MicrostockGroup
Microstock Photography Forum - General => General Stock Discussion => Topic started by: pixel8 on March 05, 2014, 02:27
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For those of us that are not Exclusive on any site, is it better to submit to every possible stock site or just the upper tier stock sites? On one hand it seems smart to get on every site possible, but on the other hand it seems like that would effect sales on your upper tier sites and would result in making less on your pictures with less volume of sales as well. Whats your thoughts on this?
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Competition is healthy.
Unless I have a reason not to upload to a site - e.g. particularly bad commissions, difficult upload, questionable site owners - I will upload.
The key is work-flow optimisation: FTP, IPTC and a well thought out working plan.
Don't expect much from everything below the top sites, however it's an investment for the future and a nice addition for the present at a very low additional cost.
However for newbies it's better to start from the top sites and then go down the list gradually, once you have a significant port.
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Personally I think it is only worth it to upload to 2nd and 3rd tier agencies if you use automated submission tool. Especially for the agencies with complicated submission system.
Otherwise it is waste of time you could use to make more content.
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I submit to 25 agencies... using automated upload process with Tramsit/Automator. Only uploading to those low earners with "upload and forget" system... no categorizations.
I have 88% income from top 6 agencies. The other 19 agencies generate only 12% of income.
So I say, uploading to Top and Middle tier only is fine, you get most of the money you can get. Uploading to Low Tier can generally give you some 10-15% bonus... worth doing? Your call. :)
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I would recommend to limit my upload to five or six sites. In the beginning you can test a few more sites more to see which ones performes for you but in general moneywise it's basically SS,IS followed by DT,FT,123rf for most people. If you shoot editorial it's worth to consider Alamy. You should avoid very bad deals like Bigstockphoto and Deposhit, also avoid intransparency about partner-sales like Veer and Deposhit.
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You should avoid very bad deals like Bigstockphoto and Deposhit, also avoid intransparency about partner-sales like Veer and Deposhit.
Can you elaborate on why not to submit to Bigstockphoto? I am on the fence with Bigstock as they are owned by Shutterstock, on the one hand I think hey its the same company now so why not and yet I worry that if I put my entire portfolio on Bigstock I will see my shutter stock earnings go down since a buyer could simply go to Bigstock and by my photos there!
Having been a graphic designer for several years I would check several sites when buying a photo.
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The downside of submitting very widely is that you then have to track the antics of so many sites - and read the threads about abusive partnership deals at various agencies, most recently Deposit Photos, but that's by far not the only one.
When you consider very small income and the possibility that they could hurt your income at sites where you actually earn something decent, I leave the proven bottom feeders off. It is good to try a new site once in a while - but even there one can get burned (go look at Albumo for a case study, for just one example).
Specifically, I'd stay away from any site where you can't delete your own images any time you want - that way you know you can bail if it turns out they're not the nice folks you thought they were. Low payers need to have simple uploading, reasonable prices, prompt payment, low payout threshold, named owners, preferably with an address that isn't a PO Box, no special requirements (I recall some new sites trying to say files should have certain naming conventions and such) and a web site that isn't an embarrassment to your work (we've seen cheap copies of existing sites, English that would embarrass a kindergartner and search that looks like random image delivery).
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The key is work-flow optimisation: FTP, IPTC and a well thought out working plan.
exactly.
it's important to keep the sites to a reasonable minimum so you don't feel like you are loosing control having images everywhere. The amount you'll make on a low ranked site, certainly won't be worth anybodies time. Uploading to the bigger sites though is pretty simple (especially with StockSubmitter - it won't add any extra workflow time) and will be worth the effort.