Your photos sitting in a camera roll or hard drive earn $0. The same photos uploaded to stock sites earn royalties indefinitely โ€” $0.25 to $5 per download, multiplied across thousands of downloads over years.

The Royalty Math

One successful stock photo: 50 downloads/month ร— $0.75 average = $37.50/month = $450/year. A library of 500 active photos averaging 10 downloads each: 5,000 downloads ร— $0.75 = $3,750/month. Building that library takes 1โ€“3 years of consistent uploads.

What to Shoot

Business: meetings, laptops, handshakes, diverse teams working (enormous demand). Lifestyle: diverse families, fitness, cooking, everyday life. Technology: smartphones, wearables, home automation. Healthcare: doctors, patients, medicine, wellness. Avoid: overly staged scenes, single demographic groups, trademarked items in frame.

Best Platforms

Shutterstock: highest volume, 15โ€“40% royalty. Adobe Stock: 33% royalty, integrates with Creative Cloud. Getty/iStock: 20โ€“45% royalty, premium buyers, harder to get accepted. Alamy: 50% royalty for non-exclusive content โ€” highest rate available.

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Video Clips = 5-10x Photos
Earn: $500-2000/month
Stock video clips earn 5โ€“10x more per download than still photos. A 30-second clip of a business meeting sells for $40โ€“$200 each. If you have a camera that shoots 4K video, add video to your stock portfolio.