Gabriela,

SS is my best earner by far.  It took time, and a lot of uploading, and a lot of work to learn what gets accepted there and what will sell.  Also keep in mind that your royalties per download are small because you are new there.  Once you reach a certain level of income, your royalties will increase automatically.  My subscription sales earn me $.36 each, my On Demand sales earn up to $2.85 and the occasional Extended License is worth $28.  They add up to a nice total every month for me, and if you keep working it may do the same for you.

Gabriela, many people avoid SS because of too low pricing. Some people respect their work enought to sell it in other, fair pricing places, SS is volume seller. If you fell you can and want to do mass, tones of photos, feel free to use SS. But if you preffer to take care of your work, control it and sell for higher pricing then 500px wil lbe much better place.

0,25$ is definitely NOT encouraging price for your work. Even 0,40$ is still some joke, I mean it's like giving for free, I think. (Selling mass is another case, don't mix two things for now). That's why I don't upload my better images here.

Ps. Are you from Poland? Your name is familiar

Hello,
Difficult to explain this in english but I will try because I would like to know your opinion.

Until now I've uploaded about 35 images on SS, I have about 40 rejects. The reason for almost all this rejects is "soft focus"...

So far, I've earned 0,25$ to a maximum of 1,88$ per image. Well, the point is that I'm started to think they don't have any respect for us, photographers. I can't believe they pay only 0,25$/ image.

I sell also on Getty and 500px. I'm thinking to close my SS account or to upload only my very low quality work and leave the best for the others.

What do you think? Are you satisfied with your earning there?

So sorry for my english!

You applied to join SS for a year and this is the 1st you looked at how much they pay? It's not by the picture, you need many sales to make money, look at the poll results. Where is 500px and where is SS? If you only upload your low quality work you will get only rejections and low quality returns.

If you are not happy with subs and woriking for low pay, high volume, you are never going to be happy with SS. Less happy with most of the other Microstock. You should leave if it makes you upset. We all work where we pick to be. I am satisfied with my earnings on SS.

Gabriela, many people avoid SS because of too low pricing. Some people respect their work enought to sell it in other, fair pricing places, SS is volume seller. If you fell you can and want to do mass, tones of photos, feel free to use SS. But if you preffer to take care of your work, control it and sell for higher pricing then 500px wil lbe much better place.

0,25$ is definitely NOT encouraging price for your work. Even 0,40$ is still some joke, I mean it's like giving for free, I think. (Selling mass is another case, don't mix two things for now). That's why I don't upload my better images here.

Ps. Are you from Poland? Your name is familiar

You've explained perfectly, I think this is the point, SS is a volume seller. And I do not know how to produce in volume, I dedicate time to each image.

I'm from Argentina and I live in Montreal, Canada:)
Thank you so much and have a great day!

Quote from: Gabriela on March 06, 2015, 20:14

Hello,
Difficult to explain this in english but I will try because I would like to know your opinion.

Until now I've uploaded about 35 images on SS, I have about 40 rejects. The reason for almost all this rejects is "soft focus"...

So far, I've earned 0,25$ to a maximum of 1,88$ per image. Well, the point is that I'm started to think they don't have any respect for us, photographers. I can't believe they pay only 0,25$/ image.

I sell also on Getty and 500px. I'm thinking to close my SS account or to upload only my very low quality work and leave the best for the others.

What do you think? Are you satisfied with your earning there?

So sorry for my english!

You applied to join SS for a year and this is the 1st you looked at how much they pay? It's not by the picture, you need many sales to make money, look at the poll results. Where is 500px and where is SS? If you only upload your low quality work you will get only rejections and low quality returns.

If you are not happy with subs and woriking for low pay, high volume, you are never going to be happy with SS. Less happy with most of the other Microstock. You should leave if it makes you upset. We all work where we pick to be. I am satisfied with my earnings on SS.

I started to sell on SS since 1 month ago. Thank you.

I do not know how to produce in volume, I dedicate time to each image.

A lot of us dedicate time to each image, Gabriela.

I get up well before dawn so I can haul heavy, sensitive gear (500mm f.4 and other L Canon lenses, two 7D cameras and tripod) into unspoiled places to shoot birds and other wild creatures when they are most active. Later, there are hundreds of shots to go through to find the best ones, which then are individually processed and uploaded onto SS and other sites.

Over time, SS has been the stand-out winner for me. Like others here, I started with .25 royalties and worked up from there. Nowadays, it's the OD and SOD sales that bring in the most money, and those sales are growing in number. Subs are not the whole deal.

As Batman said: "If you only upload your low quality work you will get only rejections and low quality returns."

I've always enjoyed going through your portfolio. Great landscapes!

I've always enjoyed going through your portfolio. Great landscapes!

Nice portfolio Disorderly.  I might have to look again a few times... umm... just to check the lighting and composition...

...It's something I will have to think because as I said some pictures I don't want to sell it on that low price.

When you sell one of the SOD licenses for $75 or $90 or $115, you feel a lot better about SS. The overall mix of sales, for me, has been more like 40% subscription, 60% everything else (OD, SOD, EL). If you get hung up on the problems with 38 cents subscriptions, you have to walk away from the other 60% of the picture too.

Unless you have truly one-of-a-kind images, I can't see any reason to skip Shutterstock. Focus on the monthly earnings, not the amount per image.

Gabriela, many people avoid SS because of too low pricing. Some people respect their work enought to sell it in other, fair pricing places, SS is volume seller. If you fell you can and want to do mass, tones of photos, feel free to use SS. But if you preffer to take care of your work, control it and sell for higher pricing then 500px wil lbe much better place.

your reasons for not using SS are your own - but don't assume everyone does work with SS has
 'no respect for [our] work'  that may be your personal opinion but you can't know what decisions everyone else is making

after insulting those who choose to work with SS you then give poor advice to a newcomer  about using 500px instead  --
how many people make more from 500px than they do from SS??  for most newbies SS is going to bring them the biggest $$

Until now I've uploaded about 35 images on SS, I have about 40 rejects. The reason for almost all this rejects is "soft focus"...

So far, I've earned 0,25$ to a maximum of 1,88$ per image. Well, the point is that I'm started to think they don't have any respect for us, photographers. I can't believe they pay only 0,25$/ image.

I sell also on Getty and 500px. I'm thinking to close my SS account or to upload only my very low quality work and leave the best for the others.

because microstock killed the industry.

but i'm convinced even without microstock the agencies would have started fighing each other in an endless spiral of price wars and in one way or the other it would have lea to cheap subs anyway just as for streaming music and amazon selling below cost to destroy their smaller competitors.

it's quite a cut-throat business now and it's 100% a buyer's market, as suppliers and photographers we're left with NO leverage whatsoever, we've been de facto downgraded to the "proletariat" of Photography !

now we're the Plebs, the "Servus Glebae" of imaging and visual arts, NOBODY is paid as low as microstock photographers !

all i can say is if your images are as good as you say, you better stick with artsy outlets like 500px and similar, dumping your cheap shots on micros could be a big waste of time unless you've 1000s of saleable images.