In this post I am going to review my earnings on Depositphotos, look at my best selling photos and show some advanced tips and tricks on Depositphotos. But before I do, if you are looking to learn how to become a deposit photos contributor, I am not going to get into that in this article but I do have another post about getting started as a Depositphotos contributor.

Depositphotos Contributor Earnings by Year

Lets jump into the stats, so far I have made about $1500 on Deposit Photos, now that is a lot less than some of the other stock sites I contribute to like Shutterstock and Adobe stock, so I haven’t spent as much time uploading photos to Depositphotos as a result. Pretty much just uploaded a bunch of photos 7 years ago and left it. This chart shows both my earnings and number of uploads by year.

The red line is the number of uploads in that year and the blue bars show the earnings each year. Notice that in 2012 I uploaded 50 photos but made only 30 cents, 2013, uploaded 141 photos and made under $40.

I haven’t uploaded a photo since 2014 but in 2019 I made over $300 from those photos I uploaded six years earlier. Now, I recently uploaded over 100 more photos in 2020 to see if I can raise my 2020 earnings.

Depositphotos Contributor Earnings Best Days

Looking at the chart, 2017 stands out, no uploads in the preceding two years but more than doubled in revenue. Lets dig into what happened there.

Looking at my Stats, on June 23, 2017 I made over $60 with 36 on demand sales and on Jul.01, 2017 I made over $120 with 72 on demand sales. Those two days accounted for almost 40% of my yearly revenue, crazy.

On Depositphotos you can see all your sales so I can go back and see what sold on those days and all those sales were for only one photo.

There is no way for me to figure out why it happened because I didn’t notice it till afterwards but I figure Deposit photos included my photo in an email campaign or maybe added it to the homepage for those days, that is the only thing I would explain such a sudden increase followed by a decrease.

Depositphotos Contributor Sales by Photo

Now let's take a look at how my sales break out by photo. One cool thing about Depositphotos is they make it really easy to see a list of your photos with how many people have viewed, downloaded and how much you have earned with each photo. However, one not so cool thing is they don’t have an easy way to sort the list, so you can’t just click a link to see your top photos.

However, it wasn’t that hard for me to cut and paste into a Google sheet so I could sort by sales. Now, as you can see, the vast majority of my sales come from one photo. I uploaded this back in 2012 and it still gets downloaded almost daily. The main reason is that it ranks high in a lot of search results.

Buyers searching for just “Canada” in deposit photos are going to see it on the first page and if you type in “Canada Landscape” then it is currently the top result.

Now search results change over time but fairly slowly. Now I say this not to brag but to give you an idea of what you can expect if your photo makes it to the top of the search results on this site.

My number two photos are on the first page if you search for “Toronto” definitely not as popular a search as Canada but still give it the number 2 spot on my download list, and the third one is on the first page buyers search for Vancouver.

Depositphotos Contributor Tips

Now if you are reading this article and have never uploaded any of your photos to any stock sites before and this is motivating you to upload to Depositphotos, that's great but I would suggest not starting selling your photos on Depositphotos, I make a lot more money from the same photos on Adobe Stock and Shutterstock so they are a better place to start if you are new to stock photography.

However, if you have already seen some success on other stock sites then definitely consider opening a Depositphotos account. But as you know, uploading to sites can be time consuming and adding another site is adding more time to your workflow.

Using Photerloo to Upload to Depositphotos

That is why we created Photerloo, which is a website and Mobile app that uploads your photos to multiple stock sites making it much easier to sell your photos across all the popular sites. So, you just upload the photo once to Photerloo, the app suggests keywords then uploads it to all your stock sites for you.

If you don’t have a Photerloo account yet, you can click the button below to sign up for a free account..

Get Free Photerloo Account

Connect Depositphotos Account in Photerloo

If you already have an account then all you need to do is link your deposit photos account. To do that, click the connect sites links on the left side then click the Depositphotos button and enter Depositphotos username and password, one thing to note is that you can’t link your Depositphotos account until after you have been accepted as a Depositphotos contributor.

That is, now when you upload to your other stock sites Deposit photos will be available to upload at the same time.

I also posted a Youtube video about my earnings that you can check it as well.

If you are just getting started with Depositphotos and need to get setup then you are in the right place, in this post I am going to show you how to signup for a contributor account and upload your first photos for sale on deposit photos, but before do, I am going to review how much money you can earn selling your photos on this site.

How much money can you make on Depositphotos?

Deposit photos is a Microstock site, you can upload your photos and then Deposit photos will sell them to their customers and send you a portion of the sales. The cut you get from each photo sale depends on two main factors, how much the customer paid for it and your level as a contributor.

First, let's look at how much customers pay for your photos, there are a lot of different options but they can be broken into two main types, subscriptions or on demand.

