Stock marketplaces reject submissions for two reasons more than any other: missing IPTC metadata and poor keywording. The image is technically fine, but the file is not. Fixing this is a five-minute pass with a bulk editor and a keyword strategy.
Shutterstock, Adobe Stock, Getty, Alamy, and most large marketplaces read IPTC fields from the file on upload. They use Caption-Abstract for the description, Keywords for the search index, By-Line (Creator) for attribution, and Copyright Notice for licensing. If those fields are empty or generic, your upload either fails review or ranks poorly inside the marketplace.
Aim for specific, descriptive keywords: object, action, setting, mood, demographic, concept. Avoid filler like "image", "photo", "picture". Mix singular and plural for important terms. Use both literal ("woman drinking coffee") and conceptual ("monday morning", "remote work"). Different marketplaces want different counts — Adobe Stock recommends 5–25, Shutterstock allows up to 50; check each.
After culling and editing, drop the keepers into the bulk editor. Set Creator and Copyright globally. Set the Caption-Abstract template ("Confident woman drinking coffee at a sunlit kitchen window — concept of slow morning, remote work, mindfulness."). Tweak per-image, then export the ZIP. You can keep multiple presets — one per marketplace — and re-run the bulk pass for each destination.
Common rejection causes that metadata can prevent: missing model release reference in caption, incorrect copyright year, generic keywords, language mismatch (some agencies require English keywords), keyword stuffing. The bulk editor lets you fix these in one pass without re-exporting from your editor.