Do not at all agree with John Harringtons rather primitive reasoning but do you really think the micro-boat is  unsinkable?

Today contributors with very good portfolios earn very good money in microstock. Demand is exploding and at the same time most images at micros are rather mediocre. This allows top contributors to offset low prices with lots of downloads.

Looking at the current intake of new images for how long will this paradisical situation continue? 1,2 or 3 years? What is going to happen then?

My guess is that this forum will pretty soon discuss exactly the same issues old school pros discuss since years (shrinking return per image, oversupply of images, ...) 

Hi there,

after a longer break I just submitted a larger batch of images to the usual suspects (IS,StockXpert,SS). Please find my impressions below. It would be interesting to hear your comments.

IS
The reviewers at IS seem to be the best trained. Often comments are valid and helpful. However there seems to be a pattern to also reject some of my very best images. Could it be that some reviewers have a hidden agenda and reject excellent images for protecting their own portfolios? Acceptance rate: 74 %

StockXpert
Comments very short but usually comprehensible. Good acceptance rate 80%.

SS
Comments mostly completely off and a catastrophic acceptance rate of 23 %. Will have to rethink if this is worth the effort, especially since I don't like their subscription-only business model.

Cheers
Gizeh

The only cost to me is time to edit, keyword and upload.

Come on, you are not honest to yourself.

The times were the micros accepted 'normal' amateur pictures shoot strictly for fun are long over.  If you want to sell you have to think about appropriate subjects and shoot stuff you would never think of as a pure amateur.

If you start submitting other stuff than snaps from your cat or your favorite landscapes you should of course treat your lost leisure time as an investment.

I make a steady $300 a month with a very tiny portfolio.

Is this revenue or profit? Before deciding if you qualify for lord or serf you should at least know the difference.

Lets assume you are a newcomer with IStock today. What would it take to get to a portfolio that earns 300$/month? How much time shooting? How much time in front of your computer? What equipment would you need to buy or at least write off depreciation for? Putting all this together what would be your hourly wage? I bet in financial terms a job at Starbucks would be a much smarter choice.

There are a few who probably make a net profit. These are people who organized their work like a high volume industrial production (see for example Yuri Arcurs work). I am pretty sure that most micro contributors are neither interested nor able to work like that.

Question is will so much inconsistency be confusing for customers?

Why should it be confusing to offer images of different qualities and price points on one site? Following your logic every supermarket should close its doors immediately.

My guess is that a lot of customers don't really care if an image costs 1, 5, 10 or even 25$ because all these prices are bloody cheap.

I am pretty confident that the snapvillage model is the future. Micro agencies who don't adapt will get increasing problems to attract contributors.

In my experience the avg. earnings/image/year at Alamy are about 20 times higher than at IStock (my earnings at other micros are not worth to mention).

The success at Alamy is completely in your own hands as they do no editing besides checking the technical quality of your files.

If you submit good images that are well edited and precisely keyworded you will get a lot of clicks and comp downloads. This will lead to a good search ranking and as a result to healthy sales. Alamy calls this concept AlamyRank. For me it works very well.

If you use Alamy just as a dumbing ground for IStock rejects you will probably see no sales at all.