The Microstock Photography Blog

So - I’ve been a very bad photog blogger.

I’ve committed the worst of sins -  not updated the blog in far too long.

Mea Culpa - Mea Culpa.

I’m not a profesional blogger - and life just got busy over the last few months. 

A few status updates:  

• my goal of getting accepted into Shutterstock - so far no-go.   I was rejected in December/January and have yet to reapply.  I promised myself I’d put together a new stack of solid images before I resubmitted. 
• my goal of taking more pictures - failed miserably.  I know.. I know.  Terrible. 
• goal of hitting 100/mth total in profit - not even close yet.
• Still working towards 100 photos at each site

 My immediate goal will be to carve out time to take pictures and hit the 100 photo mark at each site.

That is a fairly attainable goal and should realistically result in 50-100/month in profits total.

That’s all the negative talk aside -  on to the positive.

I’m very encouraged of late - in the last 2 weeks I’ve had 10 sales or so from the various agencies.

With as little effort as I’ve been able to put into microstock in the last month I’m really happy to see photos selling and it encourages me to put more time into the effort.   Not sure if others share the same inspirations but recently Istockphoto sent one of their weekly mailings that included their top weekly shots.   Every time I get one I look at it and think ‘ I can take those pictures’.    In some way that usually helps me to go out there and try.

It has been 2 full months now that I’ve tested the Microstock waters.

I feel like I’ve learned a great deal and am making progress - but much more slowly then I would prefer.

Lessons learned so far:

1. I suck as a photographer

… alright alright.. maybe I don’t suck - but it is challenging to meet the standards of the sites themselves, and more importantly of the fellow photogs. I am continually amazed and impressed by the quality of work that my fellow photogs exhibit. It both inspires and depresses me a bit. But I remind myself that it is a great learning process and I will get better.

2. Shoot More. Shoot More. Shoot More.

I can complain that I don’t have time - but that will always be the case excuse. You cannot learn, publish, sell and expand creatively unless you are actively taking pictures. Sometimes I find myself mired in work, writing, reading — and not what I should be doing Shooting.

3. Patience

The stock (and microstock) gig is all about patience. Microstock is about volume and time (isn’t everything..)

The more images you build up, longer the sell - more successful you will be. So I just keep rocking myself back and forth and repeating ‘I can be successful, I can be successful.. patience.. patience..’ even though I’ve only got 20 photos in my library.

4. Focus

Get it .. focus.. HA!.. (sorry). It is worthwhile to focus stock photos on certain themes or areas of interest.

I will write up and entire post on this tomorrow. From reading blogs, posts and other much more successful photogs I’m always amazed not just by their creativity and skill - but by the expanse and variety of pics and themes. There are many ways to be successful.

5. Shutterstock hates me.

They do. really. My 3rd attempt at acceptance is rolling around this week. I’m crossing my fingers.

My previous attempts failed in part because I did not pay attention at all - They reject the entire batch of 10 photos if any less then 7 are acceptable. My first attempt I did not pay attention to which of the 10 photographers that they accepted - and which they found undesirable. So I resubmitted many of the same ones.. and of course was rebuffed. As shutterstock shows up as one of the most profitable sites I’m eager to jump in.

Results to Date (from August thru Ocbtober):

Breakdown of my sales so far: Site / $$ / # Downloads

istockphoto | $5.84 | 9

dreamstime | $6 | 6

fotolia | $0.33 | 1

bigstockphoto | $0.5 | 1

stockxpert, luckyoliver,albumo,snapvillage = 0

Images: On each site I have roughly 20 images uploaded. Very small set of pictures.

Below are the basics for each microstock agency, including cost of credits and payout to photographers.

1. istockphoto.com : cost of one credit = $1.

Sizes Sold: xsmall, small, medium,large,xlarge and xxlarge

Prices: 1 credit, 2 credits, 4 credits, 6 credits, 10 credits and 15 credits

Pay-out: Non-exclusive photographers = 20% of photo price

Exlusive photographers = 40% of photo price

Notes: istockphoto.com is the giant in the industry with over 2 million images. If you were to go exclusive with any of them it’d probably be them. The review process is rigorous, not the toughest in the industry, but they are picky.

2. Shutterstock.com: cost per credit = $1

Sizes:

Prices: 1 credit, 2 Credits

Pay-Out: 25%

3. Bigstockphoto.com: cost per credit = $1

Sizes : Medium, Large

Prices: 1 credit, 2 Credits

Pay-out: 50% of photo cost.

Extended licenses: Yes. Up to $60 per license (Average $12).

