I thought it would be fun to start earning something from my hobby of photography back in 2008 and whilst toying with the idea of taking up photography as a full-time profession. Now I have small portfolios on several sites and am starting to see some success of my limited endeavours although not on all stock sites. Here is a brief review of the sites I have been using and some thoughts about the nature of stock photography and my experience with it. I recognize that my limited resources/equipment and experience/time spent submitting to stock sites appropriate images that sell fast has a bearing on the success of my portfolio!
Click on the banners below each summary to see the stock sites mentioned
I joined iStock in February 2008 and now have 140 files in my portfolio and 105 downloads. Easy site to join and navigate, although keywording and captioning images can be time-consuming. Review time can be up to a week for uploads and rejections can be dependent upon how the reviewer interprets the policies. Can join other contributors creative networks and review/rate images as well as get lots of advice on the forums. Can request payout when achieved $100 earnings. Commission rate is low (20%) initially but goes up to 40% for successful stockers.
Joined Fotolia in December 2008 and now have 211 images online. Quick reviews and approvals/rejections system and nice layout of portfolio list. Number of views per day seems very low and have only a few (33) downloads in total. Earnings commission is similar to iStock – low! Annoying credit system whereby each credit is worth £0.75 to the contributor and you have to earn 50 credits before you can convert into a payout.
Joined Dreamstime in July 2008 and have 92 files online, with only 22 downloads. Can request payout when reached $100 in sales but that is a long way off for me! Review time of images submitted is about a week (slow) and frustrating, especially when a rejection can be due to a dubious interpretation of policies by the reviewer. Site layout and details/lists of image data is good though.
Only joined 123 RF in August 2010 and have 70 images online and 6 downloads to date. Profile/portfolio page has been viewed 1370 times. Commission is 50% for bought images and $0.36 per subscription download flat rate regardless of size. Minimum payout is $50 via Paypal. Quite a long review time for submitted images and cannot see data lists for uploaded images to discover ranks of most popular or even which ones have sold!
I joined Alamy in May 2010 and now have 61 images in this portfolio. This site pays the highest commission – 60% which is rather nice. However, I am still waiting for a decent sale and have only had one image purchased for “novel use” scheme ($0.83 earnings!) to date! Annoying feature with this site is definitely the fact that if one image in a batch uploaded for submission is rejected then ALL the images are rejected!!! So this means that you have to either be absolutely certain that all the images in the batch are top quality or you upload one at a time! Alamy do have a news image category which might be suitable for those who take newsworthy images so I might have a look into how this works now I am doing more sports shoots.
Joined Depositphotos in February 2011 and have 62 files online but only one download. Review time is about 3 to 5 days and approval/rejection policy is consistent. Royalties start at 44% and increase according to how many images you have had downloaded. Payout can be requested when you have earned $50. Easy and uncomplicated site to navigate and use – plenty of data lists.
http://depositphotos.com/portfolio.php?id=1050073&ref=1050073
Joined Pixmac in February 2011 also and have 67 images in the gallery but no sales to date. Simple site, average upload approval times but not data listings to see how many of your images have been viewed.
Download stock photos from Pixmac.
Pixmac is a stock photo market with more than 11 million royalty free images, illustrations and vectors.
It’s the most comfortable, user friendly and fastest microstock website ever. Purchase without registration in as little as 3 minutes.
Joined Bigstock mid 2010 and now have 88 images online and only one download so far! Simple, clean site which presents images clearly but not possible to see lists of data about your images as you can in iStock. Still, it is easy to upload images and approval of submissions only takes a few days. Royalty rate is 30% for Pay as you go purchases and 50% for credit package purchses and you can request payout after $30 has been earned.
Joined GL Images (Graphic Leftovers) in February 2011 and have 46 images online. Simple uploading or FTP system and pretty quick approval time for submissions. This is a super creative image stock site probably really suited to vector image artists but it still has a clean feel to it. Commission is a flat 52% and three tier price system is offered for buyers. Website has recently been redone and looks really good. No downloads through this site but I don’t reckon it should be long if I can get some more images uploaded!
I tried to join Shutterstock a while back but the three times I uploaded a set of ten images for scrutiny have all met with one image being rejected and being told that I had to wait another thirty days before I could apply again. It seems that submitting images that have been fine on other stock sites (such as iStock and Alamy) do not necessarily meet the approval of the reviewers at Shutterstock. As you can imagine I wonder whether this is done just to put people off and preserve the exclusive nature of Shutterstock or whether my images really are substandard!
Anyway, I hope some of you out there find this post useful in some way. I would love to hear about other stock photographers’ experiences, hints and tips so I can improve my upload success ratio and increase earnings substantially in future. What works for you? What lessons have you learned?
Let me know!
John
JS Photography 