Author Topic: New to microstock - my experiences and questions (Read 10252 times)

sinnlos · « **on:** January 16, 2017, 05:37 »

Hello

I just started to get into the microstock Business since the first of January and uploaded pretty much everything i found on my HD i consider useable

... started with videoblocks (very disappointing...), Pond5, Adobe stock and Shutterstock.

After I made 4 sales on pond5 I started uploading photos to shutterstock 5 days ago and I'm pretty happy about 23 sales (even though 0.25$ is ridiculous for an Image....considering the effort... I'm happy to have the Images already taken...I could never imagine "produce" an Image for a quarter per sale...)
Anyway, I have now about 100images and ~80videos, mostly travel related online and still about 200files left for submitting.

As of now I hope the sales do not drop to Zero after I have uploaded everything...or is this most likely to happen? Should I Keep the Images and only upload 2-3 a day or everything as fast as possible?

Next step would be submitting on Adobe Stock and then I hope to achieve my goal of 1-2$ per day

No big ambitions but a nice little extra Money... especially when a vid is sold I'm really happy

the mail always comes at 1:44 at night, so earning money while sleeping is a convenient feeling

A few questions which came up for me the last days:
Is sunday generally a bad day due to the lack of Business buyers?

Do you all use PayPal for payouts? Got a 103USD payout from pond5, with currency Exchange rate and fees, I only got 93euros... 5 euros "lost" maybe bank wire would be better?

I keyword everything manually and new for each of the 4 sites I upload to... Do you think uploading travel/nature Videos to Shutterstock is worth the effort? Or is it mainly a photo Website and I could save the time?

Do you promote your portfolio somehow?

I like the Business of a Little passive income which pays maybe my car insure...but...it is so unpredictable...how do you - the ones who make a living of it - handle this uncertainty?

thank you for all your help so far

I've read a lot of threads the last weeks and this Forum is very helpful and friendly.

best regards!

alexzappa · « **Reply #1 on:** January 16, 2017, 08:12 »

Looks like a very good start: if in just a couple of weeks you made 4 video sales (out of 80 clips) and 23 images sold (out of 100) I guess you have uploaded high quality stuff.

Brasilnut · « **Reply #2 on:** January 16, 2017, 08:50 »

Quote

Looks like a very good start: if in just a couple of weeks you made 4 video sales (out of 80 clips) and 23 images sold (out of 100) I guess you have uploaded high quality stuff.

Much better than when I started out!

sinnlos · « **Reply #3 on:** January 16, 2017, 09:17 »

Yes I'm very happy with it, but I hope I can keep that momentum and sales will continue

high Quality stuff...don't know

Just the Images and Videos I make during travelling. When I compare it to some other Pictures, those typically stock photographs I think, who . will buy my images?

my ss Portfolio at the moment: https://www.shutterstock.com/de/g/travfi

and my VB Portfolio https://www.videoblocks.com/portfolio/Travfi?page=1

jonbull · « **Reply #4 on:** January 16, 2017, 09:38 »

23 images sold of 100? in 5 days?
i have 4000 quality travel photography and made less in the last 5 days.
it's clear in my opinion that shutter stock want sell new contento only

- they cost 0,25 vs 0,38...multiplied for 1000000 file is a good save
- they want people not reach minimum payout so to have better balance account.

those 2 things are reflected in a search engine that punish everything old and established ontriboutro produce.
good move ss when only amateur will be left you will see the quality of work u will sell.

everest · « **Reply #5 on:** January 16, 2017, 10:03 »

Quote from: jonbull on January 16, 2017, 09:38

i have 4000 quality travel photography and made less in the last 5 days

No you have not if you are not able to sell at least 100+ files in 5 days at Shutter with 4k "quality files". Instead of complaining learn how to shoot and sales will come.....

Congratulations sinnlos for your early success !

jonbull · « **Reply #6 on:** January 16, 2017, 10:48 »

Quote from: everest on January 16, 2017, 10:03

Quote from: jonbull on January 16, 2017, 09:38

i have 4000 quality travel photography and made less in the last 5 days

No you have not if you are not able to sell at least 100+ files in 5 days at Shutter with 4k "quality files". Instead of complaining learn how to shoot and sales will come.....