Subscriptions are for companies that constantly need photos each month and is the best deal for buyers while on demand is buying a group of images and the more you buy the cheaper it gets, also it is possible to buy an on-demand extended licence which allows people to sell merchandise with your images on them. That is how much the photo buyer pays, now let's look at how much you get paid as a contributor. Depositphotos pays based on your level and your level is based on your sales. Here is how it breaks out.

I have about 1500 photo downloads on Depositphotos so I am at the bronze level. So for every subscription download I get 31 cents and on demand downloads I get 36%. The most expensive on demand licence is the extended licence for $89 so for that sale I would get about $32. So, it is a pretty wide range for what I could make off any download from 31 cents to $32. Unfortunately, the $32 downloads are few and far between, while the 31 cent downloads are pretty frequent most of the time I get under $2 a download.

How to become a Depositphotos contributor?

Alright, so now you know what to expect, let's get into how to sign up. Follow this link to take you to the contributor signup page.

Step 1: Fill out the form on the first page

Make sure you enter all the information in accurately and it matches your ID (which you will need to upload in a later step.

Step 2: Submit 5 photos for review

After you submit the form you will need to upload 5 images for review, when you do this, choose your best 5 images because Depositphotos is going to review those images and make a decision if they will approve you as a contributor. I am just going to upload 5 of my photos that haven’t been uploaded to Depositphotos yet.

Step 3: Upload a copy of your ID

Next you will need to upload a copy of your ID, they need this for tax purposes and they will be checking that your ID matches what was filled out in the form.

Step 4: Add links to your other portfolios

Lastly you can add links to your other stock portfolios, there is where you should add links to your Shutterstock and Adobe stock accounts, including these links will increase your chances of being accepted as a contributor so add them if you have them.

If you filled everything out correctly then you will receive a message that your application will be reviewed, you will need to wait until you are accepted as a contributor before you can start uploading more photos.

How to upload a photo for sale on Deposit Photos?

Next I am going to walk through how to upload your first photo after you are accepted.

Step 1: Upload the photo

Uploading a photo in Depositphotos is straightforward. Navigate to the seller menu then click the file uploader link or just drag a photo into the uploader window. You can upload multiple files from the page but I am going to just do one right now. Next just click the Upload files button and wait for the file to finish uploading.

Step 2: Review Uploaded Photo

Once it has finished you can close the uploader but you aren’t done yet, you need to review and submit the file. So, click on the Unfinished button, if you don’t see your photo here yet then just wait a couple of minutes, sometimes it takes a little while before it shows up.

Step 3: Enter description and keywords

This page is where you enter your description and keywords, now if you added a description and keywords in lightroom or another program before exporting the photo then you will see them here already but you can add more.

Your description has to be under 250 characters and you should try to put some of your keywords in the description because it does help with the search results.

Next is keywording, you can enter up to 50 keywords per photo. if you aren’t sure how to keyword your photos, I have created a whole Youtube video about keywording and will put a link to it up here.

Step 4: Add your model and property releases

Next you need to add releases, if you aren’t sure how to use releases then checkout my Shutterstock tutorial, I go into a lot of detail about releases for Shutterstock in that video and everything I say is also relevant for Deposit photos.

Step 5: Submit for review

And that is it, click the submit button and they are sent to Depositphotos for review, Depositphotos will email you after the photos have been reviewed letting you know if they were accepted or rejected.

How do you see the status of my submitted photos?

You can also see the status with these buttons at the top, pending are photos waiting to be reviewed, online are your accepted photos and your rejected photos are over here.

Depositphotos vs Shutterstock vs Adobe Stock

Now depositphotos is a fairly large Microstock site but not as popular as Adobe Stock and Shutterstock so most photographers find they make more on Shutterstock and Adobe Stock than they do on Depositphotos with the same photos.

I actually get asked a lot in the comments if you can upload the same photos to multiple stock sites and you can as long as you don’t sign an exclusive contract with any of the stock sites which fewer and fewer are offering these days. So, if you are just getting started in stock I would recommend starting with Shutterstock and Adobe Stock before using Depositphotos.

If you are already posting to those sites then Depositphotos is a great additional site to supplement your income but it can get time consuming to upload your photos to all these sites and it is the most boring part of the process.

How to upload to Depositphotos with Photerloo?

Photerloo is a website where you can upload your photos then Photerloo uploads the photos to all your stock sites. It also suggests keywords and just saves you a ton of time getting your photos sold online.

Step 1: Login to Photerloo and click Options

Just login to Photerloo then click options and Link deposit photos.

Step 2: Enter your Depositphotos credentials

Now enter your deposit email and password. One thing to note is that you can connect your depositphotos account ONLY after you have been accepted as a Depositphotos contributor, which will give you an error if you haven’t been accepted yet.

Step 3; Upload your photo

That's it, now when you upload a photo depositphotos will be one of the stock sites available for upload and your photos will go to deposit photos at the same time as your other stock sites.

If you haven’t signed up for Photerloo yet then click this button to get your free account now.

Get your Free Photerloo Account

I also created a Youtube video about this topic that you can checkout below

Depositphotos Contributor Earnings Report