Author Topic: iStock income versus Shutterstock (Read 15467 times)

jarih · « **on:** May 18, 2012, 08:09 »

Hi!

I have images right now on about 15 stocks, but not in iStock. There is only a few images because theirs keywording system and model release rules are deep from there.. from dark place.

I am thinking at I am not upload nothing to iStock in future, it takes so much at time to get accept even for one image. Time is money too..

But how much incomes I can lose if I don't upload for iStock. Forum's statistics say that iStock income is about 67% from Shutterstock. But, is this 67 versus 100 how correct value if you have same amount of images on both stocks?

fotografer · « **Reply #1 on:** May 18, 2012, 08:13 »

You need to ask the question to people that have recently started uploading to Istock to get a realistic answer. I've been uploading there for 7 years but would probably be earning much less if I started more recently as my images with 100s of dls still get found in some of the searches. My newer images only take off if they have something a bit different or special about them.

ShadySue · « **Reply #2 on:** May 18, 2012, 08:18 »

Quote from: jarih on May 18, 2012, 08:09

Hi!

I have images right now on about 15 stocks, but not in iStock. There is only a few images because theirs keywording system and model release rules are deep from there.. from dark place.

I am thinking at I am not upload nothing to iStock in future, it takes so much at time to get accept even for one image. Time is money too..

But how much incomes I can lose if I don't upload for iStock. Forum's statistics say that iStock income is about 67% from Shutterstock. But, is this 67 versus 100 how correct value if you have same amount of images on both stocks?

Your specific questions are unanswerable, as it obviously depends on the exact images yiou have how well they'd do on any agency.

However, you can't earn less by uploading to iStock, unless time is indeed money and you would doing something useful/fruitful in your uploading time, not just watching TV or playing a computer game or something.

disorderly · « **Reply #3 on:** May 18, 2012, 08:20 »

People's experiences seem to vary so much that it's impossible to know how you would do. There was a time when iStock was my #1 earner. That time passed around four years ago, as I was able to upload far more images to Shutterstock and others than iStock allowed, and then after iStock cut my royalty rate by 20%, and then as sales there dried up. Last year (June 2010 - May 2011) iStock gave me a little over half the income of Shutterstock. This year (June 2011 to now) it's less than a third.

But keep in mind that I stopped uploading when they cut royalties, and have been deleting slow selling images ever since. I would likely be doing better there if I'd continued to upload. I just don't believe it would have been worth the effort, nor do I believe in putting up with abusive behavior on the part of an agent.

borg · « **Reply #4 on:** May 18, 2012, 08:47 »

I just see bunch of new members who want to know does microstock worth of their effort!
Photography isn't primary reason, money is...

My answer is: As an average photographer you can earn monthly salary if you are working min 8 hours a day, every day... "Average" mean almost professional knowledge about photo business...
This is not new business any more, so 8 hours(day is a limit to beat competition for average money..

ShadySue · « **Reply #5 on:** May 18, 2012, 08:50 »

Quote from: borg on May 18, 2012, 08:47

I just see bunch of new members who want to know does microstock worth of their effort!

Photography isn't primary reason, money is...

Of course, or else you'd only upload to Flickr or similar. No pixel peeping, no rejections: the photograph is all that matters.

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #6 on:** May 18, 2012, 09:10 »

I've been selling stock since late 2004. Either IS or SS has been my #1 earner each month (they've each taken their turn in the lead, and surprisingly, for March and April IS was back in the lead). You're leaving more money than just about anywhere else (other than SS) on the table if you omit IS from your roster of agencies.

borg · « **Reply #7 on:** May 18, 2012, 09:15 »

Quote from: ShadySue on May 18, 2012, 08:50

Quote from: borg on May 18, 2012, 08:47
I just see bunch of new members who want to know does microstock worth of their effort!

Photography isn't primary reason, money is...

Of course, or else you'd only upload to Flickr or similar. No pixel peeping, no rejections: the photograph is all that matters.

Yes! But as first, I was seeking for proof of my quality, not how much can I earn... I think that many of us were doing the same...
I was happy as a little child when I saw my first sale on IS ($0.21)!
For many new members "Time is just a money"...

