MicrostockGroup
Microstock Photography Forum - General => General Stock Discussion => Topic started by: leaf on February 07, 2006, 10:11
-
I thought I would start a thread about getting started in micro stock in case people had questions. There are a number of people here with a fair bit of experience that I am sure would be more than happy to share any help they can give.
So those new to micro stock...
Confusion? Questions?
-
I am interested in microstock and have looked at several sites. Can someone tell me how many pics these sites require for the application. I want to have my best pics ready when I put in my application. I have looked at Shutterstock, IStock, Dreamstime, fotolia. Are there others that I should know about? Only working with 5.1 mp, so don't believe I can upload any large size pics. Thanks for any info you might have.
-
Well 5.1 mp isn't so bad.
I think you hit the big ones there. I think shutterstock requires 10 images to start submitting. Some of them don't have any minimum requirement.
I would sudjest for starters to submit to shutterstock. I think that will be the quickest place to make some money.
After that Istock has a really good track record if you can get images in there, and dreamstime as well.
Lower down on the pole are bigstock and fotolia, but they are also very high contenders.
Canstock... well I would only submit there if you have nothing else to do and you have uploaded everything to the other places.
Then there is the others, such as scanstock, gimmestock, stockphotomedia, crestock, ... but I have only had 1 or 2 downloads on those sites and have around 100-500 images on them.... I will upload more if they ever start getting a few more downloads but until then, it is a waste of time.
Hope that helps.
And welcome here :)
-
Thanks for the info. This is really helpful. We'll see how well I do at stock photography. This is a hobby for me, but I am looking forward to learning the different elements of creating good pictures.
-
good luck.
the best thing is to just stick to it and keep to your goals. 2 images a week, 20 images a week, whatever it is keep to it and the images will add up (and so will the $$) in the end.
-
How many pictures do you think I will have to upload before I can start expecting to earn $100/month on all the sites?
-
How many pictures do you think I will have to upload before I can start expecting to earn $100/month on all the sites?
my friend makes USD 100 per month with 200 images on dreamstime. i've uploaded 135 images and i make about 20 bucks per month
-
Shutterstock requires 10 photos for the registration. iStockphoto requires 3 photos. Dreamstime, 123RoyaltyFree, and Bigstockphoto don't require any.
I currently submit to all of the above except for SS at this time, but I will be soon. SS and IS are the top two. They will usually make up between 50% and 80% of total sales. Dreamstime is a great site and might become a solid third.
-
Can you be banned from any of these sites for a large amount of rejects?
-
Yes. I beleive Shutterstock runs a warning system though I think you are allowed 5 per 6 month period. I have a reasonable reject ratio there and have onlyl had one warngin which was when I submitted a batch that were all rejected for noise.
Not sure about the other sites.
-
As I read the agreements, you can put the same photos on more that one service. Does anyone know if that is true? NOT your guess, but a "legal" answer.
thanks
-
Yes, you can put your photos on more than one site as long as they are RF (royalty free) and you are not exclusive at any one site.
-
yep, geopappas says it right
You can put the images on as many sites as you want and long as you license them as Royalty Free (Which is the default license for basically every micro site, you usually don't get a choice)
The only exception would be
1. if you were exclusive with istock you would only be allowed to upload your images to istock (this pertains to EVERY royalty free image you want to sell)
2. if you license a certain image as exclusive with a certain site. Many sites offer this, such as dreamstime, fotolia, canstock... You generally get paid more for giving a certain site exclusive right to the image
-
For any newbies I have collected a few bits of data regarding the different agencies, regarding mimumum size, earning etc.
If you don't have time to read all the text the tables especially the last one should answer a lot of questions.
Steve
www.fintastique.com/guide.htm (http://www.fintastique.com/guide.htm)
-
yes, that's quite the thorough table you have, nice work.
-
Great info. I put a link to your site on a forum called www.workingnomad.com in a thread that is collecting info for people who want to work on-line while traveling.
-
interesting site photovan.... sounds like a good idea/adventure
-
For any newbies I have collected a few bits of data regarding the different agencies, regarding mimumum size, earning etc.
If you don't have time to read all the text the tables especially the last one should answer a lot of questions.
Steve
[url=http://www.fintastique.com/guide.htm]www.fintastique.com/guide.htm[/url] ([url]http://www.fintastique.com/guide.htm[/url])
Nice bit of work. Looks like a lot of useful information for everyone, not just newbies.
-
Ancient thread alert ah those were the days!