Earnings from online sales of stock photos and prints in November 2025

This month had a very hard task – September’s earnings had been $4147 and October $3456 – how could it stand up against those? As it turned out, I just about managed it thanks to the Shutterstock AI earnings to end November with $3421. Here is my normal graph:

And, as usual, the number of files in the main stock photo agencies that generated that income.

I added very few images in the month – perhaps 30 or so. I had been on a trip to Costa Rica, expecting magnificent views of the volcanos, lakes and, of course, the birds and animals. But it was clearly the wrong time of year to visit, and what I saw was rain, rain and more rain. So, very few stock photos out of that adventure, so far. I will upload the images I think have some chance of selling, but it will be a bit of a slow process.

I’ve created a video report on earnings as well. Find it here in my YouTube Channel and subscribe to get a notification of when it is published.

Stock Photography versus Fine Art Print sales

The total income was a bit distorted by the one-off payout from Shutterstock for AI usage. This was $264 in November. I include this in the cash received in the month but deduct it and spread it out over 12 months in the more detailed analysis I do tracking what proportion of my income comes from stock photos compared with Fine Art Prints. For November 2025, that split was $2343 from stock agencies and $813 from print sales. The historic graph shows that after a steady decline in the stock photo income through the early months of 2025, the last two months have rebounded. A trend? Hard to say!

Which stock photo agencies earned the most in November 2025?

I thought that Shutterstock was going to bring off an amazing prize this month and become the highest earning agency. Microstockr was telling me it was in with a chance. But when I finally went to the website to look at the final earnings, it fell short, by a long way. Why – a $93 download on Shutterstock that Microstockr reported, had been reversed and I guess the App doesn’t look at that page on the Shutterstock earnings. So, the winner in November was again Adobe Stock with $809. SS came in with $699 which is still way above the historic earnings level so far this year. In July it was $228. Of course, the AI payout of $264 was a big reason, but there were some nice larger sales discussed below. Getty/iStock was fantastic this month with $621, well above the norm. I discuss the reason for that, below, as well. Here are a table and a pie chart of the results.

High Earning images in November 2025

Each month I look at the contribution of high-earning images to the month total. These are sales that we cannot plan for and they come at random, but they make a tremendous difference to the total earnings for the month. I realized that I had been ignoring Getty/iStock as they report earnings one month in arrears, and when I checked back, they rarely have any largish earnings, but I’ll include them in the month I am reporting on in future.

So, starting with Getty, I had a real surprise when I checked back on earnings greater than $10. There were actually eight of them for a total of $225! Not a thing to miss in my report! The majority were for $29.57 with one at $18.75. When I looked at the series, I noticed that all of them were from the towns that the cruise I took on the Mississippi in October 2023 docked in all of these towns, and so I’m guessing that someone is probably writing an article about river cruises on the Mississippi. I’m hoping they decide to add a few more images before they publish it!

The $225 from these images added to the $ I earned from >$10 images in November makes a total of $658 from a total of 19 images.

These were some of the highlights from November. First a real show-stopper image licensed on Shutterstock – this one of Ashness Bridge in the English Lake District sold for $105. Shutterstock has some months where nothing happens and then this. Great!

But wait, there’s more! Shutterstock also licensed this image of my famous cat for $94. However, since I wrote this a few days ago, I checked the Shutterstock site and there was a reversal of the sale! So, $94 appears one day and then disappears the next! I had always thought that the Shutterstock earnings were rarely reversed, but here is a case where it was!

And then we had this panorama of the Welsh countryside that licensed on Shutterstock, again, for $75.

Alamy can usually be trusted for some good one-off sales, but this month it was just 2 over $10, including this view of the fall colors near Stowe in Vermont.

Pond5 has been a most unusual agency this year. Some months I earn nothing, then $3.30, then $95. This month it was $105 as I had three videos sold for $43, $35 and $27. Here is the $45 clip:

And Adobe should not be forgotten. Two images for $26.40 each, and then a video of the rough seas off the side of a cruise ship sold for $28:

Fine Art Prints Interesting Sales in November 2025

In total, I earned $813 from fine art print sales in November, although a fair proportion came from the print leasing and wall mural companies that had invited me to add my portfolio a year or two ago.

I did sell one print locally as a 24×16 inch canvas print:

I had quite a collection of individual sales on Fine Art America with three jigsaw puzzles, a T-shirt and four prints. The largest print was a 48×26 inch framed print of a sunset over Hanalei Bay on Kauai:

A 20×15 inch framed print of the main street of Leavenworth in Washington also sold. This was an image that I included in my article about driving the Cascade Loop in Washington State, but I didn’t link the image through to any of my print providers. I think I hadn’t uploaded those images at the time I created the article. So, it isn’t clear how the buyer found this particular print.

Over on Pictorem, I sold a 20×13 inch Canvas print of the beach at Waikiki by the Hilton Hawaiian Village hotel. Pictorem is having some major delays at present after a move to new premises, and this one was ordered on the 5th November and is still at the “printing” stage. I did email the buyer a couple of weeks ago suggesting that I could print it elsewhere more quickly, but as usual, I got no response.

I did sell three small prints from my Etsy Store in November. Two 16×20 prints and one 14×11 inch print. I was able to print all these at home and ship them directly to the buyer, which is significantly faster than any of the printing companies and probably a little more cost effective. I think I have made a profit of $712 from Etsy so far this year. Not fantastic, and I keep telling myself to add more images to the store! One day I will get round to it!

Final Thoughts on November Earnings

That rounds up my report of income from photography in November 2025. I’m pleased with the contribution of the fine art sales – makes quite a difference to what my income would have been if I hadn’t evolved from simply supplying the stock photo agencies.