How do some Adobe Stock contributors get 100,000+ downloads with relatively few assets?

Forum|Forum|1 day ago
October 3, 2026
5 replies
130 views

I have been looking at the Weekly Top Sellers section on Adobe Stock and noticed something I don't fully understand.

Some contributors appear to have 100+ pages of content and around 1,00,000 downloads, while others have only 10 or fewer pages of content but still have around 1,00,000 downloads.

How is this possible? Does the number of assets/pages have little relationship to the number of downloads?

Are there particular factors that can cause a contributor's assets to receive significantly more downloads - such as content type, search ranking, keywords, customer demand, licensing type, contributor history, or the age of the assets?

I would really appreciate an explanation from experienced Adobe Stock contributors about how these high-download contributors achieve such results.

Nancy OShea

Community Expert

Focus more on quality, not quantity,

The biggest fish in a small pond usually gets noticed first.

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert

AlexBond

Inspiring

It’s not about “quality.”

Of the portfolios that are actually featured as "Recent top sellers" in the “Photo” and “Illustration” categories, there are at least several containing AI-generated work of rather mediocre quality that isn’t labeled as “AI-generated” at all. And work from several other portfolios simply wouldn’t pass moderation if that “Similar” rule were actually applied to everyone.
This has absolutely nothing to do with quality. It’s more about “cleverness” and about the fact that knowing how to bypass the “rules for everyone” is profitable.

Here’s an example of a “quality” image from the first page of one of the portfolios currently featured among the “Top” portfolios:
Burgundy satin ribbon
Notice that, apart from the rather questionable cropping and color correction, there is a clearly visible logo of some AI generation service. Also, funny that such watermarks are actually explicitly against the stock’s rules in the first place.

Quality, huh?

O

oleschwander

Legend

Yes - funny and sad. It looks as though more than one entire accounts of these ‘best selling images’ consists of unmarked AI generated images. I wonder how that’s possible.

yamato713108855

Community Expert

Even with assets of the same quality, the likelihood of appearing at the top of search results depends on your choice of themes and keywords.
Unless you rank high in search results, your assets won't sell.

RALPH_L

Community Expert

it all has to do with “demand”, “quality” and “previous sales”.

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