Author Topic: Where/How did you hear about Microstock (Read 7383 times)

Allen · « **on:** May 20, 2009, 17:06 »

Background info
I discovered microstock when I was browsing the internet looking for ways to make money online. Nothing seemed like it would work. Finally I decided to be more specific and look for ways to make money with something I enjoyed doing anyways (photography). After a quick search, I came across this website http://www.photosecrets.com/sell.microstock.html and uploaded about 10 snapshots (pictures not geared toward microstock) to places like 123rf, bigstockphoto and dreamstime.

I kept checking periodically and after about a month, I seen a sale. I thought to myself, "Hey, maybe this isn't a scam." I uploaded a few more and seen more sales. It was soon realized that perhaps if I upload even more I can make a substantial amount of money. Well the rest is history, even though I might not be a top player, I can happily say that Microstock easily pays for my fun hobby.

*Interesting Fact*
It took me 4 tries to get accepted @ Shutterstock
1 try @ Istock
5 tries @ Stockxpert

melastmohican · « **Reply #1 on:** May 20, 2009, 17:11 »

I was participating in many photo critique sites and one day somebody mentioned Fotolia. I found website, uploaded few files and nothing happened. Then I found IStock and mostly same story happened. It was 2005 and decided that it is not promising. After 3 years I looked around and there were several more sites doing the same. It is my second attempt and it's much harder to get photos accepted so sometimes I wished I did not give up so quickly at first.

madelaide · « **Reply #2 on:** May 20, 2009, 17:22 »

Like DF, I was searching for stock photos websites. I saw microstock sites too, but they weren't what I was looking for. That's when I started in Shutterpoint, and I met another Brazilian there who insisted I should try microstock. I decided to try it (IS was first) with a different set of images (food, macro shots of ordinary subjects, isolations). Despite this colleague's insistence, I never joined SS because I considered subs outrageous. Good times when the big sites hadn't yet surrendered to it!

lisafx · « **Reply #3 on:** May 20, 2009, 17:41 »

Back in late 2004 I saw a very contentious argument on dpreveiw.com's pro forum between gmnicholas (an istock exclusive and designer) praising istock and a whole lot of pros bashing him and istock.

I decided to check it out for myself and upload a few images. At the time I was shooting portraits and events and my goal was just to get a couple hundred a month on images sitting on my hard drive.

I never expected it would totally replace my commissioned work and go on to support me. Of course if I was still uploading old pictures gathering dust on my hard drive it wouldn't.

kaycee · « **Reply #4 on:** May 20, 2009, 17:49 »

Someone from a fotocommunity told about selling pictures trough some stocksites ....that was last year
So I was a little bit curious. I'm glad I got accepted very quick at the big 6 and later to several others to...

LSD72 · « **Reply #5 on:** May 20, 2009, 18:13 »

I am on a Photo Forum and started reading their making money section. Seen little arguments about Micros being good / Destroying an industry type thing. So I started finding out more then set myself a challenge for S&G. Now I hit my little goal and want to keep going with learning and uploading.... so here I am on this forum

. Small fry in a very big pond.

garycookson · « **Reply #6 on:** May 20, 2009, 19:14 »

I like this. Confessions of a Microstock Contributor.

I started as a buyer. As a graphic designer I stumbled upon Istock in 2006 when faced with another battle to find an affordable stock image for a client. In those days we were buying complete CDs from digitalvision costing around $600-700 (USD) for 80-100 images. These were fantastic but limited to 1 subject.

Istock was great because we could find individual images to fill all the holes in jobs that would otherwise have had nothing or someone would have had to draw something or create a graphic.

I then wondered if i could sell some stuff as well and started uploading images that I'd shot for older client jobs and i quite enjoyed it. The process encouraged me to improve my photographic skills.

Don't make enough money out of it to take it to a higher level (ie produce more) so i trickle some images in when i'm quiet with client work.

Cheers
Gary

CofkoCof · « **Reply #7 on:** May 20, 2009, 19:22 »

Uncle Google told me all about it.

Graffoto · « **Reply #8 on:** May 20, 2009, 20:58 »

I'm so old and feeble minded that I can't recall where I first heard about it... but I do remember the DPreview bashing and also an article in Popular Photography magazine.

