MicrostockGroup

Hi All,

I am planing to start selling some of my photos soon. I was wondering if selling photos in the lower earning tier is worth it? and which lower earning microstock sites are best to upload and sell on?

Kind Regards
-WD

Yeah, that's kinda hard not to notice. Once again just wanting to hear personal thoughts/experiences.

If you are going independent then you need to decide if all the upload work is worth your time for a few buck a month.  You need EXCELLENT images with large volume to make a nickle on these low tier sites.  Start out with the top 3-5 first then when you have nothing to do, upload to low tier sites.  Be careful which sites you upload to.  Deposit Photos, for example, doesn't rub right with some folks.  All up to you.

some numbers for you, 85% of my income come from the top5

With my small portfolio and low rate of production, I've made enough money on SS, DT and IS that it's at least fun.  On GL I make only a very occassional sale and on CC, nothing.  Really the only reason to contribute to low earners like GL and CC is to help them develop into alternatives for the future.  Looked at strictly in terms of current sales they're a total waste of time unless maybe you're lucky and have some material that just 'clicks' with particular buyers at those sites.

For me it's not worth the effort to upload them

I would say so too. Always start with the top earner first and then work your way down, but ...

you may also include all the mid and lower earner that have FTP upload. Why? If you only start with the top right now, you take your image the first time in you hands, in a few month you 2 more agencies, and you take the same images again in you hands and upload then, 2 month later ... you get the point. It takes time to upload the same images over and over again.

I use in the moment http://lightburner.com/ to upload my images to most of the agencies I work with ( List of agencies I work with (list is re-sorted every month by income)). With this I have one upload and LightBurner does the upload to the agencies. Big time saver. Then I have all my agencies bookmarked in the browser and opening the on different taps at the same time. Now I go though every agency and submit the uploaded images. (if you don't like Lightburner there are other option out there, like CushyStock, ProStockMaster, FileZilla, PicWorkFlow ...)

Well this system only works if you upload in small increments of image every time. If you produce like 50 or more images per week then it maybe better to stay only with the biggest 6 agencies. That is something you have to try out.

In the moment I actively upload to 28 agencies. Take a look at my pie charts at http://stock.hlehnerer.com/Stats.html Which one should I drop? Yes quite a few low earners, but then there are the times where these spike, and all the time spend is then paid for (well...). Take for example Zoonar, low earner but in March I had a pig spike with 3-4 well paid sales. I also submit to StockFresh, a non-earner in the moment. But they are the maker of StockXpert, so they know what they are doing. Will they ever take off? I don't know, but I think they have a good change. And when they do, I want to be part of it. The newest agency I started uploading is Photodune. Why did I started uploading there? Because they have already an established customer base with their other outlets. So there is a good potential of income. But only time will show.

There is also the problem that it becomes increasingly more difficult to get at some of the big agencies images accepted. And you do need to get an portfolio established with them to have sales.

Hmmm... more to think about for you now. Well, I with you good luck!