After a few lazy months (earnings-wise) I welcome you to the “business-end” of the year starting with my September 2024 Brutally Honest Earnings and News Report. Let’s get started!
Xpiks Microstock Contributor Survey 2024
I encourage everybody to take the quick and easy survey and potentially win $100 as well as Xpiks Pro+ or Pro license. The larger the number of participants means that we’ll have a more accurate snapshot of the (sorry) state of this industry.
—-> Link to the survey <—-
Latest on some regular client work
No major updates on the blog as I’ve been quite busy this month traveling to the north of Portugal.
I also spent a few days shooting with a client in Lisbon, teaming up with a journalist to capture the essence of Lisbon in 2024, including street photos, for her feature article in a Japanese travel magazine called Mezzanine.
We visited several spots around the city, including a Michelin-Star restaurant, Belcanto in the fancy Chiado district, where I also photographed the famous Chef, Jose Avillez.
Was a fun/busy few days and in the end I trust that many of these images on the slideshow and more will make it onto the magazine for an excellent piece.
Double earning with stock
In addition to earning from client work on an hourly basis (which I encourage everyone to do), many of the images will be uploaded to various stock agencies for potential long-term earnings.
These images include some for book covers, like the one below that’s already been accepted.
Again, I urge all stock photographers to try to pick up respective client work within their niches as it’s too unpredictable and frankly takes too long to start earning from stock. If you can combine both, as I do, great!
Let’s move swiftly onto my monthly earnings. Enough holidays as it’s time to earn!!
Monthly Earnings Breakdown
Image Earnings (USD)
| Agency | Number of Images in port (new images Sept) | Net Revenue Sept | Avg Return Per Download |
| Alamy | 16,298 (33) | 95 | 8 |
| Arcangel (RM-exclusive) | 4,704 (122) | TBD | TBD |
| Adobe Stock | 4,686 (3) | 79 + $160 Firefly Payment | 0.71 |
| DepositPhotos | 8,461 (30) | 13 | 0.35 |
| Dreamstime | 9,364 (31) | 4 | 0.44 |
| Etsy | 9 (0) | 0 | 0 |
| Freekpik | 1,142 (9) | 10 | 0.06 |
| iStock (Aug 2024) | 9,090 (10) | 86 | 0.45 |
| MotionArray | 286 (20) | 10 | 0.16 |
| Robert Harding (Q3 2024 monthly average) – RM/RF exclusive | 583 (14) | 10 | N/A |
| Shutterstock | 12,436 (29) | 158 | 0.80 |
| Wirestock | 3,066 (0) | 5 | N/A |
| Total | 630 |
Clip Earnings (USD)
| Agency | Number of clips in port (new clips Sept) | Net Revenue for Sept |
| Adobe Stock | 1,223 (21) | 70 |
| Pond5 | 2,831 (45) | 76 |
| iStock (Aug 2024) | 947 (58) | 9 |
| Shutterstock | 2,168 (31) | 55 |
| Total | 210 |
Grand Total: $840
Reflections on the month
I mentioned in my August report that if I’m not earning a decent sum from September until December then I might as well give up this business…so I had high expectations for this month.
I’m really trying to squeeze any more juice out of this drought-ridden microstock lemon.
Overall, even though I didn’t reach my $1k goal for the month, I’m relatively pleased with the $840 mainly because my drone assets are selling regularly.
Adobe Stock AI Firefly Payment Scheme
A chunk of those earnings came from Adobe Stock’s AI Firefly Payment Scheme (where I picked up $160) – here is their official announcement:
“When Adobe announced Adobe Firefly in March 2023, we shared that we are developing generative AI responsibly, with creators at the center.
In addition to your regular stock licensing revenue which covers Firefly training, we want to recognize your contributions through our second-ever Adobe Stock contributor bonus.
The 2024 bonus is based on photos, vectors, or illustrations approved between June 3, 2023, and June 2, 2024, as well as, for the first time, the all-time number of videos approved through June 2, 2024, and the number of licenses that all those assets generated in the same 12-month period.”
Still waiting for Getty’s AI payment for 2023/2024 which they’ve promised will occur at the end of this year.
