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Author Topic: just went non-exclusive on istock  (Read 29743 times)

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« Reply #75 on: April 29, 2014, 11:27 »
0
This is what I mean.
I like Canstock and 123 because they sell really well for me. Istock isn't all that good for me but mostly because I have chosen not to deal with them. FT is worthless and I really like GL.
Self hosted and a couple of sites that don't even earn a rating are my preferred uploads. But you seem to be genuinely interested so here is my upload priority list.

Self hosted - (5 sites)
Clipartof - (closed to new contributors)
Toonvectors - (70% commission on $20 vectors)
GLStock (52% on $14.00 vectors)
Pond 5 (I don't actually upload here yet but intend to when I start uploading to micros again)

Cutcaster
Stockfresh
Stockami
Featurepics
Yay
(I like the RPD even though the sales are slow- the way I look at it is if they are stealing sales from the sub sites great...I get paid better. These site combine for Christmas money at the end of the year)

Shutterstock
Canstock
123
Dreamstime
(I really, really dislike subs because I see them as killing my future sales. These sites now only get the images I have tracked as not great or non sellers on my preferred sites.It is also much more likely that my images will be stolen/shared on free sites because of the low price.)

Sites I probably won't upload to again
Bigstock (I liked these guys until they introduced the subs)
IS (Hundreds of reasons)
FT (Sales just never justified liking these guys)
DP (RPD is just to low for the volume)
Graphic River (Prices are too low-even though they do have decent volume)
Veer (Just a strange site with weird sales patterns)

Sites that will never get anymore of my images
Crestock (I can live without the four $.25 sales I get a month)
Vectorstock (Price is way to low)
Isignstock (No sales details and an arbitrary commission at the end of the month)

I want to be selling my images 20 years from now and my images take a while to produce. I will never have 10,000 images so I feel like I need to protect the ones I do have. I now look for a RPD of at least $7.00. I won't remove images that I have already uploaded but my new stuff goes to my preferred sites first. This is working for me because my income continues to rise and I don't lose sleep at night hoping that Shutterstock doesn't change their commission structure.
Note: I spend a lot of time doing things that most people would consider insane. It probably takes me around 10 minutes per image to prepare and upload an image to the first site and about 3 minutes for every site after that. I spend a massive amount of time on keywording, image naming, and content descriptions. Finally, I would guess that about 70% of my income comes directly from Google Image searches. I would argue that anyone who says that you can't sell images without a huge marketing budget is simply wrong. I'm tempted to start a co-op of illustrators based on what I've learned and the symbiostock foundation but I'm not sure enough people would be willing to invest the money and more importantly the time it would take to make it work.

This pretty similar to what I do. My results have been pretty good as well, although I've been slumping since last summer. So, I'm reevaluating and trying to expand a bit.


« Reply #76 on: April 30, 2014, 06:40 »
0
Thank you so much for the vector sites. When I decided to go non-exclusive, I did not realize how overwhelming it would be. I literally did not realize some of these sites existed. My hesitancy with toonvectors is that most of my pieces are not cartoons. I don't know if I fit?

kayann

« Reply #77 on: April 06, 2015, 08:42 »
+8
I said I would report back on the results of my going non-exclusive. It has been a year. My only regret is that I ever went exclusive. In earnings now where I left off on istockphoto. The main thing I love is you are not at the whim of one sites acceptance policy. What sites decide to accept and not accept seems so random sometimes.

My wife has an illustration that was reject by istockphoto as not quality enough for microstock that is her current top earner.

I upload to Shutterstock (by far the best earner and contributor relations), istockphoto (next best earner, contributor relations is improving a little), canstockphoto (horrible pending times), dreamstime (might discontinue this one). The problem with dreamstime is they want you to gang all sports illustrations on one page. So if I make a shield type design for all sports they want me to put all of them on one page. This is not acceptable to me when they are paying so low and from the buyers perspective, if I am working on softball, I don't need the other sports.

Does anyone know why canstockphoto is so slow? Is that a problem or just the way they are?

PaulieWalnuts

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« Reply #78 on: April 06, 2015, 08:52 »
+1
I said I would report back on the results of my going non-exclusive. It has been a year. My only regret is that I ever went exclusive. In earnings now where I left off on istockphoto. The main thing I love is you are not at the whim of one sites acceptance policy. What sites decide to accept and not accept seems so random sometimes.

My wife has an illustration that was reject by istockphoto as not quality enough for microstock that is her current top earner.

I upload to Shutterstock (by far the best earner and contributor relations), istockphoto (next best earner, contributor relations is improving a little), canstockphoto (horrible pending times), dreamstime (might discontinue this one). The problem with dreamstime is they want you to gang all sports illustrations on one page. So if I make a shield type design for all sports they want me to put all of them on one page. This is not acceptable to me when they are paying so low and from the buyers perspective, if I am working on softball, I don't need the other sports.

Does anyone know why canstockphoto is so slow? Is that a problem or just the way they are?

Thanks for the update. I'm barely hanging on to being exclusive. Are you saying that after a year your income is now the same as it was when you were exclusive? Do you have the same amount of images on other sites as you had when IS exclusive? Was any of your stuff part of the E+, Vetta, Getty higher priced collections?

« Reply #79 on: April 06, 2015, 09:22 »
+3

Thanks for the update. I'm barely hanging on to being exclusive. Are you saying that after a year your income is now the same as it was when you were exclusive? Do you have the same amount of images on other sites as you had when IS exclusive? Was any of your stuff part of the E+, Vetta, Getty higher priced collections?

Yes, my overall earning now are more than when I was exclusive to istockphoto. I have less illustrations on the other sites than I have on istockphoto. Some of the illustrations I just thought were not quality enough or have not been good earners, etc. so I did not upload them to the other sites.

Yes I did have vetta illustrations but they only sold once in a great while.

« Reply #80 on: April 06, 2015, 09:36 »
+2
Interesting, and thanks for sharing.
You're an illustrator?
That would be different to photography only like me I suspect.


 

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