In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, the fusion of technology and creativity has unlocked new frontiers in content creation. One of the most exciting developments in this realm is the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and its profound impact on visual content generation. As AI continues to advance, it has given birth to a new breed of digital artists—machines capable of producing stunning images, designs, and photographs.
In this era of innovation, stock photo sites, traditionally known as repositories of human-created visual content, are embracing this transformative wave. They are opening their doors to AI-generated images, recognizing the incredible potential and creative possibilities AI brings to the table. Now, not all sites are embracing AI-generated images and that is why guides like these exist to manoeuvre to the right ones.
Note: Given how many people are uploading AI images on these sites its not very viable to just upload at one website to make decent passive income, so make sure to sign up for at least 2-3 services.
Freepik is one of the sites I had a lot of success with selling AI images in, but that is mostly due to them being a lot more affordable with download costs than many other stock sites which tend to in general ask quite a lot of money. The rewards fluctuate based on the number of people subscribed to the system so most of the time I’ve been seeing 0.015€ per download, for traditional photographers it might be too low of pay but for a person who tends to prompt a lot of images its not too bad price.
What I also like about this site is that they are quite liberal on what style images get accepted so they aren’t super critical or strict with the quality of the images that you upload.
- Review time: Medium (Within a week)
- Submission Criteria: Low requirements
- Upload Limits: None
- Payment Minimum: 100€
- Website: https://contributor.freepik.com?utm_campaign=lunadeth&utm_medium=referral-content&utm_source=referral
Wirestock is not a traditional Image stock website because it functions as an aggregator so when you upload the image here it will send it to multiple other websites that are listed here and get them approved faster too, but there is a catch – this is a paid service with a price tag of 7,79$ a month which grants you 100 image uploads a month.
There are people who pay the fee just to enter the daily and weekly image quests that they are holding that have cash prices (another very solid way to earn money granted how hard general AI stock image selling is). There is also a general Wirestock portfolio which you can sell from, but don’t expect a high influx of potential buyers from here. That all being said it’s extremely convenient to get images uploaded faster and to many places without too much of a work because Wirestock can upscale your images as well.
- Review time: Short (Roughly a week)
- Submission Criteria: None
- Upload Limits: 100 or 200 per month (Depending on subscription tier)
- Payment Minimum: 30$
- Website: https://wirestock.io?ref=esoteric
If you are looking for an AI stock photo site that has very detailed statistics and data about sales you might want to take a look at Vecteezy, which is focused on stock photo images and vectors – it also needs to be mentioned that they aren’t exactly looking for niche content so that will get rejected, given this it seems there is a great deal of focus on general search terms what people are looking for.
- Review time: Long (Up to 21 days)
- Submission Criteria: Images must be perfectly rendered and technically flawless (no pixelation, distortion, or warping)
- Upload Limits: None
- Payment Minimum: 25$
- Website: https://www.vecteezy.com/contributors?ref=fb860fc4-931f-4cd3-bc0f-30d95e4abb9f&sub_id=default
If you looking for fast image approvals I think Dreamstime is very great option to go for, while they don’t have a massive volume of sales like some giants in the space they are still good stock sites to find images, videos, and audio from customers. The big appeal here is that they review your images most of the time under a day excluding the weekends, which allows you to upload a lot more content faster than a lot of the others.
- Review time: Short (Usually under 24 hours)
- Submission Criteria: No people are allowed
- Upload Limits: 7000 per week
- Payment Minimum: 100$
- Website: https://www.dreamstime.com/#res50742972
A German-based Panthermedia recently started to accept AI images as well on their stock site that has been around since 2004 and that’s why the contributor portal looks like it was made 20 years ago, which is also why the upload interface is a bit outdated and there is quite a lot of info you need to throw in, however, there are some bulk upload tools for managing multitude of images.
They also have a pretty good referral program and low minimum payment which are good incentives to join in my opinion.
- Review time: N/A
- Submission Criteria: Some property releases are required perhaps for images about people
- Upload Limits: None
- Payment Minimum: 30€
- Website: https://www.panthermedia.net/?aff=285403
Japanese-based stock photo site Pixta is another place where AI stock photos are accepted, this can be a great way to penetrate Asian markets if you are prompting something closer to that niche. The uploading interface is a bit different and has more variables than a lot of the others I have experience with and they offer a higher percentage commission on images that you sell exclusively on Pixta.
Top of this they have a tiered system so as you sell more images your rates start from 22% up to 42% per image. They also allow uploads of videos so that’s another way to earn via this platform.
- Review time: Short (Usually under a week)
- Submission Criteria: Seem pretty lax
- Upload Limits: 30 per month (you can apply for a higher number)
- Payment Minimum: ~33$ (5,000 YEN)
- Website: https://www.pixtastock.com/user-invites/2518674
Zedge is a very special AI image marketplace that’s slightly deviating from the traditional Stock photo sites since it is mobile only and is primarily known for selling Wallpapers for the phone, however, customers have the ability to unlock the wallpapers by watching an ad and from that revenue creators are being paid. There is also an option to sell for credits that can possibly get you more money and NFT features.
It’s a very good and frequent amount of cashflow I would say compared to a lot of the other entries on the list, but they have a clause in the contract that states that if you do not earn a minimum of 25$ a year your earnings will be forfeited essentially. It’s not too hard a requirement, as long as you keep uploading on a somewhat frequent basis.
- Review time: Mostly Instant and sometimes going through a manual review that may take a day or two
- Submission Criteria: Have to be on phone dimensions and no copyrighted content obviously
- Upload Limits: None
- Payment Minimum: 100$
- Website: https://www.zedge.net/
One of the more known stock photo sites 123RF has a lot of presence in the space and tends to have quite a lot of requirements to get accepted, unlike other sites you need to submit an ID and selfies before you start even uploading content on the platform so there is that to consider.
I will have to give more insight after I’m approved on their system, but what I’ve read is that they also have a scaling contributor system so the higher revenue % you get on sales as more you sell images or other stuff on their platform.
- Review time: Long (Seemingly has quite a long review period)
- Submission Criteria: Very hard to get accepted as a contributor and images have some requirements as well
- Upload Limits: None
- Payment Minimum: 100$
- Website: https://www.123rf.com/
The Biggest AI operator in Stock image space right now is Adobe Stock and this is technically where the most amount of money is being made. However, this is a most saturated marketplace and there is very high competition for all types of images so you have to carve out a special niche if you want to stand out with billions of photos on the site.
So what I highly recommend is to have at least one other site you sell at besides Adobe Stock because approval times are so painfully long currently. After all, so many people are already uploading at Adobe due to low requirements and not much other verification process.
- Review time: Very Long (Over 3 months even)
- Submission Criteria: Submitting images with real people in them go through additional checks usually
- Upload Limits: None
- Payment Minimum: 25$
- Website: https://stock.adobe.com/
As more websites change their stances regarding AI images I will be updating this list, plus as I get more experience with some of the platforms I can give more wholesome oversight what is the experience of making money with AI images on these sites, or how hard the criteria are?
If you are looking for an easy way to upscale your AI Stock Images, please check out this comparison article about different AI Image Upscalers.
