Microstock Photography - Beginners Guide

[Just another Snapper]

G'Day.

Actually I joined this forum primarily to learn alot of stuff about Microstocks, Perhaps foolishly I have invested a few grand in various toys.

BUT.. One Serious Question straight off the bat.  I Have found that by submitting stuff to Wirestock...' my stuff appears on Adobe, Shutterstock etc. BUT Having opened direct accounts with the aforementioned. None of my directly posted stuff gets accepted. They only seem to accept my stuff through Wirestock....

Can anybody tell me if this is just a matter of Big Boys club - to hell with small fry and Newbies? or is there some magic special filter that Wirestock puts things through to make them marvellous?

[TonyD]

You certainly don't need formal qualifications like diplomas for stock. They only help in learning composition color lighting DOF etc. & background stuff like spreadsheets, computers etc. so qualifications do help with the technical side (although they won't stop your work getting rejected from SS for example) And they don't teach you what subject matter to shoot for stock.

[Uncle Pete]

G'Day.

Actually I joined this forum primarily to learn alot of stuff about Microstocks, Perhaps foolishly I have invested a few grand in various toys.

BUT.. One Serious Question straight off the bat.  I Have found that by submitting stuff to Wirestock...' my stuff appears on Adobe, Shutterstock etc. BUT Having opened direct accounts with the aforementioned. None of my directly posted stuff gets accepted. They only seem to accept my stuff through Wirestock....

Can anybody tell me if this is just a matter of Big Boys club - to hell with small fry and Newbies? or is there some magic special filter that Wirestock puts things through to make them marvellous?

I suspect and make a note of that "suspect" that part of the reason Wirestock is becoming so picky is, they pre-review and have better standards, which means the agencies might give them a faster track into being accepted. WS doesn't want to be sending in a big batch of Crapstock, which is what the agencies have to deal with, so better credibility, and a better acceptance rate, more images, might help them get passed. MIGHT

If I found that images through WS were getting accepted, when the same images uploaded myself were rejected, I'd sure be using more WS and working less.

I still upload my own to SS, AS and DT for now. Alamy has become microstock, the rest of the places WS will forward my work to, I don't care, which makes that easy upload and forget about them. Sometimes, if I get something rejected by SS or AS (because I don't get rejections on DT) I'll upload the identical image to WS and check the box for SS or AS. You can also go back after and add agencies to images.

Meanwhile I'm not suggesting that WS is the best answer for everything and everyone. I find it fine for what I want to get out to places I don't care about and if I get some spare change, that's nice. Some people have gone 100% WS and are happy. I think each of us needs to decide how we work things.

So if it's rejected on SS, then send it to WS.    85% of something is far better than 100% of nothing.

[KWphoto]

this has been very helpful post. I am new to microstock photography. It looks like the market is saturated!

[chillbilldill]

There are a couple dead links in the guide here.

MicrostockGroup Blog
Rasmus Rasmussen's Guide

[avishfilms]

Thank you for the guide

[Photographer999]

I can't create a new topic here. It's probably to protect against spam

[SharkShooter80]

Good info thanks!

So is underwater footage and stills better as editorial? It would seem so. Just wondering about that one. I had one great white shark/cage photo that kept selling as commercial, but a lot of my other stuff like endangered species or an interesting aquatic animal seem like they would be better suited in the editorial category.

I guess landscapes/beaches could go either way?

I was on Pond5 with video since 2015. I used to make decent sales, but it has declined. I also posted about 40 photos on iStock during that time, and totally forgot about it, but saw that I had 43 dollars in my account, so I am motivated to keep uploading. I probably have about a thousand photos, so it will take me a long time to finish this! Phew. I am also waiting to end my exclusive video agreement with Pond5, so I can cross-post on iStock and Shutterstock. I feel like it may take me a year to two years to get all my photos and videos uploaded, and that feels daunting, but I will spend a few minutes per day, no?