Second best overall month in stock photography and videography | BME on Adobe Stock | BME on iStock | Reasonably good month on Pond 5 | Mediocre month on Shutterstock

Shutterstock was the lowest of the four agencies for May 2024 though still running in 2nd place YTD earnings.

Three Charts

1) YTD earnings Jan to May - Comparison of each year from 2020 to 2024
2) YTD earnings Jan to May - Comparison by agency for 2024   
3) Earnings for the month of May - Comparison of each year from 2020 to 2024

Those are great results, congrats!

All this endless talk about how stock is dead and then some people just go and earn money.

what has changed in recent years is that microstock has gone from a passive income to a full time job,unless your portfolio is already really solid,these days you have to continue to upload content with consistency.

regarding AI content,I don't know how much those who have at least 5,000 AI contents for sale earn,but I suspect that they don't sell many,not like before.

I don't know,because I still don't have at least 5,000 AI contents for sale,but I believe that the real difference is made by real contents.

I prefer not to base my portfolio too much on AI content.

what I like about normal photos is that they are more difficult to copy than ai.

people just look for the prompts on midjourney and some uploaders actually leave their prompts in the title.

if you use the same prompt you get nearly exact images.

when you try to copy a photo, you actually have to put more work into it.

and especially for things like food or locations I am sure customers will always prefer the real thing.

we agree,I also think that the contents of people,lifestyle,concepts and illustrations,they can work well with AI,don't need to be real,generally speaking,then depends of course.

as for all the rest of the contents,I think are better real,then naturally there are things that can only be done with AI.

and then yes,the real problem with AI is the massive uploading that happens every day in quantities clearly superior to real content,and then they are easily replicable,copycats etc.

Frankly,for the moment I'm not having great success with this AI content,much more so with real content,but I don't have enough for sale yet to judge.

but something tells me that if we already need 5,000 AI content to have regular sales,in a year we will need 50,000 content,and in two years?

I do and will continue,at least for the moment,to also produce AI content,but I absolutely do not want to base my portfolio on AI.

lol for people posting charts without context, i.e., numbers/$$$... kind of meaningless... as one could have gone from "$1" in one month to "$3" in the 2nd month... so rather funny...

anyhoo. focusing on increasing sales myself as well

Well probably because we don't want to disclose earnings. But I get your point if someone has a tiny port and then triples the port size then of course their earnings can easily double from there.

For mine, if I achieve over $1000 (USD) a month from the four ports I contribute to then it is a satisfactory month. With exception of Dec 2023 and Jan 2024, I have achieved over $1000 (USD) a month every month since June 2023.