Photographers, what do you consider the best platform to sell your stock photos, and why?

Interested in tapping into your experience with photo licensing plaforms. As a customer buying stock photos i came across many culprits, e.g. that larger platforms are buying smaller platforms and migrating/closing it. As a photographer building a tiny own library of stock photos I am wondering which platforms have a good balance with general success, traffic, and revenue. There are many platforms out there, and multiple licensing models, and it would be too time consuming to spread out to more than 2-3 platforms, especially if it's considered only one of many income streams. I am looking forward to read about your experiences and advice.

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Answered on Jul 22nd, 2021

Stock photography was a hoot long time ago, before smartphone era. Agency's commission was paying for both platform/publicity and asset management. Nowadays they charge more, yet delegate the latter to you.

It's not about the quality of your photography anymore, it's about quality and quantity of your keywords. In my estimate, turning an archive of 100,000 photos into passive income would take at least a whole year of keyword research and in the end will provide maybe $10-15K of annual income. Not worth the effort.

Still, there are people who make good money on microstocks. But they started from scratch, doing keyword search first and then shooting for a particularly popular keyword… while having other sources of income.