Congratulations sinnlos for your early success !

sure u are right...that'0s why i sell more than 3000 euro at macro agency even month luckily.
but u know all. clearly i was talking generally actually i sold something near 120 in the last 5 days but compared to 23 in 100 is nothing.
i sold much more in the last year, in december i sold 700 files for more than 700 dollar only in shutter stock. in january nothing. ss has changed again algorithm.

jonbull · « **Reply #7 on:** January 16, 2017, 10:52 »

Quote from: everest on January 16, 2017, 10:03

Quote from: jonbull on January 16, 2017, 09:38

i have 4000 quality travel photography and made less in the last 5 days

No you have not if you are not able to sell at least 100+ files in 5 days at Shutter with 4k "quality files". Instead of complaining learn how to shoot and sales will come.....

Congratulations sinnlos for your early success !

in micro i upload just the junk by the way...the quality is never in micro.
by the way the portfolio of the thread starter is good compared to newbies i saw recently but still too much sales for the size and time.
its clear he was in good position from beginning in search engine.
considering that the only happy camper in ss right now are 0,25 cent user i suspect the truth is ss need to sell more newbies's images to cut the royalty...if you think twice you are happier paying 0,25 or 03,8? multiply for 10 million sales....

it's 1,5 million dollar saving...understand fox?

sinnlos · « **Reply #8 on:** January 16, 2017, 12:04 »

Hm okay... than I understand why I get sales when newbies are ranked "higher"...
Thank you anyway

I will not take that for granted and plan the next trip to get more photos and video

Btw only 1 sale yesterday

jonbull · « **Reply #9 on:** January 16, 2017, 13:14 »

btw u found your portfolio pretty good, so keep on but my comment was related to the fact that in january i see low sales compared to december for example when i sold 4 images for 84 dollar for example...and my subs have completely stopped, i 'm selling mostly credit.
you have sold cause u have good images and i think shutter stock cooked the engine to sal more newbies' images.
you like me have more general travel photos, i do mostly this editorial, i began recently only doing people food lifestyle more micro stock photos, so you must create good content to sell constantly, and u must uploaded often. i have a backlog of a lot of images already prepared keyword, i upload 100 file every two days, yesterday i upload last batch with 84 approval, because uploading more u end in new in engine and clearly if you have good photos customer each your folio and made bookmark.
what is difficult is built a solid group off image who sell often. i had a lot of this , but recently they stopped selling.

sinnlos · « **Reply #10 on:** January 16, 2017, 13:53 »

For travel photos, which agency do you recommend besides SS?
Yeah I wont produce more images than the 300 I had on my HD so far, only after the next journey in july and november :/

everest · « **Reply #11 on:** January 16, 2017, 14:15 »

Quote from: jonbull on January 16, 2017, 10:52

in micro i upload just the junk by the way...the quality is never in micro.
by the way the portfolio of the thread starter is good compared to newbies i saw recently but still too much sales for the size and time.
its clear he was in good position from beginning in search engine.
considering that the only happy camper in ss right now are 0,25 cent user i suspect the truth is ss need to sell more newbies images to cut the royalty...if you think twice you are happier paying 0,25 or 03,8? multiply for 10 million sales....

it's 1,5 million dollar saving...understand fox?

Obviously micro has not the best content although all this is relative....agencies are not interested in quality they are interesting in selling and making money. If we talk about subjective quality then I agree with you. Very few agencies in the world have true quality: Magnum Photos VII Vu Contact Gettyimages and very few others. Photographers that work for these produce truly high caliber work.

Micro ?¿?.....well it can be a money machine if you do it well, not so now anymore....in any case 3k a month is good if you are an amateur ...if you do stock full time I will tell you this is a very poor figure. And 700 files sold every month is Shutter is even a poorer figure. When I tried being independent I uploaded a few thousand files to test the waters in Shutter and was extremely disappointed and the first month I got a few thousand sales. That was at a time when Istock still was making me a ton of money but already declining....

