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Getting Started as a Shutterstock Contributor

In early 2020, I ventured into selling my photography on Shutterstock, aiming to create a passive income stream while pursuing my passion for visual art. Over the course of five months, I uploaded 183 images and 39 videos, driven by the goal of turning my hobby into a side income. A year later, my efforts resulted in selling 297 images and 1 video, earning a total of $81.48. While this may not sound like a fortune, it’s the power of passive income at work—and there’s potential to scale.

A couple of years later and this is where my portfolio is at. Please note that I don’t just sell exclusively through Shutterstock, instead I use a number of different stock platforms, so overall I have made much more.

With all that being said, my journey wasn’t without its challenges. As a complete beginner, I made many mistakes and discovered that most of my initial assumptions were wrong. From navigating the nuances of licensing to managing the inevitable rejections, the learning curve was steep. But these experiences taught me valuable lessons, which I’ll share in this article.

In this guide, I’ll cover five key things every Shutterstock beginner should know: the difference between commercial and editorial images, how to optimise keywords, dealing with rejections, and the strategy that helped me produce my best-selling images.

Examples from My Portfolio

#1 What You Need to Know About Stock Photography

To earn money on Shutterstock, you need to start by knowing some of the basic ins-and-outs of the stock photography industry. The first thing you need to know is that stock photography is a numbers game. Because the return for each sale is so low, you won’t be able to make a significant amount of money with a small portfolio of images.

You also shouldn’t expect to get-rich-quick either. Making sales on Shutterstock requires, first and foremost, consistency, time and dedication. But don’t let any of this discourage you if you are a keen photographer and you have the time and discipline, the reality is that Shutterstock could work for you in the long-run.

#2 The Difference Between Commercial and Editorial Images

When it comes to selling your stock photography, you need to decide if your images will be licensed for commercial use or editorial. Both serve a different purpose and have their own pros and cons.

Commercial Licensing

The goal of commercial photography is to sell or advertise a product, service or brand. This means that every model or property needs to have the appropriate release forms. Your images shouldn’t include any identifiable logos or branding. These types of images should be more polished when it comes to uploading.

Editorial Licensing

The objective of editorial photography is to tell a story, so these could be things that are deemed newsworthy or of public interest. For example, this could include protests, new stories, events. These types of images don’t require a release form which is great, but something to watch out for is, they can’t be heavily edited. Instead, they should represent a true depiction of what you’re capturing.

Which is Best?

As a general rule, images available for commercial use will tend to sell better because they can be used for a wider range of projects, so I personally think that would be a good place to start. However, if you have images on your hard drive that you think would be newsworthy, then I wouldn’t rule our editorial stock either. 

#3 Why Keywords are so Important

Your success on Shutterstock is dependant on two things, high-quality images and keywords. This is essentially how customers find your images, so integral to get them right when uploading.

There are two main factors for getting your images discovered. The description, which allows you to have 200 characters and then keywords, where you can add 50 in total. Make your titles as accurate and descriptive as you can. Answer the main questions of who, what, where, when and Why. Be as specific as possible and try to use all 200 characters. The same goes for keywords too, use all 50 of them.

Try to think laterally when adding your keywords. Make sure you include conceptual words that describe emotions or feelings for your images. This is one of my best selling images and appreciation is one of the top keywords that accounts for 13% of all downloads.

If you are stuck, you can use the keyword suggestion tool, where you try to find similar images already on Shutterstock and you can use the same keywords as them.

#4 Expect a lot of Rejection

Image rejection is an inevitable part of stock photography and you should expect that with every new batch you upload, there are bound to be a few images that unexpectedly don’t get approval. Shutterstock has a rather tight set of rules to follow and it’s not always obvious if an image will get approved or not, but don’t worry, there are some things you can do.

From experience, most images can be easily re-edited and this process is actually normal. For example, one of my images kept getting rejected due to copyright infringement and I couldn’t figure out why. Then I noticed a small neon sign at the top right and thought this could be why. Once I photoshopped this out, the image was approved. 

Some other things to watch out for are, you’ll need to make sure your images are noise-free, in focus, have all the appropriate release forms and are different from what’s already been uploaded. That’s right, you can’t go and copy other images, everything you submit will have to be unique.

My advice is double-check everything, but don’t be put off if all of your images get rejected. There’s a good chance only a few minor edits are needed to get your images approved.

#5 Shutterstock Shoot Planning Strategy

If you choose to go down the commercial photography route, you will need to start planning your shoots. This was imperative in the begging as it helped me to understand the messages I was aiming to convey with each shot. However, if you don’t plan your shoots properly, you could be wasting your time. What I am about to share with you, I believe is the best approach and following this helped me to produce all of my best selling images.

When you’re planning a shoot, you should look to see what opportunities there are on Shutterstock. To do this, all you have to do is search a keyword on Shutterstock. For example, if you search the word egg, there are 32,000,000 images of eggs. So it’s unlikely that your image will be discovered. However, if you search for something more niche, such as ‘one many army concept’, there are only 2,500 images.

My Images on the First Page

This is exactly what I did and by creating images that target this keyword, I was able to get two images on the first page, which coincidentally, are among my most sold images. So I highly recommend doing your research first and looking to see what opportunities are available. 

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, buyers are not always looking for that perfect artistic shot: they only want images they can immediately use for their website, ad campaign or business. So bear that in mind and plan shoots based on what image you believe will appeal to buyers.

If you have started uploading to Shutterstock, then I’d love to see your portfolio. Drop a link in the comments below. If you also think I missed anything also let me know. 

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