Name: How to Make Money on Adobe Stock By Selling Stock Photos + Videos
Uploaded: 2025-11-26T23:39:48.000Z
Duration: 11 min 35 s
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In this video, I will review Adobe Stock and how much money can stock photographers expect to make there?

Adobe Stock is one of our best selling stock photography platforms hands down.

And by the way, in this video series I take a look at other major stock photography platforms like Getty and Shutterstock.

I will try to answer questions like which website is the best to sell stock photos and footage online to make money?

So subscribe to hear more insightful data from us in the future.

In my previous video, I made a point that it's still possible to make money in stock photography, but

There is an ongoing consolidation with big players buying each other.

Recently, Getty Images and Shutterstock announced a merger.

This doesn't bode well for stock photographers.

As you may know, Adobe Stock is part of Adobe Company which is known for its Photoshop and After Effects apps.

Adobe Stock takes its roots from another stock photo platform called Fotolia.

As it turned out, it was a genius move from Adobe.

Adobe Stock seamlessly integrates into Creative Cloud and this gives Adobe ample opportunities to upsell stock photos and videos to media creators.

Unfortunately, Adobe doesn't disclose how much revenue it makes from Adobe Stock.

Adobe Stock sales are part of the Creative Cloud segment.

This segment includes subscription revenues from Photoshop, among other things.

If we look at the Creative Cloud segment revenues, they grew by about 10% annually for the past two years.

Adobe stock accepts both stock photos and stock videos, but

unlike many other platforms, it doesn't accept standard editorial content.

And by standard editorial I mean any photo or video that features property or people for which you don't have a property or model release.

And editorial content also must be newsworthy.

The exception for Dolby Stock is illustrative editorial photos.

These are images that feature brands that you don't have a property release.

You can submit such photos for licensing at Adobe Stock.

The only condition is that these photos must not feature any recognizable people.

Adobe is one of a few major platforms that is kind enough to actually allow this.

Other platforms like Shutterstock and Getty Images forbid uploading AI images on their websites.

Both Shutterstock and Getty allow customers to create and license AI images with their generative AI tools.

In the past several years there was a deluge of AI images uploaded to Adobe Stock.

I don't know how much money you can make with that, but

I guess with large enough portfolio, anything is possible.

Personally, for now we do not sell AI images and don't have plans to do so.

The next question is how much you can get paid by selling photos and videos on Adobe stock.

Adobe has a fixed percentage that it pays to contributors.

Mainly they pay 33% for photos, illustrations and vectors, as well as 35% for videos.

As you will see in our next videos, this is quite generous.

Generous in comparison to Shutterstock and Getty.

And by the way, Adobe refers to photos, vectors and illustrations as standard assets.

For instance, here we have a plan that lets you buy 40 standard assets or six videos for almost $80 a month.

If a customer buys 40 photos, each photo generates sales of roughly $2.

The contributor will get 33% of that, or 66 cents.

But as we see, videos will earn much more.

A contributor will earn 35% of that, or about $4.66.

That is a very big difference in pay between stock photos and videos on this channel.

We said many times, if you are a stock photographer and you are not uploading stock videos, you're putting yourself at a disadvantage.

Having a portfolio of stock footage is a must these days.

There are fewer of them and they're not easy to create quickly in massive quantities.

Compared to stock photos, AI Imagery is poised to take market share from stock photos.

It will also be able to do so with stock videos, but maybe not immediately.

And here's our quick take on AI photos and videos depicting real events and real people will still be in demand.

So this is especially true for editorial content.

As far as generic, non unique photos, AI Imagery will take their money big time.

Of course, Adobe offers large subscription plans such as this one.

A Customer can license 750 standard assets or 25 videos for almost $200 a month.

For this plan, each photo can earn about 27 cents.

And this is where minimum royalty amounts come into play.

Adobe stock guarantees a minimum payment to contributors from these plans.

The Pay ranges from $0.33 to 30, $0.38 and depends on your lifetime sales levels.

And yet we see that even large subscription plans can earn you $2.80 per each video.

That is still pretty good in comparison to stock photos.

Besides standard subscription plans, Adobe Stock also offers custom licensing agreements and non standard plans.

Among them are Adobe Express and Pro Edition plans for Creative Cloud.

And the pay rates are exactly the same for these plans.

But these plans can generate substantial money for contributors.

Ok, with that aside, let me give you a concrete example based on our sales figures in 2024.

For instance, here's a photo of a wooden fence during a winter storm that happened in our neighborhood in November of last year.

This photo earned $26.40 from just one sale.

Surprisingly, the sale came from a subscription plan.

Probably someone had a custom subscription plan like Adobe Express or similar and we got 33% of that.

This means that someone paid almost $80 for this photo.

Likewise, we have this video of a pawpaw fruit.

It's a wild fruit tree that grows in North America and is not easy to find.

Pawpaw has a very interesting tropical taste to it.

Anyway, this video sold for $40 and earned US$14.

Of course, these two examples are extremes as these are our top earners in 2024 for stock photos we earned on average 80 cents per download.

And let me stress this is our experience.

Some other photographers may earn more and some less.

We have a large number of photos on Adobe stock, about 30,000 between me and my wife, and

But they are diverse and I think this helps and compensates.

Having diverse content is key to success in stock photography.

If you upload hundreds of photos depicting pumpkin farms, that won't do you any good.

Photos and videos must be diverse and unique.

For instance, we try to avoid uploading more than three stock photos or videos from the same photo shoot.

And if we upload these three stock photos or videos, they must have somewhat unique angles to them and be different.

Okay, what about video sales on Adobe stock?

That's almost eight times more compared to stock photos.

But there were much fewer sales for stock videos.

True, we have about 4,000 stock videos uploaded on Adobe stock versus 30,000 stock photos still, even adjusting for their relative weight in our portfolio.