MicrostockGroup
Microstock Photography Forum - General => Newbie Discussion => Topic started by: wins75 on February 12, 2009, 08:05
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Can anyone recommend microstock sites for a newcomer bearing in mind it is inceasingly difficult to get acceptances in the big established ones like fotolia?
I have got decent photos mainly landscape and travel that are rejected by fotolia.
Thanks
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Fotolia tends to reject a lot of landscapes and it is a site where a lot of people have trouble with rejections. You might want to try with BigStockPhoto and 123rf, as well as some smaller sites like FeaturePics or YAY Micro, although you can't expect many sales there at all. If your images are technicaly very good, you could try with iStockphoto as they like landscapes. However, if you didn't pass their application yet, you would need some non-landscape photos to prove diversity in your portfolio.
I hope this helps, I'm sure some other memeber swill have more or different advices for you.
Good luck!
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I have got decent photos mainly landscape and travel that are rejected by fotolia.
Be serious. How can we judge when you even don't put a link here to what you've got? :'(
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Try Dreamstime, 123RF and Stockxpert.
They will give you self confidence, and they are good sellers
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I found Dreamstime alot tougher to get accepted at, but I'm very new at this as well and I'm limited by the quality of my lens/camera. You should try BigStockPhoto, or perhaps even CanStockPhoto. However, keep in mind that they don't offer nearly as much traffic as Dreamstime or Fotolia.
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StockXpert offers probably the best compromise as it has a good acceptance rate combined with a good exposure and sales volume.
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Can anyone recommend microstock sites for a newcomer bearing in mind it is inceasingly difficult to get acceptances in the big established ones like fotolia?
I have got decent photos mainly landscape and travel that are rejected by fotolia.
Fotolia are absolutely the worst for accepting travel/landscapes __ God knows why though. It's as if they just don't believe there's a market for them ... and I know that they're so very wrong in that respect.
To be honest though you are largely pissing in the wind within microstock for such stuff (it's how I and many others started). By nature such images are so area-specific that they are rarely going to sell in the volumes to make it worthwhile. If you want to persevere your best bets are IS, SS and DT. If you can't sell there then you are unlikely to sell anywhere else.
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I have got decent photos mainly landscape and travel that are rejected by fotolia.
Be serious. How can we judge when you even don't put a link here to what you've got? :'(
Hi Flemish
Here's a weblink to a small gallery of mine (6 photos in it)
Comments welcome from yourself and everyone else. Where do you think is a good place that will accept such photos?
Suggestions very welcome
http://pa.photoshelter.com/usr-show/U0000svgnQeuMhV8
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Personally, I really like your Finnieston Crane/Quay pictures. I'm not sure if they are particularly geared towards microstock though, because they lack a central message. Culzean Castle is a good travel photograph. But for IMG_0536, the sky is a little bit too dull IMO.
You can try BigStockPhoto, they have a places/travel category. Good luck!
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Here's a weblink to a small gallery of mine (6 photos in it)
Comments welcome from yourself and everyone else. Where do you think is a good place that will accept such photos?
Suggestions very welcome
[url]http://pa.photoshelter.com/usr-show/U0000svgnQeuMhV8[/url]
Well, I like them and I think iStock would be good for these - as others have said, landscape type pictures aren't usually big sellers anywhere, but I've found them to get regular sales on IS. Yes, I know they're one of the big players but don't be scared off, I think you're easily good enough to get taken on there. You will need to use some different subjects as well as landscapes for your application, they like to see a range of different work, but should be no problem.
That said, once accepted you'd have to go a bit easier on the post processing to get those particular shots past the inspectors. iStock don't like such heavily processed images.
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Comments welcome from yourself and everyone else. Where do you think is a good place that will accept such photos?
Suggestions very welcome
[url]http://pa.photoshelter.com/usr-show/U0000svgnQeuMhV8[/url]
Well those are cool for microstock. You will hear divergent voices here on travel/nature. My best sellers are nature/industry/travel. Shutterstock and Dreamstime are my best sellers, but I would advise you to do your SS application as fast as you can, since in my experience they sell nature very well.. Make sure your images are flamboyant and do have pop-up for SS, but no noise. It's just the opposite of iStock.
So I would advise you Shutterstock. For Istock, just read the IS gurus here. If you start with DT, IS and SS, that's enough. The rest of the agencies, you can do later if your portfolio is growing.
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Finally submitted to bigstock and got some photos accepted. See how it goes. How difficult is it to submit at Dreamstime is it like shutterstock or istock?
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Dreamstime does not have an initial review of photos like IS and SS which means you can begin uploading immediately and your acceptance rate will affect the placement of your photos in a search so upload your best work.
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I had a tough time with DT because the review time is over a week. A newbie like myself wants faster feedback.
I got accepted by SS and they review in a couple of days or less. IS also accepted me but I'm still waiting for their first review (5 days now).
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I haven't tried SS or IS yet, but I've had a tough time getting accepted at DT. I've finally managed to get a few photos accepted there recently, but that made my acceptance ratio really bad. I definitely think that DT is easier than SS or IS because as epantha pointed out, there's no initial review. It's definitely worth a try.
Good luck with BigStockPhoto. That's the first agency that gave me a sale, but I see a much slower traffic compared to Fotolia and DT.
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Well I spoke too soon. I'm starting to hear from IStockPhoto and so far they've rejected 3 out of 3. The really bad part is, the rejections aren't making sense. All these images were accepted by SS, DT and SX. IS is referring to artifacting which I can't see; poor isolation on an image which isn't isolated; and copyright issues on an object with no visible logo.
