I have more than 130 photos with them, prices between $3.50 and $0.75 depending on size and quality. Never sells anything. At SS I have just over 50 photos, selling more than 20 per day.

I've had a couple of sales since 10/15

average 1 sale a month at $7-$14

So I don't think the professional designers are going to search for images there. They maybe can think it's a waste of time because of the surprise they can meet whit the price setting.

That's all very true in general, but consider this. FP lets the photographer free as to price and sales model. As they acknowledged themselves, they don't do much marketing outside the web. That's why they can deliver 70% to the photog. It means you have to use FP in your personal promotion strategy coz they won't do it for you like other much more streamlined sites with only 20-40% for the photog.

I use FP as the engine for my own site (they allow hotlinking and offer some nice easy snippets to put in the code of your site), and for my Flickr promo account. Whenever you do a personal promo like that, it's best to point to your FP portfolio, (1) because you get most $, and (2) because they allow purchases-on-the-spot. Let's say, by the occasional buyer. The seasoned designer will not use FP I guess because he has a (subscription) account with the major agencies.

That's why I feel FP is not really competitive with conventional microstock. I'm in for it long-term. It's actually midstock (or at least you can use it like that) avant la LO lettre and without the hyphe.

Sales? I'm on my way to second payout. About 8 times as much as on my canceled LO account and the payout limit is 50$. Both LO and FP started around the same time, a year ago. Somehow, FP must be doing something right.

Very, very slow. I have one sale a month, on average, with 488 RF photos. I'm almost halfway to my first payout now.

I do not think small new sites (except SV, which can afford to run with losses for years) will survive. There is no much place left and big 3-5 ones will squeeze other ones to extinction in 3-4 years.

vphoto
 

Very, very slow. I have one sale a month, on average, with 488 RF photos. I'm almost halfway to my first payout now.

Since my previous post, I got 2 more sales at FP. Maybe it's part of the mystery why some sell better at peculiar sites and some at others. Anyways, FP is as easy to upload as LO, and for me, FP sells and LO didn't. Consider taking a Flickr account (free if less than 200 pics) and link your (watermarked!) shots to FP. I have positive indications I sold on FP by my Flickr account.

I think professional designers should look there, as they will have photos that are not on the micro sites.  I am starting to upload to sites that sell for higher prices and FP are one site on the list.

Idem dito. FP is not really a MS site, not really RM. It's all-in-one. You mould it into what you want, without the hassle to set up your own site.

I find LO is easier, just one click after uploading. How do you do that with FP?  I have to go through every image I have uploaded.  If it is 100 images, it takes a lot longer.

True. That's because LO has no real options for price and license type. You just get the site's settings. Note that the FP site remembers price and license type in one session. It just takes one click then.
The MRF section on the other hand in FP is better: you can attach several MRFs to one shot. If I'm not mistaken, on LO you have to Photoshop 2 or more releases together for a group shot.

LO is still ahead of FP for me, is it your extra efforts with FP that have made the difference?

I guess so, through Flickr. I uploaded a guitar series on Flickr (with proper tagging of course, and entering it in appropriate group pools - important!) and right after that on FP. They were rejected by SS ("this is not stock") and accepted on DT only 6 days later. Yet I got a full-size (10 MP) download of it on FP the next day. The 4.8$ I got for it would have taken 16 downloads on SS.
It doesn't have to do with the FP search engine coz I just looked and I'm nowhere on the first 5 pages with "guitar acoustic".

I found Flickr to be a very sneaky tool to override the RF sites search engine preferences ;-) Don't forget that Yahoo Images features Flickr with full embedded tags, unlike Google Images. Read this interesting post on Paul Melcher's blog about that.

I have put a link in my signature here.  That might help a bit.  There must be some buyers who are paying more for my photos on other sites and I am receiving less.  If they all signed up to Featurepics we would all get a better deal.

They don't have to sign up I guess, since FP allows on the spot sales from non-designers that don't know about MS. That's why I feel my FP promo and sales aren't competitive with my DT and SS sales, and I'm not cheating on SS and DT, which both are great and the real earners... till now.

just hit payout

At LO, I've made almost 5x's as much in 16 months. 

You never miss an opportunity to promote LO.

Took long enough!  At LO, I've made almost 5x's as much in 16 months.

shameless

I think with LO and FP you can have more sales if you put some extra effort in.  With FP, this might involve linking to the images from another site and with LO, you can leave comments and use the forum to gain exposure.  If a portfolio was just uploaded and left at these sites, I don't think there would be much between them.