Hello, everyone.

I'm just getting into microstock, just got an account at iphotostock. However I feel the compensation of just 20% is unfair. I'm not interested in being exclusive. Can anyone tell me about another site which offers better money for your work, and other things which a new microstocker might need to know?

Thank you for all replies and advice.

Regards
Sauron

P.S.: Could anyone also tell me which popular microstock site offers the highest percentage to the sellers.

I love how people just ignore newbies. 

Anyway...  iStock is one of my better agencies, but results may very. The only way to find out which ones will work for you is to try them out. The poll on the right is how other submitters rate the sites.

Quote from: cthoman on April 22, 2010, 18:42I love how people just ignore newbies. 

Nah, I just was thinking about "iphotostock". Is this a site like "Timesdream"? Well, anyways, congratulations on opening an account. The rest is fairly easy. 

Quote from: FD-amateur on April 22, 2010, 18:47

Quote from: cthoman on April 22, 2010, 18:42I love how people just ignore newbies.  

Nah, I just was thinking about "iphotostock". Is this a site like "Timesdream"?

And "StutterShock"

LE: Oh, and yea - hi. Congrats

a number of newer sites offer 50 or even 70% royalties, but you won't make as many sales as you will with the high vol subscrition sites;  so it's your choice of what fits best with the type of images you supply - take a look at the various sites listed in the micropoll results - but after the first 4, sales are going to be low

s

Never heard of 'iphotostock'.

Quote from: sjlocke on April 22, 2010, 19:31
Never heard of 'iphotostock'.

I think you are exclusive there in Bizarro world.

If the percentages offered in microstock bother you, then you might want to sell under a different business model, like traditional RF or RM.  Trust me, the commission %s aren't going up in micro, they are trending down.  

Consider selling at Alamy, where you get 60% per sale and many of the sales are several hundred $ each.

Thank you everyone. 

And my apologizes for getting istockphoto wrong in the first post.

HI sauron...

I agree that 20% is not enough....My accountant laughed at me when i said I only get 20% from a distributor ....
I don't like exclusivity , unless is RM.
In some places if.you become exclusive, you can't even sell rejected images or give images away from your site for free...

It seems only a few agencies offer more than 20%...However I'm thinking of starting to do some art for RM.

Quote from: sweetgirll on April 22, 2010, 22:56

I agree that 20% is not enough....My accountant laughed at me when i said I only get 20% from a distributor ....
I don't like exclusivity , unless is RM.
In some places if.you become exclusive, you can't even sell rejected images or give images away from your site for free...

In the interest of accuracy, most of the credit based micros pay more than 20% (and nobody has any idea what % SS pays).  And only non-exclusives on Istock make 20%, while exclusives can make up to 40%.

Your accountant may think its funny that you only make 20% at Istock, but it's helpful to tell that to models so their expectations of what they will be paid are not too high. 

Quote from: sauron on April 22, 2010, 20:28And my apologizes for getting istockphoto wrong in the first post.

It was a great occasion to tease you. 
Did you get accepted yet there?
If you want to do microstock seriously, you should. You can't say you've driven a car until you drove a BMW.

Hi and welcome.

I was independent for nearly 4 years before becoming exclusive at iStock 18 months ago. The issue of the "fairness" of the split between agency and contributor came up again and again. One or two agencies started up with the central theme of being more fair to photographers and giving them a larger percentage. CanStock started in June 2004 on that premise and while Duncan (who started the business ) is a great guy, the business never really took off, so our "fair" percentage was multiplied by a very small monthly amount.

Bottom line is for a given portfolio, how much per month can each agency earn you. Two of the agencies with the "worst" per image returns (IS and SS) have consistently been #1 and/or #2 for a large number of contributors when looking at monthly income. There are other issues as well - long term vs. short term gain - but the percentage of royalty can be really misleading as a yardstick by which to judge an agency's value to you.

20% of $1,000 per month is a better deal than 50% of $50 per month...

I'd suggest that you start with the "big 4" from the chart at the right - but be aware of time commitments (DT holds files for 6 months and BigStock for 3 months).

Do we know what the % return from shutterstock is? I don't. I vaguely recall that a long time ago they said it was about 50%. In cash terms each sale gives a low return but the same may not be true using percentages.

Microstock is all about the total return, anyway, it's not about the percentage kept by the agency.

Thank you, everyone.

Quote from: FD-amateur on April 23, 2010, 05:44
Did you get accepted yet there?
If you want to do microstock seriously, you should. You can't say you've driven a car until you drove a BMW.

Well, I sent my three photos for review about a week ago. Since I did not hear from them yet, and I didn't want to contribute to them anyway; I've written to them to terminate my account. I currently am going to upload only on 123RF for a while. 

All the ten images I uploaded for review were reject for "Poor lighting/composition". 

Quote from: sauron on April 23, 2010, 14:02
I currently am going to upload only on 123RF for a while. 

Well good luck with that.   

123RF is one of the lowest performing sites I contribute to.  I've been with them since they opened (4 years or so?) and have over 5,000 images yet still barely make payout each month.

Quote from: sauron on April 23, 2010, 14:40All the ten images I uploaded for review were reject for "Poor lighting/composition". 

It might help of you would put links to the images on a free image site here. It's easier to comment.

Quote from: FD-amateur on April 23, 2010, 16:00

Quote from: sauron on April 23, 2010, 14:40All the ten images I uploaded for review were reject for "Poor lighting/composition". 

It might help of you would put links to the images on a free image site here. It's easier to comment.

don't place them here, this guy will crash you down ehehe, just kidding

apart from this join the top5, you can see them on the right side of this forum, the others are just not worth!

"You can't say you've driven a car until you drove a BMW."

You've driven *.

I've got a 911 Turbo and I've never driven a BMW.

This is one:
http://bit.ly/9vh5Gv

I'll have a go at commenting as I have myself confused getting a tricky shot with something that is saleable. When I first glanced at the image, I thought it was a funny shaped tree with nothing interesting at all. Then I saw the owl, but it's color and contrast almost makes it invisible. Finally, the branches on the right make it very cluttered. So, while it was good to capture the owl like that, I'm not sure anyone glancing at lots of images would see the owl, and then I'm not sure how anyone would use it.

Steve

Unfortunately they were right about poor lighting/composition.  Also the subject is waaaay to small.   Would you pick this photo among 1000 others if you for example make a search at Istock.

Try again and upload here so we can help u.

Thank you steheap and magnum. Could you tell me how to improve my composition and lighting?

Many thanks
Sauron

Here's another one I submitted:

http://bit.ly/asyR5k

I'm not sure the lighting is wrong (although the sky is very boring) - it is the fact that you can't see the object that you are trying to photograph, and even if it was a bit closer, it is still almost the same shade as the tree. As for improving composition, read some photo books and magazines, look at the stock sites and what sells. I'm not sure it is easy to explain in a forum post!

Just for background, I wrote a blog about my own experiences in getting into stock photography 2 years ago (as have a lot of members here). In the early days, I did go through my frustrations and successes as I got more experience.

Steve
http://www.backyardsilver.com