I tried uploading film scans at first to iStock and was throughly bashed for 'noise' (film grain).
So instead of sending them super high resolution film scans, I sent some junk I had taken with a 5 megapixel Sony digicam and got accepted!

I concluded that the punk, er ahem...young people doing the inspections had never in their lives shot a piece of film or ever looped a chrome.
Oh well. I got in and that's all that counts.

helix7 · « **Reply #9 on:** May 20, 2009, 23:35 »

I was a buyer at StockXpert. Actually I was getting free images at SXC, then migrated over to StockXpert when I realized that it was worth a few bucks per image for the quality of images at StockXpert. The free ones at SXC just weren't working for me anymore. At the time I was buying images for use in magazine articles for a small local publication I had started. Being in a startup, I was also broke and was looking for a way to make a few bucks on the side to keep a roof over my head. I found some graphics and illustrations on StockXpert that looked like the sort of thing I could do myself, so I gave it a try. That first month I made enough to cover my car payment. From there, it kept on growing.

Since then I closed down the magazine (print is a dying medium), and have gone back to full-time graphic design work. Microstock is still a moonlighting gig for me, but it represents about 1/3 of my total annual income. Never thought it would get this far after those first few weeks of drawing and uploading.

Anyka · « **Reply #10 on:** May 20, 2009, 23:37 »

Some one at the forums at fotofanatic.com (contest site) "confessed" he was selling at Shutterstock. He was jeered at by the other members for selling his art at such ridiculous prices. Not by me, cause I got curious (and I never regretted it).

ThomasAmby · « **Reply #11 on:** May 21, 2009, 04:58 »

August last year I was looking for easy ways to make money. I stumbled across Fotolia and after reading about the concept of selling pictures I grabbed my girlfriend´s camera, took about a million pictures of everything and placed them in a folder called "cheap pictures". I thought the revenues were very low, so I didn't want to share any "good stuff" with them for such low prices. I didn't even want to Photoshop them before submission. I uploaded about 30 - man, they were bad (seriously bad, you wouldn't believe me). All rejected of course, so I took one picture which I kept cleaning up in Photoshop, but it were rejected everytime I reuploaded it.

I was angry I couldn't get in, as I saw this as the perfect opportunity to make money. I decided to give it a try with illustrations, earn enough money to buy me a DSLR camera, then continue with photography. So I taught myself how to use Illustrator and got accepted, saw some sales and improved with my Illustrator skills. I now have very decent sales as an illustrator and have no plans getting into photography anymore.

dunsmore · « **Reply #12 on:** May 21, 2009, 05:09 »

sjlocke called and said to spread the word

Sean Locke Photography · « **Reply #13 on:** May 21, 2009, 05:56 »

Quote from: dunsmore on May 21, 2009, 05:09

sjlocke called and said to spread the word

Heh heh...

antoniodalbore · « **Reply #14 on:** May 21, 2009, 06:46 »

I knew since 2002-03 but where very skeptical about it...

Then my regular RM sales started dropping and I decided to give MS a try...

bye!

Perry · « **Reply #15 on:** May 21, 2009, 06:53 »

In 2004 was searching for some free or cheap images to use in my graphic design projects. While googling I stumbled upon this site called iStockphoto.com "Designer's dirty secret - Images from $1" I got all excited.

And when I read more info on the site I understood that by uploading my own pics I could get some "credits" to download photos with... Soon I was earning more money than I spent...

bittersweet · « **Reply #16 on:** May 21, 2009, 07:26 »

Quote from: Perry on May 21, 2009, 06:53

In 2004 was searching for some free or cheap images to use in my graphic design projects. While googling I stumbled upon this site called iStockphoto.com "Designer's dirty secret - Images from $1" I got all excited.

And when I read more info on the site I understood that by uploading my own pics I could get some "credits" to download photos with... Soon I was earning more money than I spent...

I'm going to quote Perry's post because it could have been written by me as my story is exactly the same.

