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: about 4-5% of photographer applicants get in
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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
$50M+
royalties paid to artist-members since 2013
Stocksy
50-75%
artist share per sale (iStock: 15-45%)
Stocksy
1,800+
photographer-owners in 80+ countries
Stocksy
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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(demo: preview the full teardown)Sourcesupdated · daily
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.