I started stock about 4.5 years ago with Alamy and My Loupe, and about 3 years ago with Acclaim. I made one sale in one year on Alamy with around 600 images. I bought into the hype that micros were evil, but I was desperate to make money, and because of circumstances in my life (which I wont bore you all with the details) basically helping a family member, I couldn’t work a full time job and needed a very flexible part time job which I couldn’t find. So I started uploading to the micros and low and behold, I started bringing in money right away. So I kept shooting low-budget (to no budget) production still life’s and my income continued to build almost every month. I was also occasionally assisting a professional music, fashion, and Digital Vision / Getty stock photographer so I got to see behind the curtain of Getty production shoots and some were north of $20,000.

About 2.5 years ago I submitted my images to Getty, Corbis, Jupiter, Masterfile and a few boutique, high-end stock agencies. All turned me down. Getty (paraphrasing) wanted photographers who had advertising experience, had worked with art directors, and were willing to fund their own productions that were directed by Getty art directors. So basically, the Getty AD says here’s what we want you to shoot, but you pay the bill and take all the risk. Jupiter basically said the same thing but wanted only “paid for hire” contracts. Corbis never replied to a number of inquires. One of the boutique agencies told me to go to iStock, the other wanted 1000 slides to consider, and all insisted on a photographer exclusive contract. I was blown away, I mean micros were cutting into the trades big time by this point and all were making the entry into traditional photography that much more difficult.

Continued micro, my income continued to rise. I continued with Alamy and Acclaim and started to make monthly sales with Alamy but still the two together only amounts to 1/8 of my total sales. A year and a half ago I started with Getty under their Lifesize collection, now Photographers Choice (the pay to play scheme) and technically make a lot more on a per image basis than with everyone else combined but the caveat is the $50 per image entry fee and that some of my images do not sale so it’s very daunting to consider placing a lot of images with Getty at $50.00 per image. I could easily lose a lot of money in placement fees.

Nine months ago I submitted a select group of images to Masterfile, Getty (asking for entrance into a different collection that I didn’t have to pay for) and Corbis. Corbis didn’t even look at my images, they just told me to send stuff to Snap Village. Getty said no, and Masterfile said no thanks. So, more for the micros.

Now I know my stuff is low production, and mostly still-life, but much of it is comparable to stuff I see on the big agencies, and clearly some people are paying top dollar for it (hence the sales on Alamy, Acclaim and Getty.) If the top agencies want to stem the micro flood they need to be more willing to help photographers get into their agency, a trial basis with a select number of images perhaps, some system and not just an entry barrier to all but the most experienced.

Anyway, I love shooting stock, I don’t make a lot but I don’t work that hard, very low key, part time job that pays the bills and allows me a lot of freedom and free time. I wish I could get into the better agencies but I see the barrier as more of a production costs issue than a talent issue. The photographer I assisted had assistants do everything. She would just show a tear from a magazine and say “I want this lighting” and the assistants created it for her, she didn’t know how to do it. She had more of a director’s perspective than what most of us think of a photographer. I helped her out on a few small projects that didn’t require any technical lighting assistants and her stuff was just OK. I believe 90% of her success was being able to throw enough money at the problem. I’m not saying she wasn’t creative but I think many of us could recreate her success under similar circumstances and with enough money.  I’ll keep trying for Masterfile and Corbis and slowly submit to Getty but Micro is paying the bills and without it I wouldn’t be a photographer.

Thanks. Maybe the better question is, what is an affordable video cam suitable for stock footage. The obvious nice aspect of the Nikon, or Canon DSLR is the shallow depth of field, but if i'm buying something primarily for video then perhaps I shouldn't consider a dslr. Is there a favorite affordable video cam (under $1000) among the micro stock crowd?

On iStock, buyers prefer to find what they are looking for.  The search return is not a brainstorming tool.  That should be the responsibility of the buyer to come up with various ideas.

Police officers also eat donuts.  Should all donuts be keyworded with "police officer"?

Are you serious? You're equating handcuffs to donuts? Man you are a jerk, the worst offender in EVERY forum of being the singular biggest smart but (yes I read your annoying little one liners all over the place) You clearly never worked as a designer (i read your web, animation yes, design layout, probably not) or what i said in my last post would ring true at least a little bit. I never said I or designers USE stock agencies as a brainstorming tool, however inadvertently sometimes different image spawn the creative juices, oh that never happens to you? Interesting, and yet you work in the creative arts but can't relate to creativity, ok.  iStock exclusive, it figures. Bend over and pick up the soap Sean, not only let istock do it to you but convince the rest of us that we should let them as well. The istock mind control machine has warped your ability to think, and to be polite. Yet again, another shining example of person trolling the forums to unnecessarily assert his aggression and lack of civility towards others because he knows that in the real world someone would knock that chip off his shoulder quicker then he could say "istock"

I have images with Getty, Acclaim and Alamy in addition to many of the micros, and so I tend to think conceptually when it comes to keywords, and since I haven't uploaded to iStock for a while it caught me off guard that they became so sever in their policy of only wanting literal keywords. I had 20 out of 24 images rejected for keywords, that is such a waste of time. What they should do is accept the image, send an email scolding you for the keyword infraction, list the offending keywords and remove them. Saves everyone a whole bunch of time and still gets the point across.

