If you want to sell stock photography, the technical part — pointing a camera and pressing a button — is the easy part. The hard part is understanding what each agency actually requires before it will pay you: account setup rules, file specs, release paperwork, keywording conventions, and royalty structures that vary wildly from one platform to the next. This guide walks through all of it using the agencies' own documentation, so you're not guessing.
Step 1: Pick Your Agencies and Set Up Contributor Accounts
Most beginners start with two or three agencies rather than one. Shutterstock's signup asks you to enter your full legal name, display name, and email address, and it explicitly notes that your full name should match your legal or business name if you register as a business. A valid tax form is required in order to receive payments and submit content. Adobe Stock is free to join and, according to its own guidance, welcomes photos shot with any camera — including a mobile device — as long as they meet its standards.
Getty Images and iStock run a single application: you're first invited to sign a non-exclusive agreement with Getty Images, and can then apply later to go Exclusive for higher royalty rates and rewards. Exclusivity is a real commitment — it isn't limited to what you actually submit to iStock, it can cover any image you'd otherwise license royalty-free elsewhere in that category. Dreamstime and 123RF have simpler onboarding: Dreamstime's sign-up needs only an email address, and 123RF describes itself as reviewing well over 100,000 new submissions regularly across its contributor base of hundreds of thousands of creators.
Before you touch upload buttons, it's worth reading how multi-agency metadata generation actually keeps titles, descriptions, and keywords consistent across accounts — because once you're contributing to more than one platform, the account-setup step is the last time things stay simple.
Step 2: Meet Each Agency's Technical and Legal Requirements
Every agency rejects files that fail basic technical checks, and the thresholds differ. Adobe Stock accepts JPEGs between 4MP and 100MP and under 45MB, with vectors submitted as AI or EPS files with JPEG previews. A commonly cited Shutterstock requirement is a minimum of 4 megapixels for photos, alongside no watermarks, logos, or copyrighted material, and sharp, well-lit, high-quality files.
Releases are where beginners lose the most submissions. If your photo or video includes people or private property, you'll need model and property releases before an agency will accept a commercial license on it — this is true across Shutterstock, Adobe Stock, and Getty/iStock alike. Adobe Stock's own requirements page is direct about the legal boundaries: it states plainly that it can't accept photos and illustrations that contain logos, names of companies, brands, artists, real known people, fictional characters, or reference to creative works that are still in copyright.
AI-generated content policy is one area where agencies genuinely disagree, so don't assume one platform's rule applies everywhere. Adobe Stock welcomes content created with generative AI tools as long as it adheres to current image submission standards. Getty Images and iStock take the opposite position: they explicitly state they do not accept files created or modified using any generative AI models such as Stable Diffusion, DALL-E, Midjourney, or Adobe Firefly. Shutterstock sits in between — contributor-submitted AI content is not permitted, and only Shutterstock's own AI system generates the images labeled "AI" on the platform.
Step 3: Write Metadata That Actually Gets Your Photos Found
A technically perfect photo with weak keywords will sit unseen. Adobe Stock's own keywording guidance is specific: the minimum number of keywords required is 5, and the maximum is 30, arranged in order of importance so the most relevant, visible aspects of the image come first. It also warns against padding keyword lists — including irrelevant keywords actually hurts your visibility on the site, and camera or file info like "Canon" or "4K" shouldn't be used as keywords at all.
Shutterstock allows more room — up to 50 keywords per image — though most guidance suggests aiming for a meaningful portion of that ceiling rather than either extreme. The practical challenge isn't remembering a number; it's writing the same image's metadata five or six different ways because Adobe's 30-keyword cap, Shutterstock's 50-slot field, and Getty's controlled vocabulary don't share a format. This is the exact bottleneck Rastock's AI metadata generator is built around: one keywording pass that respects each agency's own limits, banned-term lists, and mandatory-tag rules, rather than one generic tag set stretched to fit everywhere.
Step 4: Understand Royalties, Payout Thresholds, and Realistic Earnings
Royalty structures vary more than most beginners expect, and none of them are simple flat percentages. Adobe Stock pays a 33% commission on photos and illustrations and 35% on video, with a $25 minimum payout via PayPal or Skrill. Shutterstock's starting royalty for new contributors is 15%, with levels that increase as you accumulate downloads within the calendar year and reset every January 1st; a standard subscription download pays a minimum of $0.10, with higher amounts depending on the customer's plan and license type.
