Is the Adobe Stock Photo program a rip off for artists?

I can't see how it could possibly pay enough to be worthwhile.  In fact I cancelled my account with Adobe Stock because of the very low payment per photo, and the minimum required to get paid ($50).  It would take a huge number of quality images and a lot of work to get anywhere.

I think the artist is responsible for his profits. Not Adobe. Like Mat said, it is a numbers game.

Since starting ADOBE Stock, I have received a few thousand dollars, with no effort except keywording.

On my own website, I have earned less than a hundred dollars.

The days of earning good profits for photos is over. Sure there areb exceptions but unless, you are already known to a buyer or spend time in a art fair, forget it. 

I knew the rules of the game before I started uploading to Adobe Stock. I have the choice to play or leave. I choose to stay.

I'm just starting out, I'm a traditional photographer and videographer. I am also graphic designer, and I create graphics and I have been testing Adobe out as far as what it compares to the other stock photo companies online. It's been nearly three months now, and I'm documenting the entire process. I currently have a selection of 1088 photos for users to choose from. At this point I'll hold off on giving my opinion until I have all the analytics for the year. I must say, at this point I've sold 105 images, and the financials are definitely a bit underwhelming. I will hold off regarding the full analysis as I don't want to misjudge. It's something I thought people were saying they were making good doing, but at this point, I'm roughly around three months and it doesn't look good so far. 

I completely agree with you Sherwood_Martinelli 

A complete ripoff. I got 23 cents for a photo. 😄

I have used adobe images purchasing them. Payed 269 for 10 photos, I think it was. :D:D

I think I'll quit contributing to their library. Definitely not worth it. 

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For low volume (and really, perhaps all), professional photographers like me, it is indeed a rip off. It’s much worse and more exploitative than the dreaded “crowd sourcing” so many entities resort to for images and “content.” After what happened to me, I think all micro stock photography sites do it is give professional veneer and cover to businesses to take unfair advantage of professionals in creative positions. My story: I was contacted by an art buyer representing one of the biggest banks in the country requesting an artist statement. (They found me because my image and I weren't that hard to find - and I'm glad they did).  Turns out the bank went out and bought my image on AS and then had their art buyer hunt me down. I got paid pennies for an image that is blown up and museum quality framed in a bank lobby. And now if they want to, the same bank can go out do the same thing in every one of their banks in the country again if they want.  I didn't know this was allowed - selling my stock image as my ART as opposed for use in publicity materials (felt intentionally vague in TOU - which yes, I read.) I think we all know that if it was clear, most professional photographers would never agree to be taken advantage of this way. Then imagine my shock when with a little investigation I discovered that on the AS client side website they (Adobe) promotes the heck out of this right being for sale.  At the time I wrote Adobe contributor support and got a very nice note back where the representative sounded sympathetic and said she would pass my concerns on to the “legal team”. Just recently on the year anniversary of the incident. I followed up to see if anything ever came of it, and after a month I’m still waiting to hear back. Was anything changed?

Interesting Discussion. For myself speaking, I can say AS is not a Rip Off. I love taking pictures, i have always seen it as kind of documentary. And only a very little part of my images is commercial enough for sale. I have some cattle and agricultural images in my port and i personnaly dont like it when animals look like plastic toys on an extremely green meadow under an even brighter blue sky.  Cows look like what they look like: they have dirty knees, snot on their nose and sometimes po.op at their tails. Here i can just submit those images without much work. And i have sold some of these images.

Same is for illustrations. AS has never asked me for a photo reference for an illustration of a duck or something. And i hope they never start this.

So i just fill the database with those images i made anyway along the way.

I am not that kind of person that squeezes every aspect of life into frame for microstock.

Mat Hayward is a fantastic ambassador for Adobe Stock. I heard him speak at PhotoPlus 2018. For about 5 minutes I was falling for the "volume" pitch of microstock. Here's a well-written article about the reality of the numbers game. The comments are well worth the time to read as well.  https://petapixel.com/2017/12/11/sold-photo-adobe-stock-earned-pennies/#disqus_thread

I found this discussion very interesting and decided to give some of my thoughts to this topic.

In my opinion, there are two types of photographers in general.

The first one is the photographer as a person providing a service and the other one is the photographer as the artist.

Of course sometimes one person can be both.

I think, a hobby photographer is most of the time the artist type. He/She consider his/her images as a work of art. A hobby photographer values his pictures much higher. He makes often unique pictures and do not have many of them unlike a service photographer. Because of that it hurts a hobby photographer to see his pictures sold at this low price.

A service photographer has more options and possibilities to “produce” many, many pictures. He has better equipment, a studio, he has a network, and he can easily book a model for a photo session and “produce” pictures. So for service photographer there is no problem to have thousands of images in his portfolio.

I’ve joined as a contributor today. I wanted to test, if my images will get some attention at all.

I’m a realist, so I know it won’t be easy or I get disappointed very quickly.

By reading some of the posts here in the contributor forum the spark of enthusiasm is rather fading. But if I don’t try, I will never know.

The other topic is the amount of rejected images. Adobe Stock seems to me more restrictive in comparison to other agencies. The pictures needs to be all perfect, sharp, with no grain and with correct exposure.  But sometimes the imperfection is making a picture interesting, is making it a work of art. So, I’m not sure if stock agencies are really the right place for hobby artists.

Or if you look at the “produced” like in a factory pictures of those “happy, smiling people”.

These are mainstream pictures to me with no value. They are perfect, from the technical and photographic point of view. But there is no soul in those pictures.

The problem is, the customers out there want such pictures today, and they want them for a lowest price possible.

Adobe is microstock like other sites and it's a numbers game. You need a quality portfolio of varied subjects in significant enough quantity to determine your return per image (RPI) and download (RPD) before you really judge/project potential earnings. For me, 1000 plus images (populated for a year) was my benchmark quantity to determine RPI, RPD, and site viability. As a bonus, that also set my upload target based on what I need submitted and accepted to estimate earnings per year. Again, it's only an estimate, but over the course of a year it's generally pretty close. Don't get discouraged at the beginning- microstock is a marathon not a sprint and IMHO... You have to upload small batches multiple times every week. As an example, after reviewing last year- my goal is 100 new images a week 20 uploads per day. It's the long game and there is no quick money to be made here, but it is what it is.