As you are pointing out, there are a lot of things wrong with stock photography and sadly having an artistically great photograph is not enough since the market for commercial photography follow only commercial demand. I got lucky with having photos from a few sought-after destinations and was happy with my earnings until a few months ago: I started putting together a portfolio of travel photos in 2016 and finished in March 2017, bringing my portfolio to ~600 photos, and ever since I have been getting a solid, but declining passive income from it, as high as ~200$ monthly on average in 2017, ~160$ in 2018 and ~130$ in 2019. This year has been bad though, since Corona started (and I guess demand for travel images declined) my sales have dropped and worst of all Shutterstock which used to account for over 50% of my earnings cut their rates drastically and as a result my Shutterstock income fell by ~80%. Even though earlier this year for the first time since 2017 I uploaded new photos (a batch of 250, increasing the size of my portfolio by almost 40%) and I believe that my new photos are a lot better technically, my earnings are now less than half of what they were a year ago. I don't like that Shutterstock is now giving my photos away for 0.10$, but there's no point in taking down the photos I already have for sale. I have many photos that I never put up for licensing though, especially my recent travel photos, and am now looking into working with a macrostock agency exclusively.
I noticed that you have some exceptional photos in your post, however, some of them are quite generic and could be taken anywhere in the world. When I started selling stock, I thought that this kind of photos would sell well, but I was wrong: There is just too much supply of very similar photos of beaches, flowers, sunsets, etc. and not so much demand for them. My bestselling photos are actually those that show a very characteristic thing about a destination, but that are not the primary sights for which there is a ton of supply already. These photos are standing out from the crowd and have commercial value since e.g. someone buying photos for an ad or a blog about a country is looking for a photo that the viewer associates with this destination in a positive way. These are some of my bestsellers, most of them sell great across multiple agencies:
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/camaguey-cuba-warm-sunset-light-shines-399271585
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/havana-cuba-december-2015-cuban-flag-412724059
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/green-andean-landscape-afternoon-light-near-521212891
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/melbourne-australia-on-may-5-2016-523031776
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/swimming-holes-florence-falls-among-most-521213233
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/snow-peaked-mountains-reflect-blue-lagoon-406037995
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/pantanal-paraguay-august-2015-old-paraguayan-406369300
But even with photos like that, it's hard to land a bestseller if the destination already has a huge supply of photos. I found that the stockphoto market is very much driven by supply and demand. My bestsellers are photos from Cuba - I was lucky with the light since I visited in December and have some great photos, but I also have that from other countries. But Cuba has only a relatively small supply of photos (220k on Shutterstock) compared to destinations like Thailand (almost 8 million photos), but the demand for photos from Thailand isn't that much more than for photos from Cuba. My photos still rank quite on top when searching for "Cuba" ob Shutterstock, achieving the same for Thailand is almost impossible. In general I found that my photos from Latin America and Oceania sell way better than my photos from Europe and Asia, maybe because there's less digital nomads but also less local suppliers in these regions so many of my photos are truly unique.
The second category of photos that works for me are those that could be taken anywhere, but are very quite unique in illustrating something particular. I have a few photos with decent sales there, but they earn little compared to my bestsellers:
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/rusty-barrel-oil-on-partly-black-521213089
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/funny-portrait-brown-horse-white-stripe-523031917
Btw, if you love traveling, you should check out https://travelfeed.io/, the Hive dApp for travelers :)
Hi, @jpphotography! 🙂 I have almost 5800 pictures in SS with a definitely lower income than yours. So, observing my sales I also strongly suspect that SS puts regional restrictions too. Because I now live in Bulgaria, not in Germany, England or USA.
The pictures in my post are just random images from my portfolios in some stock agencies, not my bestsellers.
Some of my bestsellers in SS are:
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/beautiful-colorful-narrow-lane-typical-maltese-1364334593
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/beautiful-colorful-sunlight-window-reflections-on-1225522837
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/schaloen-castle-oudvalkenburg-province-limburg-netherlands-1014016642
But what does actually a bestseller in SS mean? I don't think that this company appreciates skills or talent, as I said. Given the numerous stolen or equal pictures by fake profiles, or the thousands non-processed, simple and useless pictures by some contributors.
I love your images, btw. ☺️ I've traveled only in Europe so far, but I also have visited some hidden unpopular places in Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium...I don't know if this has helped me with the sales. It can't help me after the change of the earning plan for sure.
I also follow the Travelfeed Community, I think it is a bright idea!
P.S. The pictures on your website are amazing!
Thank you :) You have some great photos as well, I really like photo of the street in Malta! Unfortunately Shutterstock can just cut their rates because there is a very high supply of photos - the money that they save on contributors now goes to Shutterstock's shareholders, their stock price skyrocketed since they are now paying a dividend. Unfortunately agencies like Shutterstock don't care about their contributors or the artistic value of photography, so I think it is time for us photographers to look for other revenue streams.
Europe has so many amazing places, I still want to see more of Bulgaria, I only spent two days in Sofia last year on my way back from Macedonia, but I have heard so many great things about Bulgaria's nature!