Wim · « **Reply #8 on:** May 18, 2012, 09:19 »

After 1 year in stock IS is my second best earner and 1/3 of SS income so to me they are definitely worth it.
Good luck!

ps. forgot to mention I have a few hundred images less on IS because of weekly upload limit.

luissantos84 · « **Reply #9 on:** May 18, 2012, 09:34 »

to me SS is around 3x IS but I believe most big/top contributors were actually having similar income (of course less sales but a higher RPD), these lastest months/year SS is becoming more relevant to the majority of them

p.s: 4x less total income on IS comparing to SS

heywoody · « **Reply #10 on:** May 18, 2012, 09:51 »

My return per image on IS is double even that of SS. If you can get your stuff accepted there, it makes no commercial sense not to do so in favour of lower volume sites.

jarih · « **Reply #11 on:** May 18, 2012, 11:52 »

Thanks, many good ideas and points.

At a moment IS take so much time to upload, slow uploading system, it is it the week limit.

And keywording, I keywording my images twice. The images for homeland and images for English stocks. But English keywords are not good for IS, only for others stocks they works fine. This IS's tricky keywording system, every f.. image must keywording over again, double check and double check.. and always there is something wrong

It makes automatic mistakes.. a little uneasy for me. Most image rejections be based on keywording.

I keep it in my last stock to ride, no stress, no pain

Mantis · « **Reply #12 on:** May 18, 2012, 13:27 »

usually about 1:1 but this month IS is higher than SS by 1.5:1

michaeldb · « **Reply #13 on:** May 18, 2012, 13:57 »

Quote from: jsnover on May 18, 2012, 09:10

...You're leaving more money than just about anywhere else (other than SS) on the table if you omit IS from your roster of agencies.

It's hard to disagree with that, but the whole microstock world is so complicated that, as many have said above, it is impossible to know exactly what is really going on, let alone predict the future.

I am, however, sure of my experience. I started submitting to IS in 2005 and am Gold there. I stopped submitting to IS over a year ago, and since then not only have I saved a ton of time I would have spent jumping through IS hoops only to have good images rejected, but my overall income has gone up considerably.

Are customers who would have bought my images at IS finding them elsewhere, so that I do not really lose by ignoring IS? Hard to know for sure, but it is possible, IMO.

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #14 on:** May 18, 2012, 19:04 »

Quote from: michaeldb on May 18, 2012, 13:57

Quote from: jsnover on May 18, 2012, 09:10
...You're leaving more money than just about anywhere else (other than SS) on the table if you omit IS from your roster of agencies.
It's hard to disagree with that, but the whole microstock world is so complicated that, as many have said above, it is impossible to know exactly what is really going on, let alone predict the future.

I am, however, sure of my experience. I started submitting to IS in 2005 and am Gold there. I stopped submitting to IS over a year ago, and since then not only have I saved a ton of time I would have spent jumping through IS hoops only to have good images rejected, but my overall income has gone up considerably.

Are customers who would have bought my images at IS finding them elsewhere, so that I do not really lose by ignoring IS? Hard to know for sure, but it is possible, IMO.

My take on this was to delay uploading - so IS doesn't get new images until 9 months or so after everywhere else. That was largely to keep them off Thinkstock, but IS has so far done a better job than I did of keeping my images off their site (I'm now approaching 1/2 my portfolio there 6 months after they said all indie files were forcibly moving over).

Uploading via Deep Meta is easy, relatively speaking, and I'm already familiar enough with their procedures and policies that they're manageable. I don't care about rejects - I'm done worrying about those at any agency as they've all got weird tics. DT and their idiotic similars policy; SS has occasional bursts of odd rejections (and I was intrigued to note they claimed they wrote some pre-screening software for incoming images prior to the human inspection - I'd love to know more about that) and so on. I upload and they accept it or they don't. Next.

sharpshot · « **Reply #15 on:** May 19, 2012, 03:42 »

I stopped uploading to istock for over a year after the commission cut. Then I noticed that most people were uploading all they could and my boycott was just losing me some money. I now occasionally upload images that I think might make some money there. I take as little time as possible, just a few keywords, as the disambiguation drives me crazy. A few have made some extra dollars but I've really lost enthusiasm for sites that pay such a low commission percentage.

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Author Topic: iStock income versus Shutterstock (Read 15467 times)

jarih

fotografer

ShadySue

disorderly

borg

ShadySue

Jo Ann Snover

borg

Wim

luissantos84

heywoody

jarih

Mantis

michaeldb

Jo Ann Snover

sharpshot

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