Agency Based Discussion > General - Top Sites
DT exclusive - advice wanted
increasingdifficulty:
Exclusivity only makes sense when you are close to the owners and there are 200 photographers on the site. You will benefit from personal pitches, incredible visibility and good placements.
At the sites for the masses, don't even consider exclusivity today. It's very expensive.
steheap:
Why not submit them to multiple agencies? I wrote a blog post yesterday about how I upload to 16 different agencies with not much more effort that it takes to upload to one.
http://www.backyardsilver.com/2017/12/my-current-workflow/
I get about 66% of my earnings from the top 4 (SS, iStock, Alamy and Adobe) and then it tends to drop off quite quickly. I've 8 agencies that give me just 10% of the revenue.
But it costs nothing in terms of my time to put them there and it is still $300 a year or more.
Hope you find the article useful (and if you sign up for new agencies you could always use my referral links on my site (sorry for that shameless plug!))
Steve
Brasilnut:
--- Quote ---I've 8 agencies that give me just 10% of the revenue.
--- End quote ---
I hear you Steve and your results speaks for itself.
My biggest concern about submitting to smaller low-earning agencies is that they may struggling so much that they decide to have a garage sale on your images, and/or change their contributor terms and conditions to make it a worse deal for the contributor. What do you think?
Brightontl:
Sorry,
I have been trying to reply, but I still can't stop laughing at someone being exclusive to DT.
This world is full of dreamers!
Jo Ann Snover:
--- Quote from: desdemona on December 20, 2017, 08:21 ---
Which one would be the best? One of the Big 4 mentioned here? What are the pros and cons of each of those 4 (upload process, treatment of contributors, earnings of recently uploaded images, ...)?
--- End quote ---
Your portfolio is an unknown, so it's hard to give more than general suggestions based on overall earnings, but if your time is limited, I'd start with SS and AS/FT. For both of these agencies you earn more royalties as your lifetime earnings build (at least until FT goes away) so you might as well get going.
For me, SS is a bit more than double AS/FT but both are solid earners
I wouldn't touch Deposit Photos under any circumstances (search for some of the threads here about their many shenanigans) but I know others put up with them. All agencies in the micro realm treat their contributors badly, so there's only the issues of scams, not paying or too many secret partner deals to look out for.
Once upon a time I'd have strongly recommended 123rf but I left them when sales dropped - unlike other agencies, when 123rf sales drop your royalty (eventually) drops as they do a 12-month average to figure your earnings tier. So their failure to sell (when you have a portfolio with good sales at other agencies and falling sales at 123rf after many years of decent sales, it's pretty obvious to me where the problem is) ends up costing the contributor in royalty rate. That was enough for me to leave them.
Alamy is a pain to upload to and sales are good when they happen but much less frequent (at least for me) than elsewhere. I'd save them for later once you've established portfolios elsewhere.
Some people have noted here that illustrations do well at CanStock - I wouldn't recommend them for photos as their sales were rubbish (I left as sales dropped in volume and were mostly 25 cent subs). Perhaps someone who currently sells illustrations there can comment?
Good luck - and don't wait to drop exclusivity at DT. I don't think they're going to magically bounce back :)
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