My First 10 Stock Photo Sales — Earnings and Lessons Learned

I have always enjoyed dabbling in photography, especially while traveling. I signed up to sell stock photos on Shutterstock in late February 2020. My motivation was partly to make some money and partly just out of curiosity. I am writing this in case you are also curious.

First I will note that I did not just upload these photos… I uploaded MANY photos. I probably had over 100 uploads and 30 were accepted. I did not have any initial rush of sales, instead, I have had a steady trickle of a couple of sales over the last few months. Also, note that I have not uploaded any photos since the initial batches in February.

Now for the first 10 sales and the lessons I learned along the way!

1. A photo of a concentration camp in the Czech Republic.

I uploaded this photo on 2/25/20 and first sold it on 4/19/20… almost two months later! That means I had two months of thinking I would never have a sale. Waking up one morning (after nearly forgetting about Shutterstock) to see the notification ‘Your photo sold for the first time’ was quite thrilling. This photo has also been my most frequent seller with 5 downloads to date.

Lesson: If you don’t initially have success, be patient.

2. My sister’s hand holding a mutant strawberry.

Let me tell you — I struggled with how to tag this photo. It’s unique for sure, but what search terms would someone use to find this? Here are some of the tags I’ve used: “organic”, “imperfect”, “harvest”, “mutant”… and about 20 more. I always aimed to have at least 20 tags. I don’t which one worked here — but one of them did! This sold 2 times to someone in Baltimore, USA, and someone in Istanbul, Turkey.

Lesson: Do your due-diligence when tagging. Think of what someone will search for and don’t just use generic terms.

3. Close up of a rusty fence

I took this photo on my cell phone while out running… in a not very pretty place. It is shocking what sells. One of the best parts of starting to sell stock photography was that it led me to take interesting photos in my everyday life that I would never have thought of before. This one sold 1 time — for the highest amount.

Lesson: Forget about pretty pictures, think about what people might use, and get creative with what is around you.

4. A guy and a sunset

This one is kind of a generic stock photo. It sold 1 time. Stock photography sites require a model release form for any person who is identifiable in your photo. That’s a lot of hassle so I didn’t upload any of those. This photo was okay because it doesn’t show a face. Probably a lot of other people shy away from those photos for the same reason, so there are fewer of them — but people still want to buy them for marketing. If you have a willing model, go for it!

Lesson: If you are going to photograph people keep their face out or get a model release.

5. Colorful German Buildings

I think this photo is artistic and interesting. I also think it could have better editing. I took this on a point-and-shoot camera and didn’t edit it all. The sky could be more vivid in my opinion. But hey, it got accepted and sold, so someone must have liked it.

Lesson: Be careful with the photos that you do edit. If your editing causes compression of the photo it is less likely to be accepted by the reviewers.

Now For My Earnings:

Where my 10 photos sold

The greatest thing I earned from this was the thrill of becoming a paid photographer! And with sales to 6 different countries! It’s gratifying to know someone appreciated your work and fun to try to imagine what the purchased photo is being used for.

But the dollars and (mostly) cents matter too. I have to say, if you are in this only for the money I hope you are much more successful than I was. (Remember volume matters and I only have 30 photos as of this writing.)

I made a grand total of $2.25 across these ten sales. (I think that’s enough for a coffee — haha!)

I had 4 sales for 10 cents each, 5 sales for 25 cents each, and my most pricey photo was the rusty fence at 60 cents for a single sale.

If you would like to compare these with the photos that didn’t sell check out my Shutterstock portfolio.

Finally, if this was helpful to you and you aren’t yet deterred from selling stock photos you can sign up to become a Shutterstock Contributor using my referral link.