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Newbie Discussion / First time out in MicroStock - My first 10 images
« on: July 18, 2011, 07:59 »
Hi all,
About a month ago I submitted my first batch of 10 images to some Microstock sites, and it was particularly interesting to see what was rejected and what was accepted. I chose to start submitting to ShutterStock, iStockphoto, Dreamstime and Fotolia as they seem to be the 'Big 4' in Microstock.
I have written a detailed post on my blog about it ('My First 10 Microstock Images'), so I won't go into the details here, but I will provide some conclusions.
1) ShutterStock are very picky. Even images that were accepted by the 3 other agencies were rejected by Shutterstock.
2) Not all back ends/management systems are created equal...I have used a number of Content Managment Systems, so I believe the account management areas of Microstock agencies should be as easy and robust as the best of those. iStockphoto is by far the worst. Dreamstime is probably the best once you have a look around and Fotolia is not too bad. I cannot comment on the Shutterstock back end in full since I am not yet accepted there yet, but the submission system was good.
3) If you get multiple rejections for an image, the agencies don't always reject for the same reasons. One image could be rejected by one agency for too shallow a DOF, and another might reject the same image for poor lighting.
I wouldn't say I put my best 10 images forward this time around, but I thought this was an interesting result and might provide some insight for others starting out or looking at dabbling in Microstock.
CG
About a month ago I submitted my first batch of 10 images to some Microstock sites, and it was particularly interesting to see what was rejected and what was accepted. I chose to start submitting to ShutterStock, iStockphoto, Dreamstime and Fotolia as they seem to be the 'Big 4' in Microstock.
I have written a detailed post on my blog about it ('My First 10 Microstock Images'), so I won't go into the details here, but I will provide some conclusions.
1) ShutterStock are very picky. Even images that were accepted by the 3 other agencies were rejected by Shutterstock.
2) Not all back ends/management systems are created equal...I have used a number of Content Managment Systems, so I believe the account management areas of Microstock agencies should be as easy and robust as the best of those. iStockphoto is by far the worst. Dreamstime is probably the best once you have a look around and Fotolia is not too bad. I cannot comment on the Shutterstock back end in full since I am not yet accepted there yet, but the submission system was good.
3) If you get multiple rejections for an image, the agencies don't always reject for the same reasons. One image could be rejected by one agency for too shallow a DOF, and another might reject the same image for poor lighting.
I wouldn't say I put my best 10 images forward this time around, but I thought this was an interesting result and might provide some insight for others starting out or looking at dabbling in Microstock.
CG