You might impress a newbie with your numbers , for me this is a very low monthly revenue. Again my monthly revenue might sound pocket money for the top micro contributors (be them Getty/Istock exclusive or independents)....all very relative....capito fox.... ;-)

jonbull · « **Reply #12 on:** January 16, 2017, 14:24 »

Quote from: everest on January 16, 2017, 14:15

Quote from: jonbull on January 16, 2017, 10:52

in micro i upload just the junk by the way...the quality is never in micro.
by the way the portfolio of the thread starter is good compared to newbies i saw recently but still too much sales for the size and time.
its clear he was in good position from beginning in search engine.
considering that the only happy camper in ss right now are 0,25 cent user i suspect the truth is ss need to sell more newbies images to cut the royalty...if you think twice you are happier paying 0,25 or 03,8? multiply for 10 million sales....

it's 1,5 million dollar saving...understand fox?

Obviously micro has not the best content although all this is relative....agencies are not interested in quality they are interesting in selling and making money. If we talk about subjective quality then I agree with you. Very few agencies in the world have true quality: Magnum Photos VII Vu Contact Gettyimages and very few others. Photographers that work for these produce truly high caliber work.

Micro ?¿?.....well it can be a money machine if you do it well, not so now anymore....in any case 3k a month is good if you are an amateur ...if you do stock full time I will tell you this is a very poor figure. And 700 files sold every month is Shutter is even a poorer figure. When I tried being independent I uploaded a few thousand files to test the waters in Shutter and was extremely disappointed and the first month I got a few thousand sales. That was at a time when Istock still was making me a ton of money but already declining....

You might impress a newbie with your numbers , for me this is a very low monthly revenue. Again my monthly revenue might sound pocket money for the top micro contributors (be them Getty/Istock exclusive or independents)....all very relative....capito fox.... ;-)

im full time photographer. i do stock and other stuff. sell fine art print also.
well 3k from stock is a good figure for my business...i'm improving and hope it can keep u. consider i do mostly travel and genetic photos so yes when i financed my travel the expenses is finished and i have zero cost...calssic stock have a lot of expenses, in western world studio model make up cos a lot of money.
it depends on cost and net earning. by the way i collaborate with redux pictures and contrasto italian agency for example. they are competitors of contact and vu agency...
many people do 1000 sales mostly sub. i do mostly credit. so 700 sales for me can 1500 dollar while for u can be 100.

jonbull · « **Reply #13 on:** January 16, 2017, 14:28 »

Quote from: everest on January 16, 2017, 14:15

Quote from: jonbull on January 16, 2017, 10:52

in micro i upload just the junk by the way...the quality is never in micro.
by the way the portfolio of the thread starter is good compared to newbies i saw recently but still too much sales for the size and time.
its clear he was in good position from beginning in search engine.
considering that the only happy camper in ss right now are 0,25 cent user i suspect the truth is ss need to sell more newbies images to cut the royalty...if you think twice you are happier paying 0,25 or 03,8? multiply for 10 million sales....

it's 1,5 million dollar saving...understand fox?

Obviously micro has not the best content although all this is relative....agencies are not interested in quality they are interesting in selling and making money. If we talk about subjective quality then I agree with you. Very few agencies in the world have true quality: Magnum Photos VII Vu Contact Gettyimages and very few others. Photographers that work for these produce truly high caliber work.

Micro ?¿?.....well it can be a money machine if you do it well, not so now anymore....in any case 3k a month is good if you are an amateur ...if you do stock full time I will tell you this is a very poor figure. And 700 files sold every month is Shutter is even a poorer figure. When I tried being independent I uploaded a few thousand files to test the waters in Shutter and was extremely disappointed and the first month I got a few thousand sales. That was at a time when Istock still was making me a ton of money but already declining....

You might impress a newbie with your numbers , for me this is a very low monthly revenue. Again my monthly revenue might sound pocket money for the top micro contributors (be them Getty/Istock exclusive or independents)....all very relative....capito fox.... ;-)

i don't want impress nobody and i not believe a dim of hat you write. 3700 k month from stock , from photos i have in my hard disk mostly from travel and assign,eat, can sound nothing but who u consider i not spend nothing to do them....there are top micro stock who make 50 k month and spend 55. by the way i stopped my day job 10 years ago to make what i loved so i m not interested in spending hour photographing apple against wall paper or idiot people smiling.

jonbull · « **Reply #14 on:** January 16, 2017, 14:35 »

