Earnings from Photography in July 2026

We are in the doldrums of the summer months, which does seem to hit both stock agencies and fine art sales as people think more about vacations than licensing imagery or choosing wall art and my July was hit by both. Overall income ended up at $2835. Still a tidy sum, but quite a fall from the June total of $4241. And, yes, I know that this is somewhat different to what I reported in that June earnings report – I estimate some earnings from sites that are slower to report and there were a couple of very nice art print sales that I had missed.

Here is my graph, updated with those revised June numbers:

And, as I am always asked this question when I fail to show this graph, here are the file totals at the main agencies at the end of July 2026. I have been very busy adding new images and some videos to the stock agencies in the past 4 weeks or so, and hopefully some of these will start to sell soon. If not, perhaps they will be picked up in next year’s free image offer from Adobe Stock!

Hitting a Massive Earnings Milestone

Also, during July I hit a personal milestone that has been a long time coming. $500,000 in earnings from stock and fine art photography! It is amazing to think how my initial attempts to license a few of my “holiday snaps” in 2008 has developed over the years. I ended July at $502,585. And somehow, I have continued to maintain the enthusiasm to continue to write these blog posts about earnings pretty much every month since 2010. This is post #774 by my count. Sometimes I think that is the bigger achievement!

Agency performance in July 2026

As usual, Adobe was far and away the largest earner in July, even without any free image payouts. Here is my normal chart of earnings from the main agencies/categories.

Alamy makes a massive change to commissions

As if we didn’t have enough worries in the stock photography world, Alamy announced some exciting news in July. To be honest I had seen the email but didn’t pay much attention. There are so many things to worry about in the world these days that I just let it slide. Then I read the fine explanation that Alex Rotenberg published on the Brutally Honest blog and realized just how much the commission of almost all of my readers will be hit by this change where they are reducing the percentage of the sale price from 40% to 20% for all contributors who have had less than $3000 in sales in the past year. I know I am doing pretty well at this game, but when I checked my personal results between 1 Sept 2025 to today, I have reached $2947 – just shy of that magical $3000 number myself although there are a few weeks to go yet before the year closes out.

Fine Art continues its support to my monthly income

I maintain a chart of the income split between stock photo agencies and then various sorts of fine art income from mainly print sales directly from my own portfolio sites as well as some corporate agencies selling fine art prints and wall murals. I calculate the stock income slightly differently as I spread out any one-time payments for AI training or free image buyouts over 12 months rather than counting it once in the month it is paid.

This shows pretty well, how the past 12 months have been particularly good for fine art print sales. However, I have really struggled with Etsy over the past 3 months. I went to the UK in early May and decided that I didn’t want to put my store on vacation for 5 weeks, thinking that would lose customers. So, I decided to take the master copies of my images on Etsy with me so that I could fulfil any orders, but I turned off Etsy Advertising. Well, it worked, in the sense that I didn’t have to create any new prints, and my store remained open. But on my return in early June, I turned the ads back on, but they have struggled to gain any traction ever since. Very low views and clicks and I think I have only spent about $10 on ads in the past 30 days. Then to compound my issues, I did sell one canvas print in July and had it shipped. There was an error in the placement of the print on the canvas frame and the buyer immediately gave me a 2-star review saying this was not what she expected for $120. I immediately contacted her and on the basis of her photo of the canvas, I ordered a replacement and got it to her within the week. (I did manage to get Easy Canvas Prints to refund the original order as well without issues). She was very pleased with the new print and said she would revisit the review, but after a week with a prompt from me, she hasn’t done so. As a result, my 5-star store is now 4.8 stars! I can reply to her review, but it is a little annoying to say the least.

Life is never easy in the Fine Art World!