August 2026 Earnings from Photography report

This is a short report for the August earnings from online stock photography and fine art sales as I have just returned from a two-week trip around Oregon (just 1900 miles driven in that time!) and so I am knee deep in processing images and then will be keywording them (using ArtrushVision, of course) for both stock agencies and the various fine art print on demand sites.

So, I thought I would just include the overall earnings chart, the comparison of stock and fine art earnings and a few comments about the month and then do more at the end of September.

Overall Historical trend in earnings from online photography

Overall, it was a very good month bearing in mind the time of year. The total was $3061 built up from a great total of $2521 from stock agencies. Fine art sales are traditionally low in the summer as people have other ways to spend their money on vacations and the like, but I was pleased to see a very good sale on Etsy of a 40×30 inch canvas of a scene I composited of Woodburn Hall at WVU in Morgantown:

Stock Photo best sellers in August 2026

Not so much “best sellers” as high earning sales in August. The winner by a long way was a sale of one of my Kauai drone panoramas sold on Shutterstock for $115! Yes, you read that correctly! Over $100 in license payments to me.

There was also a $42 payout, again on Shutterstock for this image from Hudson Yards in Manhattan.

Altogether I received $239 from images that sold for more than $10, which definitely helped the month.

Important Survey of Stock Photographers

There will be more from me next month, but I wanted to draw your attention to an important new survey from Taras of Xpiks. He had done this before and always takes a lot of time to analyze the results and give us all some interesting insights into the industry and its trends. You will find the survey here – please take the time to complete it.