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 As promised, here's my entry about my experience with microstock. The only way to make any money at all in microstock is to have many, many pictures up at multiple sites. I began about 2 months ago with shutterstock and 123royaltyfree and have since been joining istock, dreamstime, bigstock. Joining each site and uploading my portfolio (about 300 pics right now), keywording, on each site is a lot of work so it takes time. My 300 pics is nowhere near enough to make real money. The photographers who earn a thousand or more per month have several thousand photos in their portfolios, and most of them shoot people photos, which I don't in general. I have made about $240 dollars so far. But according to the statistics I'm calculating, my average income per day is increasing (with more sites and more pictures up), now it is an average of $6.4 per day, or almost $200 per month. It would be great if this trend would continue, but since I've decided to focus my energy now on getting a new portfolio ready for macrostock, I won't be uploading many new photos and my income might trickle down to nothing. We'll see. The photo above is my best selling photo so far and has earned me about 9 dollars even though it's only been up for a few days. The photos below are some of my other bestsellers. As you can see these are not what most would consider interesting or good photographs. That is one useful aspect of microstock - there is immediate feedback about the saleability of your images. Different images are popular on different sites, but these were relatively popular on all sites. The different sites also function very differently and have different royalty structures. Shutterstock pays $.20 per download; 123rf pays $.22 or 50% profit, which ever is higher; istock pays anywhere from $.10 to $.60 depending on size; Dreamstime and Bigstock pay $.5 per download. Of course it is very important to remember it is NOT $.20 per image. Over time the amount per image should be much, much more than $.20. Rejections also differ. About half of my portfolio was rejected by istock and almost nothing was rejected by 123; nonetheless, istock is bringing in a good amount of money. Most of the istock rejections are supposed artifacts in my images when viewed at 100 percent. This was unpsetting but acceptable for pictures from my fz20, but I find it rather unbelievable for pictures with my new d50. I find this aspect of microstock the most insulting and demeaning of all; they are paying the photographers so little that I feel they have no place being so picky. Sometimes the rejections are almost random, and sometimes I think the reviewers know less about photography than I do. Overall I'm glad I decided to do this, I've learned a lot and made at least some money on images that I otherwise wouln't be able to sell. But, as soon as I can move beyond microstock, I will. The vast majority of microstock photographers are beyond amateur; many of them don't know basic things about photography like aperture, shutter speed or depth of field. I understand why these people would sell their images to microstock agencies. What I don't understand is why people with 12mp slr cameras and decent images would continue to submit to microstock agencies. I imagine they could earn so much more at a standard agency. I've read one such photographer's explanation on the shutterstock forum: he believes the future is with microstock. I don't believe it is. Maybe my arguments about this can follow in a future post.
Posted by Gaja at September 2, 2005 11:22 AM © All images are copyrighted. Please contact me for permission or licensing. CommentsMost people can't afford $500 RM images for their website. Microstock gives these small mom & pop stores a chance, that they can look good without spending a lot of money. If you need a picture of a gondala in Venice for a travel agency website - do you pay corbis $500 or istockphoto $1? Posted by: CarlosX at June 13, 2007 10:28 AM Payout raised to .25/download Posted by: jeo at April 15, 2006 9:18 PM Excellent write-up, very valuable for me since I'm finding a home for loads - probably thousands - of archived images from the last 18 years. The one thing that burns me up is having an image rejected and finding another accepted image on the site that is hugely inferior, and by this I mean flat, uninteresting, poor colour, overly lit, with no drama or sex appeal. Does iStock accept these images because they're more palatable? I'm not only a professional photographer, who could easily shoot with the best, but I'm also a graphic designer of annual reports - very high-end material, so I think I know where I stand :-) BTW, "real" stock agencies require you to fulfill contractual obligations so much so that it becomes a full-time career. There are quotas to maintain as far as supplying images, and you generally bring something unique to the light table, like a well-honed style. Something to keep in mind while you make a passive income off your mostly unused images. Posted by: firstimecaller at November 24, 2005 4:59 PM Just a small tip that will save you some time. When you are editing your photos with Photoshop or any other program amke sure you include the keywords in the IPTC information. To do this with photoshop go to File-> File Info and add the keywords and the title of your photos. Most of the microstock sites extract these data so you don't have to enter the keywords manually each time you upload at a different site. Here are links to a couple of more microstock sites Posted by: Stockart at October 3, 2005 6:42 AM Gaja have a look at www.alamy.com Browse through the images - yours are just as good and I'm sure would sell. Downside is you need to send the images by cd to the UK but this is not difficult. "nd problem some face is digital images need to be >48mb tiff files. I have just bought genuine fractals to interpolate my images - I'm amazed at the quality and its easy to do. This stock library has a truly global reach and the lowest price per image appears to be in the region of £50. I'm still going through the quality control stages so I can't say much more and unlike you I have sold no pictures -ever. Posted by: Graeme at September 21, 2005 1:24 PM you always made great shot! well done! Posted by: Diana at September 8, 2005 2:21 PM It just doesn't seem very fair! Posted by: Crash at September 7, 2005 5:52 PM I agree with Owen -- this seems like too little money for the quality work you do. I am reading this right--that a company could download your image once and put it on their web site or on a brochure and you would earn less than a dollar? Posted by: Gienna at September 7, 2005 1:55 PM Thanks for sharing the info and your experience in microstock. Gaja, I also have no idea about stock photos trading. But I think with your photos standard, I would pay you more if I am to buy one because I think your work worth more. Anyway, I'm very happy for you because you have earned more than $200 now. I once thought of want to sell my photos on the net too, but I think not many people will buy from me, especially I'm only using PowerShot S1 IS. I don't mean the camera is not good. Just that there are many many more better 'spec' photographs out there. The competition is rather high. Keep up the good work! Posted by: yungyaw at September 7, 2005 12:22 PM Congratulations! It seems to me that you are doing great, and it's also rewarding to get paid for something that you truly like doing. In a future update, I would like to know how microstock agencies licence your images and whether you retain the copyright. I also agree that the D50 makes very clean files (I used one for a few weeks). Posted by: Alex at September 6, 2005 12:18 AM A great read indeed - nice to get this kind of info from someone who's been 'in the trenches'. Very interested in any further installments on this topic. Posted by: Turfdigger at September 5, 2005 5:00 AM thanks for the info gaja! many months ago i "applied" to be a contributor at istock, and was accepted. i haven't uploaded anything yet - as i don't think many (if any) of my shots are the kinds of photos people buy from stock houses. i would imagine uploading 300 photos to many different sites would take forever, but if you can make a few hundred bucks a month, it seems worth it. Posted by: zac at September 4, 2005 1:29 PM Thanks a lot for the article, quite an interesting and educational read. Please let us posted on how this thing is coming along for you! Posted by: Massimo at September 3, 2005 9:15 PM Fascinating read, a subject which is currently very close to my heart. I can't help but feel that you are getting paid very little for your pictures - $0.20 per download? Maybe I just don't get how this whole 'microstock' thing works compared to a more traditional stock agency. I have been trialling a membership with an image library at the moment. I haven't sold a thing yet, but then I only uploaded 5 images. So far one of them *may* have sold, but I'm still waiting for a confirmation after several weeks. If the sale does get confirmed, I will get around £60. I've told myself that if this sale does go through, then I'll start uploading a lot more images. Thanks for providing a few examples of what has been successful so far. Posted by: owen at September 2, 2005 4:07 PM Post a comment |