Quote from: sinnlos on January 16, 2017, 13:53

For travel photos, which agency do you recommend besides SS?
Yeah I wont produce more images than the 300 I had on my HD so far, only after the next journey in july and november :/

you can produce images everywhere. travel photography is saturated in my opinion. is not worth trying to enter rm agency if you don't have big portfolio of very good quality, or a niche portfolio, maybe a country or 2 not often covered...consider the mostly micro stock is made by amateur who shoot mostly the same stuff and the sam countries.
in my opinion next time focus on the not already done 1000000 times, shoot people, editorial for example.
I like solo mango in italy good agency but still very saturated but very good quality.
if you do this part time micro is the only way to make money, small. rm is for full time in my opinion. Other agency are not really interesting.
My rm at the moment are divided by alamy redux picture and gallery stock. if you have high quality images you could try stocksy , i think very good image quality and subject and it seems to sell well.

gnesher · « **Reply #15 on:** January 19, 2017, 12:04 »

Congratulations these sales, these are amazing numbers.

I've got just over 500 photos in SS (no videos) and have made 23 sales in the first 19 days of the month (Jan) so much (much) worse

I've looked at your profile, it's definitly good though for the life of me I can't explain the sales difference. I take a lot of similar photos and I don't think your keywording is better (if anything it feels like your not adding enough keywords) but then again, maybe the more keywords you add, the less they contribute to your position - I'm honestly not sure.

In any case just keep on the good work and I'll be keeping an eye on this thread as I'm quite interested on the replies

jonbull · « **Reply #16 on:** January 19, 2017, 12:31 »

Quote from: gnesher on January 19, 2017, 12:04

Congratulations these sales, these are amazing numbers.

I've got just over 500 photos in SS (no videos) and have made 23 sales in the first 19 days of the month (Jan) so much (much) worse

I've looked at your profile, it's definitly good though for the life of me I can't explain the sales difference. I take a lot of similar photos and I don't think your keywording is better (if anything it feels like your not adding enough keywords) but then again, maybe the more keywords you add, the less they contribute to your position - I'm honestly not sure.

In any case just keep on the good work and I'll be keeping an eye on this thread as I'm quite interested on the replies

that's what i don't understand me too...ok i understand actually...only my new images are selling...nothing sell before november 2016...so it's clear in the search engine they are promoting new contributor or new content....probably they have an algorithm who help spreading the sales between all the contributor so as many don't reach 35 dollar month....
in addiction i am 0,38 cent guy and i'm pretty sure they are advertising mostly 0,25 cent...they save near 50 % commission multiplied for thousand or million images is a good save.
i am making right now 25 sales per day but i had more in the past. the only thing to do is upload content.

cascoly · « **Reply #17 on:** January 19, 2017, 15:43 »

Quote from: sinnlos on January 16, 2017, 12:04

Hm okay... than I understand why I get sales when newbies are ranked "higher"...
Thank you anyway I will not take that for granted and plan the next trip to get more photos and video

Btw only 1 sale yesterday

ignore the conspiracy theories - no one has any real evidence that newcomers are ranked higher - other than the anecdotal that THEIR images aren't selling (out of tens of thousands of contributors)

you're off to a good start - i'd say upload in larger chunks - 50-100 a day isn't too many -- travel images ofte3n take awhile to produce sales, so the exact date or time of upl probably won't matter; if you have similars, spread them out a bit over several batches

alexzappa · « **Reply #18 on:** January 20, 2017, 05:13 »

Quote from: gnesher on January 19, 2017, 12:04

maybe the more keywords you add, the less they contribute to your position

this could be an interesting point to investigate

sinnlos · « **Reply #19 on:** January 20, 2017, 11:19 »

Thank you for your replies so far

I just dont like to put so many keywords because if I have for example a fireplace video,
I just add "fireplace, chimney, fire,warm, burning, wood, flames"
I mean whats the point in putting 30or more keywords for this simple scene? The buyer will look after those words if he wants a fireplace.... not "romantic" or sth. Like that...
And I save time

Got in 9 days 41 sales now, my aim of 1$ a day is still realistic

Btw. I got a video sale on Adobe Stock a few minutes ago,
Got 9€ commission... how is that possible!? I thought its 35% of the 59.99? Any experiences?