I've had a few hundred images with Can for a few years, and earned 2-3 bucks every month, pay out once or twice a year (at best). Middle of this month all the sudden $20 in sales. Anyone else see a sudden change at can?

No, my remark was that Elena's report "sounded more like a scam". She said that Getty requested payment for image placements that were promised free, and they needed her credit card. I never said it is a scam. I don't have all the facts.

At the risk of beating a dead horse, when someone says something to the effect of "sounds like a scam to me" they're essentially calling it a scam. I suppose I should have replied more specifically "the comment was made that Photographer's Choice sounds like, could be, might be, a scam.." "someone used the word scam" splitting hairs. Point is it isn't a scam lest anyone get the wrong impression.

This is not a scam guys. Getty wants your credit card for future submissions, because they have an automated, online submission system. It's a policy for all contributors. Getty is the giant of the traditional stock agency they are not "scamming" anyone, they are a legitimate business, they have been around a lot longer than any micro agency, probably around for more than 20 years and are the biggest / best earners for most of the top professionals. Most any pro you hear about if he/she shoots stock they have images with Getty. You don't need thousands of images like you do with Alamy. Read my post above, I profit (on average) about $53 per month from 20 images. Not great, but that's an average of about $2.65 per image per month and that's subtracting the placement fees, so my average will rise as time goes on assuming I keep making sales. My micro images earn me about $1.25 per month (that is a total from six agencies). So you see from my figures I'm not a micro star, i don't spend money on productions, I rarely shoot people, just business and food still-life's. So if my numbers hold up to yours (that is a big "IF") then a good guess would be whatever you earn through the micros, you'll earn twice that through Getty, on a per image / per month basis.

My images with Getty are not amazing images, no cost productions. Some simple food photography, drink images, fruit dropping into water, a few badly lit lifestyle images. Nothing cost me any money except one shoot of a friend (three of the 20 images) and I rented a battery pack for a light which cost me $100 and it was a waste, didn't really need it. So if you're doing better than me at the micros (most are) then you should profit well from Getty. Granted the $50 submission fee is horrible but if you can submit 10 for free by all means do it. For every one you sale within a year, you can place one for free, if you do well you may never have to pay.

Getty's pay to place images are not edited. They do a quality control check but do not reject for any reason other than quality control issues. So they have to charge otherwise they would turn into Alamy. They probably don't want that, they don't want to / cant afford to deal with that volume of images. It takes one month to six weeks for submissions to be accepted and online, and then another month for the keywords to show up. BUT you don't have to keyword! That to me is huge because i submit and keyword for six micro agencies.

I have 21 images with Getty under the pay for placement. The first 10 cost me 250, paid another 450 for for 7 and have recently placed 2 free from the sell one place one free policy. (that wasn't in place for the first year of my images so my initial sales didn't earn me a free placement) anyway, total placement costs 700 and earnings 1363. Cost paid for productions around 200. So not a great profit so far but technically on a per images basis better than all the micros. The caveat is that about half of my images have not been licensed so the $50 per image fee is a gamble. However, I am pretty sure a few of my images that were licensed probably would have been rejected at istock. I'm still trying to make up my mind about sending Getty more, with the economy, my sales at Alamy are down and so I worry about wasting money at Getty. hope this info might help. 10 for free, might as well, and then for each sale, place another for free and if you're good you might not have to ever spend any money for placement.

yea, but it's so much easier to have people do it for me.

I realized a long time ago that if I had to kill and butcher my own meat, I'd quickly become a vegetarian.  Heck, there are lots of jobs I pay somebody to do that I wouldn't do myself.

man, isn't that the truth.

So go ahead and keep bashing the Alamy price differnce, but keep in mind that the percentage difference between Alamy and micros is often less than the percentage differnce between SS and istock, as well as other micros. So where really is the "grossly different price"?

Helix, your point is one I hadn't considered, and a very good one at that, thank you.

Alamy doesn't care, so why should you? Also, there is a difference in the particulars of the RF licensing agreement with Alamy and micros. It may be a minor difference but Alamy's is more encompasing by a degree.

MSG is an ingredient, Monosodium glutamate, and the name (logo) of an 80"s-90"s hard rock band, "Michael Schenker Group" http://www.michaelschenkerhimself.com/home.php and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Schenker - so the MSG just doesn't work for me at all. The text below MSG is just too, too, small can't read it, totally useless. The blue logo to me looks more professional however, again the small text is unreadable. The camera logo is too much like the istock logo. Just my opinion.

I thought this might be interesting. As mentioned before I have 19 images with Getty, RR, Photographer's Choice. I made one sale last month for $5.06. My commission, $2.02. It was for a web site. I didn't realize that an image can be licensed for so little at Getty. Disappointing.