Getty Images/iStock exclusive contributors start at 25% on images and video and 30% on illustrations, rising as download targets are hit through the year, while non-exclusive contributors earn less per sale but keep the right to sell the same files elsewhere. Dreamstime and 123RF advertise the widest royalty bands — Dreamstime's royalty ranges from 25% to 60% depending on exclusivity and file popularity, and 123RF advertises commissions between 30% and 60% per license. Both require a $100 balance before payout; Getty/iStock also requires a minimum of $100 in accumulated royalties before payment is issued.
On realistic expectations: most contributors make $50 to $500 per month on Shutterstock once their portfolio is established, with single-digit earnings common in the first few months while you build volume and learn what sells. That range is a reasonable proxy for microstock generally — earnings compound with catalog size and consistency, not with any single "hero" image. If you're mapping out whether contributor income can realistically offset a metadata tool's subscription cost, model it against total downloads across agencies, not one platform's numbers alone.
Step 5: Scale to Multiple Agencies Without Losing Control
Selling on one agency limits both your reach and your protection against any single platform's algorithm changes or payout delays. Most experienced contributors — including Dreamstime's own advice to new sellers — treat wide distribution as the real lever for volume rather than chasing a higher exclusive royalty on one site. That means the same batch of images needs to reach Adobe Stock, Shutterstock, Getty/iStock (non-exclusive), Dreamstime, 123RF, Freepik, and Vecteezy without you manually re-tagging, re-formatting, and re-uploading to each one by hand.
Desktop tools like Xpiks have long served this niche well — it's free, works offline, and supports direct FTP submission, which makes it a solid choice if you're comfortable writing your own keywords and just need a faster upload pipeline. Its limitation is that it doesn't generate metadata for you; you're still writing titles, descriptions, and tags manually, agency by agency. Rastock.ai covers the step before that: it generates policy-compliant metadata per agency (respecting banned and mandatory keyword rules), then handles the bulk FTP distribution and status tracking across 25+ agencies from one dashboard, with rollback if a batch needs correcting after upload.
To be fair about where this doesn't help: if you upload a handful of images a month to a single agency, an all-in-one metadata and distribution tool is overkill — Adobe's or Shutterstock's own contributor portal, plus manual keywording, will do the job fine. Rastock also doesn't take a revenue share or claim any ownership over your files, and every metadata set can be exported as free IPTC or CSV, so you're never locked into the platform even if you later switch to manual submission. The pricing page lays out where the break-even sits relative to your monthly upload volume.
Frequently asked questions
How much money can a beginner realistically make selling stock photography?
Expect single-digit monthly earnings in your first few months while you build volume and learn what sells. Once a portfolio is established, most Shutterstock contributors report making $50 to $500 per month, with top earners with large catalogs making significantly more. Earnings scale with total catalog size and consistency of uploads far more than with any individual image.
Do I need a model release to sell photos of people?
Yes, for commercial-use submissions that include identifiable people, you need a signed model release. If you don't have a release but the image documents a real event or public place, most agencies let you submit it as editorial content instead, which has narrower usage rights but doesn't require a release.
Can I sell AI-generated images as stock photography?
It depends entirely on the agency. Adobe Stock accepts AI-generated content that meets its submission standards. Getty Images and iStock explicitly reject files created with generative AI tools like Midjourney or DALL-E. Shutterstock doesn't allow contributor-submitted AI images at all — only its own in-house AI system uploads AI-labeled content.
Should I go exclusive with one agency or sell on multiple platforms?
Exclusive agreements (common with iStock and Dreamstime) pay a higher royalty percentage but restrict you from selling the same or similar work elsewhere. Many contributors find that non-exclusive distribution across several agencies produces more total sales volume, even at a lower per-sale rate, since it multiplies the pool of potential buyers.
How many keywords should I add to each image?
It varies by agency. Adobe Stock requires a minimum of 5 keywords and caps submissions at 30, ordered by relevance. Shutterstock allows up to 50 keywords per image. Padding a listing with irrelevant terms typically hurts visibility rather than helping it, so relevance matters more than hitting the maximum count.
What's the minimum payout threshold for stock photo agencies?
Thresholds differ by platform: Adobe Stock pays out once you reach $25 in royalties via PayPal or Skrill, while Getty Images/iStock and Dreamstime both require a minimum of $100 in accumulated royalties before releasing payment through PayPal, Payoneer, or similar services.