//edit: ah I got it, it's because of a lower resolution sold, I guess.

And another question... I will upload my asia related stuff (from indonesia, Bhutan, cambodia etc) to motion elements, do you think its a good idea?

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #20 on:** January 20, 2017, 11:35 »

Quote from: sinnlos on January 20, 2017, 11:19

...I just dont like to put so many keywords because if I have for example a fireplace video,
I just add "fireplace, chimney, fire,warm, burning, wood, flames"
I mean whats the point in putting 30or more keywords for this simple scene? The buyer will look after those words if he wants a fireplace.... not "romantic" or sth. Like that...

Buyers may not search the way you think all the time, so sticking to what's in your scene/footage is important, but - as an example - including living room, cozy, house, home, interior along with fireplace, mantel, mantelpiece, gas fire (or wood or whatever) may well help your files sell if the buyer looks for "cozy living room" not "warm fireplace".

Looking at Shutterstock's list of keywords used to find my sold files, I see some files have house selling more than home and others the opposite - so I now always include both; for interior shots, sometimes room is more important than bedroom or living room, and so on.

PigsInSpace · « **Reply #21 on:** January 20, 2017, 12:57 »

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on January 20, 2017, 11:35

Quote from: sinnlos on January 20, 2017, 11:19
...I just dont like to put so many keywords because if I have for example a fireplace video,
I just add "fireplace, chimney, fire,warm, burning, wood, flames"
I mean whats the point in putting 30or more keywords for this simple scene? The buyer will look after those words if he wants a fireplace.... not "romantic" or sth. Like that...

Buyers may not search the way you think all the time, so sticking to what's in your scene/footage is important, but - as an example - including living room, cozy, house, home, interior along with fireplace, mantel, mantelpiece, gas fire (or wood or whatever) may well help your files sell if the buyer looks for "cozy living room" not "warm fireplace".

Looking at Shutterstock's list of keywords used to find my sold files, I see some files have house selling more than home and others the opposite - so I now always include both; for interior shots, sometimes room is more important than bedroom or living room, and so on.

Ditto Jo Ann. I've had photos sell before based on the oddest keywords. I also include common misspellings of words if possible and Latin names for plants and animals, which while arcane, has landed me one sale. I use xPiks, which will do keyword searches for you, and if there's a way for me to get close to 50, I go for it.

Cersei · « **Reply #22 on:** January 23, 2017, 19:10 »

This is very interesting. I also started uploading 20 days ago and with 70 images (uploaded during last 20 days, not all at once) i have 20 downloads.

I think it doesn't have to do anything with newbies but more with the new content. My new content always sells in a few days following the approval.

Btw sinnlos nice portfolio

sinnlos · « **Reply #23 on:** January 24, 2017, 05:20 »

thanks

I hope it has also to do with Quality and not only new Content

will be interesting to see how this evolves...at the Moment I still have 4-5 DLs per day, hope to keep those at least

even though I hope Video would be selling more often, 0,25c per Image is ridiculous. I wonder how one can make a living out of it....

sinnlos · « **Reply #24 on:** March 01, 2017, 04:49 »

to recap my first two month of microstock, the speculations by some of you were quite right. The first three weeks I had a lot of sales, 81 sales in 3 weeks, then february it dropped to 28 for the whole month (only SS figures). So new pictures are def. pushed.
Overall, I earned 140$ in the first month, and in february only 90$ - (114 and 74$ of those with Video - and I have 2,5 times more photos online than videos)
- concluded from that, putting effort in the photo section isn't worth it at all and I will focus on Video.
Hope to see more sales coming with the last added Videos and doubling my Portfolio...

apart from that - I submit to Adobe stock - SS - VB and ME at the Moment... considering PIXTA and 123rf for Video as well .... any experiences for with footage sales recently there? those agencys have at least a decent pricing... not like VH.

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Author Topic: New to microstock - my experiences and questions (Read 10252 times)

sinnlos

alexzappa

Brasilnut

sinnlos

jonbull

everest

jonbull

jonbull

sinnlos

jonbull

sinnlos

everest

jonbull

jonbull

jonbull

gnesher

jonbull

cascoly

alexzappa

sinnlos

Jo Ann Snover

PigsInSpace

Cersei

sinnlos

sinnlos

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