MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => General - Top Sites => Topic started by: dingles on August 08, 2013, 09:33
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I am mostly a video guy, but I do have studio photography experience. Previously I did not put much effort into images as I couldn't produce the numbers to get a decent return. However I have been dabbling lately and decided to put images on iStock, Shutterstock, Pond5, Dreamstime, and Depositphotos. They all have approximately the same images, however there were a tiny portion rejected from Dreamstime...the rest seem to accept all of them. The images have now been up a couple of months...here are my thoughts on each agency from someone just starting. Surprising getting accepted went pretty smooth at all places as I have read some struggles on these forums, so that put a +1 on my ego :).
iStock - Sales are okay through iStock main site, however most image sales are coming in from the Partner Program. Now the PP has only about 30% of my images ported from iStock, which is disappointing as it could be a bigger source of revenue...all in all sales are decent, but if they could address some issues they could be better.
Shutterstock - Sales a super strong...only thing is $0.25 an image is low, however if I was able to boost the amount of images, this could provide a nice return. All in all I have way more sales at Shutterstock than iStock(minus PP). This was the most surprising to me and sales started almost immediately, while a few years ago when I had content on SS I had no sales for a long time...So I hold SS in higher regard now.
Dreamstime - Sales are poor even thouigh views are decent, but I get a high return per images...more than 4X what I get per image from SS it seems. I find they reject a lot of images for odd reasons, but do allow appeals. Their review times are long, but they do provide a countdown which I have not seen elsewhere. I'm hoping things pick up, but overall SS and iStock are blowing them away as far as performance.
Depositphotos - Sales are poor, but views are up. The return is small, but a bit better than SS. Overall, I love the back-end uploading process...seems to be the best I have run into...just wished the site performed much better.
POND5 - No sales...no views...this is very disappointing as the returns at Pond5 are great, but sales are non existent and views just aren't showing. It is by far the one I want to perform most, but it doesn't seem like a pl;ace buyers go for images as videos is their strong suit. Oh well :(.
I have looked into Stocksy, but I don't feel my style of images match their motif. I did have content up on Fotolia a long time ago and it did okay, but I just wasn't happy with them overall and decided not to go back. I may try 123RF, but I'm not sure how far I want to branch out just yet.