Clips are finally selling regularly
The standout result for the month is that clips earned me a nice $189 (more on the individual sales later). A significant portion of those sales came from drone shots – around 90%.
Pond5
Great price for a drone footage I captured exactly two years ago on a poker trip to Vigo, Spain earning me just under $64.
Alamy
I was going to write off Alamy in September and promote them to the “Minnow” category until I finally had a decent sale.
Even though 11/12 of my sales were under $6, the one that made the difference earned me $74.94 from an image taken in 1972 in New York (before I was even born) by my father.
In fact, as discussed in my May 2023 Earnings Report, I scanned, used Topaz AI to sharpen and uploaded some 50 of my dad’s prints to Alamy as Rights-Managed exclusive. So far, only two have sold, including one that I shot of the Chicago Bulls back in 1999, which earned me $24 net.
iStock
Quite average month at $94 net, although I’ll cut them some slack as they’re reporting for August. From checking on their daily download stats I can already see that September will be a better month.
Shutterstock
Shutterstock pulled in an average month at a combined $158. There were two nice sales, one photo and one video.
You may recall that I did a series on flooded cityscapes, that has earned me some good coin.
I wrote about this during my most destructive “microstock rebellious years” of the late 2010s.
As for videos, this one from the last year’s cruise sold, helping to offset some of the costs (still a long ways to go until I pay off the cruise).
Arcangel
It’s been a few months since I’ve discussed Arcangel even though I’m pushing day in and day out to create exceptional work on there. September was no different with a quite impressive 122 images accepted.
But the main reason why I haven’t been discussing Arcangel is that I seem to be stuck this year with quite few sales (only 6 in fact), which is poor for the size and quality of my port and all the time that I’m investing…
Nevertheless, it was nice of them to feature me on their bi-monthly client showcase slideshow among great talent.
What’s in store for October? Two posts…
Firstly, I’m excited to share that in October will be publishing an exclusive interview with a rising book cover Elite artist at Arcangel, Leonardo Baldini, who unlike me is having regular sales.
Dmitry’s stock adventure in Madeira as a case-study
You may recall that I interviewed Dmitry last year.
Last but not least, will be publishing a blog post following on from Dmitry’s recent stock adventures in Madeira.
Dmitry will discuss his main costs and time invested to capture 100s of stock photos and videos, including aerials. I’ll be using the same sort of structure as I’ve done with my travel posts and ask the ultimate question of whether he’ll be able to recover some/most/all of his costs from the trip!
Thanks for reading until the end and until next time!
About Alex
I’m an eccentric guy, currently based in Lisbon, Portugal on a quest to visit all corners of the world and capture stock images & footage. I’ve devoted ten years to making it as a travel photographer / videographer and freelance writer. I hope to inspire others by showing an unique insight into a fascinating business model while shaming scammers.
I’ve gone all in on submitting book cover images to Arcangel Images. Oh and was also flying a DJI Mavic 2s drone regularly (although it crashed into Botafogo Bay on NYE – here is the story), which I’ve upgraded to a Mini 3 Pro and the Air3.
I’m proud to have written a book about my adventures which includes tips on making it as a stock travel photographer – Brutally Honest Guide to Microstock Photography
Alexandre Rotenberg's Brutally Honest Guide to Stock Photography & Footage 
I saw your feature in the video congratulations. Maybe it will help your sales for the year. I sold a few at the first of the year and have been hearing crickets since. I wonder if the AI market has hurt the sales at AA this year. Hopefully not maybe just a dry spell .
Christy Berry
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Not sure if AI is hurting this segment of the market yet. I don’t think so as any reputable publisher would not touch AI.
It’s frustrating and without sounding like I’m boasting I do have some quite impressive images up on the collection.
Anyway, I keep uploading and they keep accepting so I must be doing something right 🙂
Love your cowboy shots, Christy!
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Thank you .Yes being consistent is good and you have some wonderful images and you aren’t niched down like I am.
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Great report Alex. A lot of useful information. Sorry that the book covers are not making the grade so far this year. Hopefully they will recover! And the flood series was a great idea that seems to be paying off!
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