soon as you hit submit or through the "pending" feature that I mentioned earlier.
What are the Best Stock Photography Agencies?
Past what submission tool you choose to use, and I hope I made it clear why Microstock.plus is the best, it’s all about where you choose to sell your work.
As I said in the beginning, 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 are the ones mentioned below.
1. Pond5 (Photo & Video)
Across the board, Pond5 is the best agency for contributors—especially with video!
In my mind, there’s not a single other agency that even comes close to how great Pond5 is when it comes to 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, although Adobe could be better
More frequent payouts on these platforms because of their high traffic
It’s worth mentioning that all three of these platforms have subpar contributor interfaces compared to Pond5, especially when it comes to searching for an individual file that you uploaded.
Dreamstime "Disable Limit"
Even though I said these agencies essentially set the industry standard, I now advise against using Dreamstime for one big reason: control over your work.
When you have your work online, one of the most crucial parts about selling it is control—whether it’s keeping it for sale or removing it. However, Dreamstime makes 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 your files are deleted first.
This is because Dreamstime has what they call a "Disable Limit," which is 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 files for months after initially reaching the limit.
This is all to say: I recommend skipping Dreamstime, as the "Disable Limit" alone makes it 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 as the options listed above.
However, when a sale is made, the earnings are some of the best in the industry, which is why I recommend signing up for Alamy. 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 are very take-it-or-leave-it. Earnings are great on MostPhotos and meet about the industry standard on Pixpa.
However, Pixpa has a terrible contributor interface, but at the very least, everything submits, tracks earnings, and works great straight from Microstock.plus.
On the other hand, MostPhotos has a much more user-friendly interface, but it requires you to manually submit each photo individually from inside MostPhotos (like Xpiks) after first submitting on 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 five, as it’s truly better than most!
Like BlackBox, StoryBlocks is not easy to get accepted to StoryBlocks. It’s a video-only platform that specializes in selling high-quality videos to their clients, which is one of the reasons I see it as one of the better submission platforms.
On top of this, StoryBlocks has one of the best and cleanest interfaces, like Pond5, and you’ll be compensated well for your work!
What are the Worst Stock Photography Agencies?
If an agency has a website that looks like it hasn’t been updated since 2003, stay away.
I’m not kidding when I say there are some out there, such as PantherMedia, ScanStockPhoto, and Crestock, to name a few, that put in no effort whatsoever to help sell or manage your work.
On top of these, there are a few more agencies that look professional and clean but are terrible platforms nonetheless. These are the agencies that I highlight below.
1. Shutterstock
There’s a reason so many contributors sign up for Shutterstock but close their account right after their first payout—which is nearly impossible to reach!
On the surface, Shutterstock looks like a big, trustworthy platform. However, they’re pretty much robbing you in terms of your earnings, and then, when you’re $15 in and just want to close your account, you’re stuck because you can’t get a payout until your account hits $35!
All I’m saying is that if you value your photography at all and want to earn more than 10 cents per 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—possibly even more so than Shutterstock!
That being said, treat them both agencies 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 per download, just like Shutterstock!
As for EyeEm, treat it 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 instead. It’s really tricky coverup to steal your hard work.
3. Cavan Images (Photo & Video)
Cavan Images is worth a special mention because of 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, which I’ll explain in more detail below.
What I think is most shady is that Cavan Images comes across as a clean, professional agency, like Pond5, but in the background, Cavan is secretly submitting your photos to 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 this doesn’t even mention that if you choose to turn off the partner agencies in the settings, you’ll see no traffic or sales whatsoever, because Cavan Images is not a big player in the industry.
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.
This is all to say that I see Cavan Images is a big red flag to avoid at all costs!
4. Miscellaneous Platforms
There are a few other agencies, like 500px, 123rf, or YayImages, that look like good, clean, professional stock photography agencies, but what all of these—and so many more—have in common is terrible earnings because of terrible traffic.
As for the rest of the agencies that you will find on Microstock.plus, don’t pay any attention to them. I covered all the need-to-know agencies to do well and make some money in this industry, and any others typically follow the same trends: terrible traffic, terrible earnings, and terrible interfaces!
Selling Your Own Work!
If you value select shots more than the profits you would make on any stock agency, I highly recommend selling your own files as digital downloads.
Obviously, you need to have your own website to sell your work like this, but it is, without a doubt, the best way to have total pricing control over your most valuable content!
For example, photos that I took on Denali—or even up-close photos I got of a rare Canadian Lynx—are far more valuable 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.
That being said, if you choose to sell your work yourself, be smart, and do your homework. You need to protect your hard work!
Do I Still Sell Stock Photography?
No, and while saying "no" isn’t entirely true, I think it’s important to understand my experience with stock photography.
When I first decided to dive into photography full-time, I thought that I would do things like sell prints and stock photography to make money. I looked at these two options as the fastest way to get started and generate some income.
However, it didn’t take long to realize there is very little money to be made in this saturated industry—not to mention no money at all when it comes to selling prints.
So, I pivoted. I got into blogging—one, because I already had a blog, and two, because I have friends who are successful bloggers making their living from it.
Now, that’s not to say that when I decided to go full-time, it worked right away—in fact, it took many years to turn it into a sustainable income. But, at the very least, it was more profitable than stock photography, and I already had a small foundation when I got started.
All that being said, yes, there are full-time stock photography contributors out there, and yes, I still have submissions for sale on my recommended platforms. It’s just that I now exclusively stick to video submissions only because I value my photos far too much to sell them for so little. They are more valuable in my hands and on my website than they are for sale on different platforms.
What I can conclude is that if you want to make stock photography a full-time thing, or even a small, part-time portion of passive income, expect to dedicate countless hours not only to getting started but also to shooting. Your library needs to be insanely massive to have a meaningful impact in terms of profits in this space, which is why I honestly don’t put any effort into it like I used to. The ad revenue from this article alone will outpace my earning potential from my entire photo library over a month's time. It’s sad, but true.
If you have any questions about this topic, please leave a comment below!