I posted a lot in the old request forum at IS and after a while I saw a request for an illustration of something that I thought would be fun to draw. I had Illustrator on my computer already, but had never taken the time to learn it past very basic skills, and my attempt at this particular requested item was shot down (*gasp*!). My other two application pieces had been really bad scans of inkjet prints of items I had created in Adobe Dimensions (anyone remember that? LOL). Not surprisingly, they didn't like these either. For my second application attempt, I pulled out some old charcoal drawings I had done and scanned those in. I combined them with a passable vector that had been part of a rejected client logo. I was accepted.

At that time, if you were accepted, you were accepted, and you were automatically approved to upload vector, photos, or flash files, regardless of what your application had contained. Vectors were all one price, and they and flash were the cheapest things on the site. My how times have changed.

astrocady · « **Reply #17 on:** May 21, 2009, 08:08 »

A couple of Christmases ago, my wife gave me a new DSLR which revived my interest in "serious" photography. I entered and placed in a couple of local contests and began searching online for more to enter, as well as general digital photo info. Somehow when surfing from site to site, I ended up on microstock diary. Uploaded a few to Dreamstime, then fotolia, then etc, etc.

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #18 on:** May 21, 2009, 10:33 »

In 2004 was listening to NPR while driving my daughter to preschool. The story was about musicians making a bit of money with a site they uploaded their work and some of the conversation was about micropayments. My brothers are musicians so I went to their web site to find out more and forward it to him. BitPass was the micropayment site they used and I looked at what other businesses were using those payments. iStockphoto.com was one so I thought I'd see what that was about. When I read about it I thought I'd see if they'd accept my photos and thus the journey started.

After about 6 weeks they rejected a file I really liked and I got an article via e-mail that talked about other stock sites. That led me to start uploading to Shutterstock (which was just experimenting with getting FTP working and Jon was still doing a lot of the inspecting himself), CanStock and Dreamstime.

Dreamframer · « **Reply #19 on:** May 21, 2009, 11:13 »

I wanted to earn some money online, and I started to search Goggle for opportunities. Accidentally found info about Shutterstock. I always loved photography and I wanted to give it a try. The same day I made accounts on SS, DT, FT, IS....and several days after on 123RF, BS, StockXpert...

Karimala · « **Reply #20 on:** May 21, 2009, 13:56 »

What??? No one found out about microstock through a college football team fan forum, like me? Wow...I'm shocked.

[shameless OU Sooners plug]

www.soonerfans.com

[/shameless OU Sooners plug]

epantha · « **Reply #21 on:** May 21, 2009, 14:15 »

My marketing and communications company had been using Getty for years when one day a freelance designer working in-house turned us onto IS as a source for inexpensive photography. I immediately thought it was a great idea and wanted to try uploading myself. A little over a year ago I upgraded my camera equipment and gave it a try. Love it and want to continue with this type of work for as long as possible.

shutterdrop · « **Reply #22 on:** May 22, 2009, 07:59 »

I saw it on TV it was "Get Rich" info-commercial .

The name of the show was, "Every Monkey with a Camera Can Get Rich." Just buy a PHD [Push Here Dummy} camera and join a Micro Stock Agency. They are looking any picture of dogs, cats, kids, mailbox, and Uncle Harry. You can get rich , live the good life and travel around the country! Please send $24.95 and we will rush out our CD to you today!

bittersweet · « **Reply #23 on:** May 22, 2009, 08:00 »

Quote from: shutterdrop on May 22, 2009, 07:59

I saw it on TV it was "Get Rich" info-commercial .

The name of the show was, "Every Monkey with a Camera Can Get Rich." Just buy a PHD [Push Here Dummy} camera and join a Micro Stock Agency. They are looking any picture of dogs, cats, kids, mailbox, and Uncle Harry. You can get rich , live the good life and travel around the country! Please send $24.95 and we will rush out our CD to you today!

I think I saw a link to that on sjlocke's blog!

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Author Topic: Where/How did you hear about Microstock (Read 7383 times)

Allen

melastmohican

madelaide

lisafx

kaycee

LSD72

garycookson

CofkoCof

Graffoto

helix7

Anyka

ThomasAmby

dunsmore

Sean Locke Photography

antoniodalbore

Perry

bittersweet

astrocady

Jo Ann Snover

Dreamframer

Karimala

epantha

shutterdrop

bittersweet

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