MicrostockGroup

Hello Microstock Forum!

My name is Simon I am an old istock-contributor that took the decision to go independent in December last year. I dont know if I mad the right call, but i guess i will find out in the nearest couple of months.

I have been an exclusive istock contributor since 2005. I have a very low amount of files, and a few of them have become very popular on istockphoto, some of them got popular in 2006-2007 and have kept generating downloads since then. I have now 240 files on istock, wich has grown by about 30 % per year since I started. I have about 2800 total downloads on istock.

Here is my profile on istock: http://www.istockphoto.com/user_view.php?id=660871

Anyhow, with both fear and excitement, i decided to go independent 3 or 4 months ago. The reasons was:
- Declining trends on istock during the autumn.
- Istock kept rejecting my "more creative" work where I had done to much in photoshop, according to them.
- I read of how sales on shutterstock and other sites was gaining poulatiry and traffic, on the cost of istock, and I dreamt of greener grass on the other side.
- It was hard to get new files popular on istock, very much of my sales were old files placing high in the "total downloads" search results, i guess. That meant that my motivation to produce new work and keep going with this wonderful hobby was declining.
- I was so close to hit silver, then the system changed, as you know, and i got stuck on 25 % forever, instead of 30 %.

So when i got independent, i registered at ALL(almost) other microstock sites. I uploaded about 230 of my best work to something like 25 sites. I bit overkill when i look in the mirror. I used the wonderful tool picworkflow. But it was a lot of work anyway... I got a lot of new images made in the process which was good!

The inspections went quite ok. I got between 60 and 230 files accepted on the different sites. About 120 on average maybe.

So how is it going? Well most of my photos have been uploaded now and approved since a few weeks ago. With shutterstock delayed and just now getting ready. Here is an overview of the downloads on the sites that have generated more than 2-3 downloads :

                Images-Days online-Downloads-Royalty $
Istock non-E     241   33   18   33,2
Istock partners  231   31   29   11,0
Shutterstock     112   61   147   76,5
123RF                132   73   23   16,8
Fotolia                 69   77   20   7,4
Bigstockphoto    132   77     8    8,9
Photodune          78    71   6     7,7
Dreamstime       118   77   16   6,29
DepositPhotos    181   78   14   5,9
Veer                    116   52   4   3,9
Canstockphoto   172   78   5   4,3
               
Total                               274   175,4

Worth considering is that i just recently got all my files up on shutterstock and downloads started kicking in better just a couple of weeks ago. Right now I have about 6-8 dowloads per day on shutterstock.

Before the independent switch I had about 35 downloads per month on IS which generated about 130-140 dollars, with great variation from month to month. The partner program generated about 12 dollars extra the last months. My BME was 215 dollars.

So do you think I made the right call? January gave me 105 dollars as independent, plus IS PP around 12 dollars maybe.  And that was with shutterstock just starting to do well for the last 10 days of January. Today I had my first enhanced download on SS.

Here is my entire portfolio of my new work after the switch, which is a bit different from my istock port:

http://depositphotos.com/portfolio.php?id=1263117

I suspect that it might have been quite naive to go independent with only 240 images to sell. Maybe the downloads I have right now will decline heavily over time. I wonder, and hope, that the sales will continue to grow though, I dont know...

Anyhow the switch have made the process of shooting new stuff and uploading much more motivating now since new stuff start selling strait away, compared to the slow starting Istockphoto. And i get much more of my heavily edited photos accepted that I make in photoshop.

So what do you think? Good to do the switch?

I am 27 years old and my end goal with microstock is to earn about 1000 dollars per month. I have previously been doing mostly nature photos, here is my site with nature photos (in swedish): www.naturfotografering.se

/Simon

i like some of your natural pictures,they are no photoshop edited, so original!!
bTW, congrats to be the independent

Thanks Sobm and Microbius!

ShadySue: A bit of both. First of all, the minor sites have accepted almost all my pictures. But if we talk about the biggest 10 sites, there have been some rejections. Some images have gotten rejected by many agencies at the same time, these have been of obvious bad quality, old files, from old olympus camera, with a lot of noise. So I was not surprised. Better images have been rejected at some agencies and accepted at others. The pattern has been quite random actually. Some of my images that generally sell well have been rejected due to "low comercial value, we dont need this right now ect" So my impression is that the taste, skill, mood, randomness at the different inspectors have created this random pattern. The absolutely hardest agency was crestock, which only accepted 22 of my 240 images. Fotolia and Photodune was quite hard to. Next after them was shutterstock, which showed signs of randomness in their inspection. Some good quality images was rejected, and some lesser quality images was approved, you could often see that one inspector was "hard" and rejected a hole bunch, and then the next time, it was the other way around even though the images was of similar quality.

Oh, I forgot to include dreamstime. Gonna insert it now in the original post. Thanks luissantos!

I'm in the same boat, but about a month behind you. I dropped my exclusivity from iStock in late January after being there since late 2007 and am in the 30 day waiting period. I have about 800 images on iStock and get about 150-200 DL a month generating around $600 to $700 a month with a BME around $800. I had never used the PP although I have opted in and my files went across at he start of February.

I have started uploading to SS with my files in "opt-out" status. So far I have been testing the waters and uploading older files and "test" files which are basically trying to find out what works and what doesn't. So far I've had 75 out of 110 accepted including some files that were rejected series' that were repeatedly on iStock for reasons that I considered ridiculous.

Unlike you I'm not going to go nuts and upload to lots of sites. I will probably upload to DT and one or two of the others, but not FT as I see so much bad comment about the way they run their business and the way they treat their contributors that I feel it's not worth it.

if you really wanna get into the same earnings level perhaps you will need to join FT and perhaps a few more too, only SS will give you "big" buck other won´t so you need to pile up..

I would make good use of the 'comments' box when submitting to explain this as fully as you can.  I have found SS inspectors to take a very reasonable approach when in full possession of the facts - otherwise they are bound to be cautious - just because they don't recognise a mobile phone doesn't mean it has been 'made up'

WOW!!  It's right there in the numbers reported on what is a small portfolio that tells you everything you need to know about what is happening in the microstock.  I would have never guessed the marketplace would promote the cheapest site out there if the suppliers failed to protect their pricing structure.  Look at the sales at the cheap-a$$ SS.  A whopping $.52 per download.   Why aren't indies worried about this trend if they were smart enough not to be exclusive with istock.  As SS becomes more dominant say good bye to your other baskets and any decent $$$$ for your files.  And there is no way SS can raise their pricing with IS blocking them with TS.

Why do you only have a small number of images on IS? If you were not uploading a lot to IS, do you think you will be able to uploading a lot to multiple agencies?

I think Luissanto's numbers show how hard it is to be an indie.

He is very productive. That being said, with 3391 images on SS, he made less than $500 in a month. The total income for five agencies was $853.01 in Sept, 11 (his best month), where he had around 3000 images per agency except IS (998).

I have no desire to talk him into IS exclusivity, but I am very sure he will do much much better as an IS exclusive.