Forget Depositphotos they only give 30 cent sales never anything higher and the volumes of sales are too low.

Plus you can't delete your images you can only deactivate them.

I have 1500 photos with them and made $400 in 5 years 

Dreamstime are hardly any better in terms of sales however you do tend to get somewhat higher amounts per sale but not often.

I made $1000 in five years with over 2000 images.

Of the minnow agencies its the best earner for me......If I were to be starting from scratch though in today's market I don't think it would be worth my time.

Quote from: Deyan Georgiev on November 02, 2019, 05:00

Quote from: Jeff Tracy on November 02, 2019, 04:01

Forget Depositphotos they only give 30 cent sales never anything higher and the volumes of sales are too low.

Plus you can't delete your images you can only deactivate them.

I have 1500 photos with them and made $400 in 5 years 

Dreamstime are hardly any better in terms of sales however you do tend to get somewhat higher amounts per sale but not often.

I made $1000 in five years with over 2000 images.

Not true, there are sales up to dollar or two, yes less often, but there are. Just to be correct. (There are also sales 0,16 and 0,19 ..)

Not true you say?

I just stated the facts from my experience and for Depositphotos I never had a sale over 34 cents

That's OK if you mention your experience, I just say that they have higher sales for sure.

Hi all,

I'm in microstock from about three years. I do it just for fun and give me some side earnings. I upload only images from my travels.
At the moment I uploading to the 4 main agencies (Shutterstock, Adobe, Istock, Alamy) plus Eyeem. I'm considering to add another agency from the "low earners". I follow every month the very useful reports of Brasilnut and Steheap (congratulation for the work and insights to both of them!) and seems that Depositphots deliver some earning compared to other "low earners". Also, the minimum payout is $ 50, so maybe I can reach it in 1 year (I have ready to upload about 2.500 travel images already keyworded). I have considerd also 123RF and Dreamstime: 123RF has a super slow review process and from the reports seem to sell less than Deposit; Dreamstime seems similar to Deposit, but it has minimum payout of $ 100. So the choice could be between Deposit and Dreamstime: what do you think?
Thank you!

DT

Do sometimes people connect low earnings to low quality submissions??
Personally, I always took in little consideration the points of people on the forum here, for my benefice... I think it's the best advice. Make your own experience.

If you're going to submit to Depositphotos, might as well submit to all the other minnows, including:

123RF, Bigstock, Dreamstime, CreativeMarket and SignElements. Notice that I excluded Canva.

All those should help pay for a few beers at the end of the month and combined, a new fast lens at the end of the year (on your 2,500 travel images). Can't really go wrong with that.

My only issue, as I have discussed on my latest report, is that some of these agencies will start struggling so much that they'll pretty much give away your/our images for free or team up with those Unsplash turds as Canva have done. Then, unfortunately your/our images will be smeared forever.

Thanks for the mention, happy that you're finding the content useful.

I am not currently with Depositphotos, but, like you, I am considering it. 

As for the other minnow agencies, here is my view:

Dreamstime Pros
--Extremely easy upload process - they take 80 keywords rather the customary 50.  Also, each word is separated, so you do not have to duplicate such as "New," "York" and "New York."  This enables me to add more fringe keywords and use US and UK spellings (color and colour).
--Sales are OK, but I go into this knowing it is a low earner.  However, I have scored some $10+ sales (far the exception rather than the rule)
--They accept almost anything.  When IS or SS rejects a photo for content (sporting events, public artwork) DT will usually accept

Dreamstime Cons
--Only uploading drawback: you have to select three categories.  Really?  Three?
--Sales are just OK  35 cents for subscription
--The $100 payout takes a long time.  I have 4000+ photos there and I had to wait two and a half months to reach $100.
--Public website could use updating

123rf Pros
--Extremely easy upload process
--No limit on keywords. 
--No categories to choose, except country of photo
--Sales are OK
--$50 threshold for payout

123rf Cons
--You can wait forever for the staff to review your photos.  There are topics on this board where people wait for months for the review.  I currently have 73 files in cue that have been there over 6 months
--Don't complain about the review time.  The times I did, I went from a 90% approval rate to a 75% rejection rate.
--Their judging is sporadic.  I have had photos rejected, only to repost (with no changes) and have them accepted
--Sales are OK, but, for me, lower than DT.  I will wait about 2 months for a $50 payout with 3000+ photos
--Public website could use updating

Quote from: Pauws99 on November 02, 2019, 14:44

Quote from: DiscreetDuck on November 02, 2019, 10:25

Do sometimes people connect low earnings to low quality submissions??
Personally, I always took in little consideration the points of people on the forum here, for my benefice... I think it's the best advice. Make your own experience.

Most people submit to a range of sites so whether their quality is high or low they can compare the relative earning power of sites. Individual experience does vary but it makes sense to check other peoples experiences before adding a site to upload to..there's dozens so its hard to try them all.

Not so evident since a top seller image can have more than a thousand downloads on one site, and absolutely no download on another from the same kind. Your portfolio can't even be compared to itself. Relativity here again... Too many parameters that we can't be aware of. But be sure, I have the same concern, finding the best way to sell

The larger the portfolio the more it evens out the top sellers on each site will vary but it averages out. Its not an exact science of course and you do get a feel of the kind of stuff that will sell better on certain sites...I always think the images I personally like sell well on Dreamtimes for example.

Thank you. After reading the various opinion I will try first with Depositphotos.

Depositphotos and Dreamstime are very, very low and slow earners. The good thing about Deposit is that the submission process is very smooth and quick. On the contrary Dreamstime is a drag - very complicated if you want to use all three catagories.

Totally agree.

I'm thinking about dropping Depositphotos.  It's annoying that I'm almost only getting 0.32 commissions. It's quite low. And sometimes even lower ones appear, like 0.16. Very rarely I get something bigger, but it's too infrequent to move the average significantly. Nowadays my RPD is around 0.37 USD which is very low. Image RPD at Shutterstock for example is usually quite close to 1 USD

Deposit photos for me is OK. If I upload on FTP it is very easy to load pictures.. I get around 30 cents on most sales. I do get a few sales everyday so the site is not a dead site as so many of the small sites have become.