704


20802 + 704 = 21506

Yes, many things have risk, but giving over all your agency passwords with no possibility of proving who made an unauthorised change to your account is another thing.

I happily give over my credit card at a bar. If I don't recognise a particular charge, the bank will do a chargeback and I'll get my money back. There's no way I would ever give my microstock account details over to a third party.

It's not about avoiding risk or not avoiding risk. It's about managing risk.

Nice work Stephen. I'm suitably impressed, jealous and inspired - not necessarily in that order.

I guess they don't adorn your profile with the gold icon until the next update. Buggers!

I'm nowhere near qualifying to contribute to such agencies, but I can comment on Yuri's comments.

Yes, he could easily get accepted by Getty Images and Corbis if he wished. He has contributed photos in the macrostock market since he first began. He earned US$64,000 from microstock last month and US$80,000 in total. However, I understand the difference in earnings to be a reflection of the quantity of work he contributes to each market rather than the profitability of either one.

He has made recent comments about the profitability of microstock now that he is spending large amounts on his productions. See: http://www.microstockgroup.com/index.php?topic=3278.0

While he says he intends to continue contributing to both markets indefinitely, it's reasonable to expect he'll adjust the balance of what he contributes to each market to maximise his return on investment.

I don't know which agencies in the macrostock market Yuri uses, though I know many such agencies distribute directly to Getty, Corbis and Jupiter. This means that the photographer doesn't need to go directly to Getty et al, as distributing agencies can do it for them. To answer your question, I 'expect' this is the easiest way to get in, though I know at least some of these agencies are invitation only!

I'm slowly learning about the macrostock market, and each time I learn something new I realise how different it is from the microstock market.

Well spotted! They're always saying that iStockphoto operates independently of Getty, so I'm not surprised by such a discrepancy in their operations. Other microstock agencies have expressed concerns over the level of sophistication among their own buyers. Perhaps iStockphoto perceives their buyers as requiring more protection from themselves than Getty buyers.

I've started tracking my acceptance and rejection graphically in a spreadsheet. I list all the photo numbers down the page and the agencies across the top. If an image is accepted the appropriate cell is green, or red if rejected.

Any vertical red lines means I got a reviewer on a bad day. Horizontal red lines means I made a poor decision contributing that image.

On that note, many of the agencies use your acceptance rate in their 'best match' algorithm, so it's in your interests to keep your acceptance rate as high as possible. I cull my photos ruthlessly before uploading. If I'm not confident that an image will be accepted at almost all agencies, I don't upload it. That doesn't actually stop me getting rejections, but it helps keep my acceptance rate up. Most people find that quality gets better earnings than quantity anyway.

I hope that helps.

That's a clever insight, and a lot of maths to work through!

iStock openly charges a premium for buyers using foreign currency (they all have the opportunity to buy in US dollars), so another perspective you may choose to take is that the buyer is paying the extra (US$0.205 per credit in your example) for iStock to manage the currency, and the remainder (US$1.30) is what buys the photo.

In reality it all goes into the pot, and whether 20c per credit is enough for iStock to cover the FX costs or not is up to them. I'm sure they'll adjust the foreign currency prices so that they cover the costs with a bit of a margin to cope with fluctuations in the real exchange rate.

Your example does highlight the size of the premium. Buyers pay an extra 15.7% to use Australian dollars in your example. (1.505 vs 1.30)

Vonkara, thanks for bringing this thread over from DT!

I fell in love with someone from the other side of the planet, so microstock became a way to earn money without geographical restriction.

Excellent information coming through in this thread, which is a credit to the original question.

One minor correction about rejection rates.  Dreamstime openly say that a contributor's acceptance rate is factored into the best match algorithm. Other agencies are likely using similar contributor based metrics too.

So while it's good advice to not get upset about rejections, it's also good advice to avoid uploading images you know have little chance of being accepted.

Perhaps I didn't explain it well. 

You shoot two more photos in a session, which both have to have the post-processing done (which for most people is substantial) and the meta data added. 

Then uploading to those three extra agencies is three extra clicks in your uploading application and a few more on the websites.

The agencies don't want to bother with batting away all the nuisance suits from property owners, which have no legal foundation in the US. They're protecting themselves from costly administrative and legal burden more than the threat of successful lawsuits, as Yingyang just pointed out.

This is my understanding after conversations around trademarked buildings with Ellen Boughn. I presume from the other comments in this thread that the same situation extends to private property as well (i.e. not formally trademarked buildings). Ellen was citing �The Professional Photographer�s Legal Handbook� by Nancy Wolff.  I've ordered my copy. This field is a nightmare with lots of 'opinions' floating around. It'll be good to read about it from an experienced barrister who specialises in this field.

Again, Yingyang raises another good point - that the agencies are protecting their buyers from similar burdens and annoyances.

I love Bryan's style. As Elenathewise says, he's preparing things in a logical order. He has his eye on the long term rather than cashing out now, and I'd guess he's not at all aiming to be in the "top 6", but rather hoping to provide a unique offering in the marketplace - something the others haven't thought about.

LO are one of my lowest earners too, but they're the agency I'm most excited about for the future. They invented the term 'midstock' and were one of the first selling in the midstock price range. And as Bryan often explains, midstock is not just about pricing, but about creating a buyer experience in the middle ground between doing an online search (microstock) and phoning a rep (macrostock). We haven't seen the last of Bryan and his team's innovation.