Promptbase: How Much You Can Actually Earn?

Lately, I’ve been seeing videos on YouTube that promise viewers huge earnings from selling prompts on Promptbase. I will not mention the exact videos here — you can easily find them using YouTube search.

From a quick glance, a viewer can easily decide that selling prompts on Promptbase is a lucrative business that can earn you thousands of dollars a month.

The bad news is, no, it cannot. At least in this point of time. The good news, though, is that Promptbase is a legit way to earn passive income. Most likely, not thousands of dollars a month (at least, at this point). Nevertheless, it can offer you a nice addition to your monthly budget.

In this article, I will show you how much you can ACTUALLY earn with Promptbase, based on my own experience with the platform and the examples of other prompt creators.

Example 1

Fortunately, it is very easy to check how much a creator on Promptbase is earning, and make your own projections.

For our first example, let’s take this creator:

During their entire time on Promptbase, they have made a total of 335 sales. Now, let’s check how much they charge per prompt:

As we can see, $2.99 is the price for most of their prompts.

Based on these two numbers, we can make a simple calculation of how much the creator has earned during the whole time they are on Promptbase:

335 x $2.99 = $1001.65

But, we have to keep in mind that Promptbase withholds a fee of 20% of every sale made on the website. Therefore:

$1001.65 — 20% = $801.32

$801.23 is the total amount they have been paid out from Promptbase since they have started.

Now, let’s go one step further and calculate their approximate monthly earnings.

From their profile, we can see that they have been on the website since January 9, 2023.

As of beginning of April 2023, when I made these calculations, they were on the website for 3 months.

Let’s divide:

$801.32 / 3 months = $267.10 / month

And, one final calculation: since this creator sells Midjourney prompts, we need to factor in the cost of a Midjourney subscription.

I project that for creating the amount of prompts that this creator has, one would need a minimum of a Standard Plan Midjourney subscription.

The standard plan costs $30/month. Let’s subtract:

$267.10 /month — $30/month = $237.10 / month.

This is a pretty accurate calculation of how much this Promptbase creator earns a month.

And, while $237.10 a month is a pretty nice bonus to your main earnings, and it can definitely help you pay some bills, it is very far from the thousands of dollars promised to us online by some of the creators that like to produce clickbait content and have little to no hands-on experience with Promptbase.

Example 2

Let’s look at another example.

This second creator has slightly more sales, and their price range is more diversified:

After studying their feed, I have assumed that the average price for a prompt in their store can be assumed as $3.99 (since I believe that prompts with considerably higher prices, like $19.99, are not the ones that sell often, — and also, the creator didn’t have much of those).

Let’s multiply:

419 x $3.99 = $1678.81

Let’s subtract the Promptbase fee:

$1678.81 — 20% = $1343.05

Let’s calculate earnings per month:

$1342.05/4 months = $335,51/month

And subtract the price of a Midjourney subscription:

$335,51/month — $30/month = $305,51/month.

Again, a realistic an achievable amount reached by someone who dedicated 4 months (as of when I made the calculations) to working on Promptbase.

Other things to consider

I would like to mention additional factors that play a considerable role when becoming a seller on Promptbase.

• I find the prompt creation process to be creative and enjoyable. In case this is something that you like and are curious about, the time spent creating the prompts flies by unnoticeably. However, I should still mention that it takes time to create prompts.
  The shortest time within which I was able to create a prompt from start to finish (including generating the prompt, selecting and saving the 9 example images, and preparing a detailed prompt instruction for the buyers) was 45 minutes.
  Keep this in mind while evaluating the passiveness of this type of income: you will still need to do active work.
• You can say: well, I will just submit tons of prompts and multiply my chances. Well, you will not be able to do this from the start.
  Promptbase limits the amount of prompts you can submit for review to 2 prompts. The review usually takes 24 hours, though may sometimes take longer. That means, in the beginning, you will only be able to submit 2 prompts per day.
  You will be able to submit more as you make your first sales.
• You cannot price your prompts higher than $4.99/prompt during your starting period. In addition, this makes little sense: most prompts are sold by relatively cheap prices on Promptbase ($1.99, $2.99).
  Putting high prices as a non-established seller will most likely result in no success. I think, it makes more sense to start small and grow your sales gradually, to eventually unlock the potential to sell your prompts for more money.
• In the examples I reviewed in this story, the creators have 41 and 42 rank on Promptbase respectively (the rank is calculated based on the number of sales). This means that these profiles are successful prompt sellers.
  It takes time and effort to get there, and it is highly unlikely that the money I mentioned in my examples will be earned during the 1st month. Just as with every online business, it takes time and effort to establish yourself as a reliable and successful seller before you can reap the benefits. Nevertheless, it is possible — and currently, still very realistic, considering that the market is not yet as saturated as in some other passive income activities.

I hope this article was helpful!
If you’re interested in further exploration of this topic, please leave comments or questions below — I’d be happy to discuss.