Notes:

4. fotolia.com: credit cost = $1

Sizes : small, medium, large, xlarge, xxlarge,extended

Costs: 1 credit, 2 credits, 3 credits, 4 credits, 5 credits

Pay-out: Non-exclusive = 33% to 47%

Exlusive = 50% to 64%

Notes: fotolia.com has an odd measurement for payouts - the higher the # of photos you have available for purchase the higher percents that you receive.

5. 123rf.com : credit cost= less then $1

Sizes: web, print, ultra high, tiff, extended

Prices: 1, 2, 3, 10 , 99

Pay-out: 50%

Notes: Subscription available for customers @ either 5 or 26 images downloaded a day.

Subscription services are usually good for photographers. Drives more downloads.

6. StockXpert.com : Credit Cost = $1 or less in package

Sizes: small, medium, large, xlarge, xxlarge

Prices: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10

Pay-out: 50%

Extended Licenses pay up to 50.00 / sale.

7. dreamstime.com : Cost of credit = $1 or less in bundle

Sizes: small, medium, large, xlarge, extended

Prices: 1, 2, 3, 4, 50+

Pay-out: Non-exclusive = 50%

Exclusive = 60%

Notes: Dreamstime.com images become more expensive the more downloads they have. This pushes users to download less popular pictures. Odd system but interesting. They also offer a subscription plan which allows 25 downloads per day.

8. Canstock Photo: Credit Cost = less then .50

Sizes: small, medium, large

Prices: 1, 1.5, 2

Pay-out: Non-exclusive = 30%

Exclusive = 30-50%

9. luckyoliver.com: Cost of credit = $1 or less when purchased in bundle

Sizes: blog, small, medium, large, xlarge, xxlarge

Prices: 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 20

Pay-out: Non-exclusive: 30%

Exclusive: 30-50%

Notes: Site is campy but fun. Exclusive members are paid more the higher downloads they have.

Thought that I would jot down 2 blogs dedicated to microstock (both vastly superior to mine)

http://www.microstockdiaries.com/

http://microstockphoto.blogspot.com/

Both are terrific reads.  I will add permanent links on the main page here when time permits.

I do my best to not copy any content or ideas from the blogs above-  they are both a great source of info for all interested in microstock.

Dreamstime is back up.  Looks like they had a total downtime of 24 hours.  No word on what hardware was at fault - (believe some of the service is hosted in Romania).

08/20/07 Edit:  The good folks at dreamstime have let me now that the above info is incorrect.

They do not have any systems hosted in Romania and are based in one of the top tier sites in the US.    I see they have been running just fine since the outage - in fact I’ve even had a sale!   Glad to see they are running well.

Luckily they managed to restore most data.  Sounds as though some of the images in pending status were lost.

So a few unhappy photogs get to reupload images. 

I’d wager that’s not the worst that could have happened.   For a newcomer that is pretty rough news, but hopefully it is a learning experience and doesn’t keep them down for too long.

I was very pleased to login to my istockphoto account and see my first succesful sales!

Feels almost silly to be excited about an earnings of 2.48 (4 total sales)..   but one has to start somewhere.

I find the types of photos that sell in microstock always to be suprising.  Of the 14 of my photos that were accepted, the macro photo of a power cord sold twice.  Picture of a softball glove was the other sale.    Just funny to me that something as mundane as a power cord..  but I suppose somebody was willing to pay a few bucks for it.

I’ve set goals for myself to upload a minimum of 10 photos a week to istockphoto.

That will be the first site I upload to - I’ll then reuse those same photos to upload to the other sites.

I’ll post shortly with a bit more on my strategy.   Now to find 10 decent photos a week..

Looks like Dreamstime is down due to a hardware failure.

Tried to access the site last night and could not bring up the page at all.

They are now announcing a hardware failure.  Let’s hope that they can restore service quickly.

Very tough break for such a new player in the game.  I’ll update with more as it surfaces.

I started down the microstock journey with my first uploads and acceptance into istockphoto last month.

As you likely know, they are the elephant in the industry and I thought that it would be a place good start.  Over the course of 2 weeks I uploaded 18 images.   From reading online I knew well that I should expected a steady stream of rejection.

I’ve got no delusions as to my skills behind the camera, I am positive that 99% of the picture-takers out there are better then myself.

So I plan to use a few of the micro-stock agencies as litmus tests if you will.  And provide some critiquing for my learning curve.

If I make a few bucks a month in the meantime - and feel proud that I sold a few pics - Great!

(of course..  if all of them are rejected and I see 0.. I’ll be ticked as hell)

A few were rejected immediately based on quality,  a couple I was able to improve and were accepted.

One of my favorites (a nun with face ..mostly… covered)  was rejected.  No model release form.

Welcome all!   My name is mike.  

I’ve started on a stock photography journey .

You are welcome to follow along.

shutterstock rejected all of my photos.   good job me