I'm getting a bad feeling about IS.
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Greetings from a fellow Newbie. I have mostly nature and landscape shots too.
Here's how I've done so far:
Shutterstock: So far I've had the best results in terms of acceptance and sales.
IS: got in after 3 tries, but it's too soon to see how things will sell there.
DT: acceptance rate is 27% which is kind of pathetic, but I realise that I made the mistake of submitting too much "bordlerline" pics during my early days there.
123rf: accept a lot of images, but have yet to make a sale
BigStock: accept quite a few, but have yet to make a sale
Fotolia: this site rejects almost all of my shots. Clearly it's a bad match so far.
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Forgot to add: did not make it in at StockXpert yet. I can try again in a couple of weeks.
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IStockPhoto even rejected one of the images that got me accepted as a contributor. I complained, and they said the initial approval doesn't mean those 3 photos would actually be accepted.
I looked carefully at the rejected images. A few rejections made sense, in some ways. In most cases I simply conclude I can't improve the image in any way I know of, and walk away.
I suspect the IS reviewers are being leaned on to meet a target percentage of rejections across the board.
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I am still newbie, less than year, so I can tell that the only one with regular payouts is SS. 123RF, StockXpert and DT are like 10x less but still I might get payout every couple months.
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I'm just a couple of weeks into this, but so far SS seems to be the one that makes sense. IStockphoto is fun, if you call a fraternity hazing fun. :)
Thinking the smart thing for me to do is go exclusive on SS and forget the rest - too much hassle for too little money.
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I'm just a couple of weeks into this, but so far SS seems to be the one that makes sense. IStockphoto is fun, if you call a fraternity hazing fun. :)
Thinking the smart thing for me to do is go exclusive on SS and forget the rest - too much hassle for too little money.
No, submitting exclusively to SS is exactly the wrong thing to do. If you want to go exclusive anywhere iStock is the place, but you can't do it until you've proven your ability (to make commercial imagery) by surpassing 250 DLs with a 50% acceptance rate. Although this might seem to be a tall order for you now, after you've spent a little time in this industry you'll see it as an exceptionally low hurdle.
If you haven't already read this, you definitely should: The Microstock Photographer’s Guide (http://rasmusrasmussen.com/microstock-photographers-guide/)
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Forgot to add: did not make it in at StockXpert yet. I can try again in a couple of weeks.
It's so odd that StockXpert would be rejecting people who got into SS and IS, especially considering the fact that it doesn't offer much earnings compared to SS and IS. Good luck on getting accepted though! I got rejected first time as well and I'll try to re-apply once I've diversified my portfolio more.
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I suspect the IS reviewers are being leaned on to meet a target percentage of rejections across the board.
Any other conspiracies you'd like to pontificate on? J.F.K.'s assassination? Bermuda Triangle? Aliens?
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Well I spoke too soon. I'm starting to hear from IStockPhoto and so far they've rejected 3 out of 3. The really bad part is, the rejections aren't making sense. All these images were accepted by SS, DT and SX. IS is referring to artifacting which I can't see; poor isolation on an image which isn't isolated; and copyright issues on an object with no visible logo.
I'm getting a bad feeling about IS.
It's not you , it's them ...
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Thanks for all your encouraging comments so far, i think as a newbie getting feedback from others as well makes things less frustrating and encourages one not to give up and keep persisting.
Incidentally there is a microstock book by Douglas Freer i saw on Amazon. I went to my local Borders bookshop but they did not have a copy so I could not browse through it and was wondering if anyone has this book and is it good? or worth getting?
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Incidentally there is a microstock book by Douglas Freer i saw on Amazon. I went to my local Borders bookshop but they did not have a copy so I could not browse through it and was wondering if anyone has this book and is it good? or worth getting?
An ultra-quick Google search shows he's been on DT for three years and has only 2600+ sales. He's been on IS for even longer and has barely managed 10k sales. Unless your aspirations are low, I don't think you will benefit much from his 'insights'.
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Incidentally there is a microstock book by Douglas Freer i saw on Amazon. I went to my local Borders bookshop but they did not have a copy so I could not browse through it and was wondering if anyone has this book and is it good? or worth getting?
An ultra-quick Google search shows he's been on DT for three years and has only 2600+ sales. He's been on IS for even longer and has barely managed 10k sales. Unless your aspirations are low, I don't think you will benefit much from his 'insights'.
I read that website you suggested thanks which is quite good.
With regards to Douglas Freer himself it doesn't matter to me how much he has sold in microstock because I am learning to get into these big sites just now. For someone new like myself I was just wondering if his book was any good and if it adds anything new not mentioned already on microstock tutorial websites so I could decide whether or not it was worth getting?
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Disappointment today. Submitted my first 6 images to Dreamstime only for them all to be rejected!! Mainly because they have got lots of those already! This is turning out to be even harder than I thought.
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I once drove a cab for a while, back when the cab companies owned the cars. They made a little money from every fare so they hired every driver they could get. With so many drivers, no single driver could make any money - and the company didn't care, because only the fleet total mattered, and it didn't cost them anything while you sat and waited. Pretty soon you learned the hot spots - the bus terminal, train station, and of course the airport - but so did everyone else, so those places were mobbed with cabs. You might try to find an odd niche by connecting with a hotel doorman, or by following the Amtrak schedule. Once in a great while you'd get lucky and pick up a guy at the airport who lived in Anoka. Most days you just sat out there until noon and realized you'd made 3 dollars.
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Don't get discouraged wins75. You have to keep trying.