MicrostockGroup

I recommend uploading to several sites for a year to see which ones are working for you as it is difficult to predict. Then you can focus on the best one s trying  to make images especially for them
Good luck
L

I guess there are so many available photos that buyers won't bother to search for your pictures on another site. If your picture is not on a site, they'd buy another picture instead.

So I would suggest that you upload to multiple sites not to lose possible sales. Concentrate on major sites though, as the others are a waste of time most of the time.

You will very likely find out that some of these sites are a waste of time, or aren't properly run, causing you to want to close your account.  And in some cases that is a real pain, requring you to tediously delete your images one by one.  Other sites won't remove your images for a period of up to 6 months after you request your account to be closed. 

 My advice is to check out the "close account" rules and procedures before starting with a site.

I'm happy uploading just to one microstock site: my RPI is very healthy and it comes with the to upload to other well known macro sites..

Thanks people, by multipul sites, I meant I'm quite new, was with IS for 6 months before also using SS, DT, FT. these are all the sites that im with. FT and DT are very slow tho, compaired to IS, whats the deal ith that? SS is doing nicely 

Time is money. You loose 6 months of sales with that method. I usually send my images to the sites with low sales monthly.

From the point of view of a long time stock photographer...

When RF came along us RM guys bitched and complained...then joined in. Now the same situation has arisen with Microstock biting into low end and some middle range RF sales.

The new strategy I follow is

RM only to Corbis and Getty

High end RF through a distributor like Blend or Tetra who place RF non exclusive everywhere...it's not really worth it to give one agency exclusivity with RF

Non similars and outakes to Micro, and low production value, low budget shoots also to Micro. Prices do not justify the same effort and investment as RM or high end RF. Never, ever become exclusive to one Micro site...it will cripple your career in my view. I know iStock offer a path to Getty...but that is what is making some of us long term Getty shooters look elsewhere...they load the site with similars from iStock Exclusive and Flickr, but castigate us regular shooters for even submitting more than one in a series.

Put what you have on every Micro site you can get accepted by and see what sales pattern emerges...I have up to 275 images on 11 of them...some are an ordeal to upload and submit to...others, like Veer MP and Shutterstock, are a dream.

So far almost 300 downloads on Shutterstock and sales on Dreamstime, iStock, Veer, Fotolia and 123rf....will give it until April and see who sells well or reasonably then start dumping a few.

I think to start making decent income from Micro a portfolio of 1000+ images and regular submissions are needed...I shoot good looking people in a clean and friendly manner...and it looks like they will sell OK. Have put a little thought into becoming a generic cube farm type big MS producer but would go insane.

Hope this helps people out there.

Very interesting post Pixelbitch (BTW, love your screen name - wish I had thought of it )  Thanks for sharing your perspective on the industry.

I especially can relate to what you said about "becoming a generic cube farm type big MS producer".  Although I don't know what a "cube farm" is, I get the gist.  

I feel the same way.  At times I think I am missing the boat by not shooting the "Yuri style" of images, but OTOH he has pretty much cornered that market, and what sales slip through his fingers are already snapped up by his scores of imitators.  

ITLR it is probably better for each of us to develop our own style that finds its own market, rather than mimicking someone else and picking up the crumbs from their table.

Hey Traveler1116,
 Do you think it is wast of time adding to stockxpert(StockXpert). My feeling is they will be out of picture soon and by the looks of it soon.

Seems like nobody cares about Crestock like they (Crestock team) don't care about us. After a while, I stopped uploading there, they have weird random rejections (a lot, on good images), very few sales and a very low commission. Lately I've read on their forum, there are a lot of photographers and illustrators waiting weeks even months for their requested money. Is there anybody uploading on Crestock anymore?

Thanks for the report on StockXpert. I guess I will try to keep plugging along there also. I think something funny is going to happen with them. And it is funny that StockXpert site is almost identical to Stock.xchng. Being so new to the game I should just shut up and back to work.  Thanks 

I got my one payment from them after having two images picked to be free wallpaper images (I only said yes to one), but now that image is all of the internet being given away for free and used by tons of people in their blog, needless to say I will not give anymore images away for free ever again.  They were a fairly responsive company when it came to my questions but that doesn't seem to be most peoples experience.  They sell subs for 25 cents too, so I'm fine being done with them.
StockXpert hasn't gone down yet but I have also stopped uploading to them because I don't see them as being worth the effort as soon as photos.com and jupiter images are gone.  Who knows what will happen in the near future but it won't be better than it is now and likely will be worse.  I'd be worried that for a newbie uploading to StockXpert you may never reach a payout if things change drastically, but if you have a good port and lots of images go for it, you can always delete them very fast (about 500 times faster than DT and there are no stupid 6 month lockins).