This was a fascinating video I watched as there was a photographer named Michael Stemm who decided to one day use the site Shutterstock where artists can make money selling their photos for a license. Usually this can be businesses wanting to use it one time for a project or there are often licenses to enable them to use it on items to resell. Usually the stipulation is you can’t resell the work as is.
For the most part he just left the account stagnant. One day he realized that he saw his own work on a bunch of Walmart merchandise. As it turned out a company had paid for an extended license to enable them to use his photos on all these products. In the end apparently he only made a little over a dollar from the site because of the sale but can’t even claim it as he never maid the minimum payment threshold.
Overall he was saying lesson learned. An ideal situation would be that he would get a royalty of some sort for every product sold with his work on it. But because of the licensing agreement that doesn’t appear to be an option for him. I guess that is the negative where although stock photography sites make it easy for you to potentially make money be careful as you could be undervaluing your work.