Stocksy United
👤 Bruce Livingstone (Invented microstock as iStockphoto (sold to Getty $50M, 2006), then co-founded Stocksy to build its opposite.)🌐 siteLinkedIn
The man who invented cheap stock photos came back to build the co-op that pays photographers the most.
Will it work? · our read
Artists own it. A fairer split is a durable moat when your suppliers are your owners. But this is a 2016-era $10M co-op, and generative AI now undercuts the stock-photo category it helped create.
01How the money moves
Curate hard: Stocksy says only 1% of artist applicants are accepted
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Members co-own the co-op and upload exclusive work
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Brands license it; co-op keeps about 50%, artists 50-75%
02The numbers
$10.3MStated2016 sales, last disclosed
2016
the sentence on the page
over half of its revenue as royalties to its members, totaling $4.3 million. Revenue for 2016 has grown to $10.3 million, with $5.9 million paid out to contributors. Surprisingly, 80% of total sales…
Curation stays tight: about 4-5% of applicants are accepted. start.coop
Last public revenue: $10.3M (2016), up from $7.9M (2015). No recent figure disclosed.
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You have the verdict. Members get the work behind it.
- The CENTS scorecard — where it's strong, where it's soft
- The founder's key move, and the counter-move
- How it could die — the evidence, and how sure we are
- The case against our own call
- A 🚀 launchpad prompt — the case, as a plan for your business
We rate our own confidence — and argue against ourselves. Nobody else in this category does.
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See a full teardown, free → ImportYetiSourcesSources last checked 25 August 2026
start.coop — Stocksy co-op case study (revenue, payouts, membership)BusinessWire — Stocksy doubles revenue to $7.9M (first-party release)Wikipedia — Stocksy United (co-op structure, membership, royalty split)Wikipedia — Bruce Livingstone (iStockphoto, $50M Getty sale)Stocksy FAQ — no AI-generated content policy
Revenue is first-party but dated. BusinessWire (Stocksy's own release) confirms $7.9M for 2015; the co-op reported $10.3M for 2016. No recent annual revenue is public, so I did not invent one — the headline figure is explicitly the last disclosed year. Cumulative royalties (about $50M to artists since 2013) and the 50-75% split are Stocksy-disclosed via start.coop and Wikipedia. Important: Stocksy is the merchant of record and books full license sales as revenue, then pays out 50-75% as artist royalties, so its net-of-royalty take is roughly half — this is company revenue, not third-party GMV. Growjo's '$118M revenue' is an unverified estimate and was not used. AI-policy and payout details come from Stocksy's own FAQ and blog. We never score you.