Hi,

I've been selling microstock photos for a while now and I've used the color labels to mark which photos have been edited, which need to be edited and which have already been uploaded and which ones have been rejected.

Things however are getting a little complicated as some agencies (plainpicture for example) require exclusivity and have a rather more complex approval process which means I need to specifically also tag images I've submitted (approved and rejected) to avoid mistakes.

There are not enough color labels to keep this and I can't use tags as they are used to tag the photos. What are my options? How are you managing your photos?

Thanks,
Guy

A bit off topic but I was wondering if anyone here sells prints on Facebook? I'm using places like Society6 but there's no integration which makes it really hard to promote myself (and track success)

Hi,

So two years ago I was approached by a US agency requesting to use one of my photos. The terms of the agreement were a little loose (it was my first time selling a photo directly) and we ended up agreeing on a two years contract for 1500$.

Now the two years are up and they just contacted me asking to renew for another 1-2 years offering 800$ for a single year and 1500$ for two years.

Again there's no proper contract so far but these are the rights they are requesting:
Licensed for $1500 for 2 years print, retail, collateral, social, website, banners, trade show, field marketing

Is this sensible? Can / should I ask for more? Let me clarify that on a regular month I make 20-50$ on microstock sites

Thanks,
Guy

So,
After having a very small collection of photos (<50) for about 3-4 years (generated 100$ during that time) I've decided to give microstock photography a real chance. I've started taking / uploading photos in September (5 months ago) adding 550 new photos so far (so a total portfolio of about 600 photos up to date).

Main earner is obviously Shutterstock which went from selling 4 photos in Aug to selling 42 photos in Jan. This means I'm making a littler over 10$ a month for the past 3 months (this month I've made a bit over 12$).

Other agencies I upload to are 123RF, BigStockPhoto, CanStockPhoto, DepositPhotos, Dreamstime and Fotolia. I've made about 6$ in the past 5 months in Fotolia and < 1$ in the rest of the agencies. Upload is done via StockSubmitter (mac which is quite limited).

I've also upload photos to Society6 and FineArtAmerica making one 7$ sale in Society6 over the time.

I'm quite happy with how SS is progressing, it's slow and not a lot of money but I can visibly see sales grow (and come in) every day. The rest of the microstock sites / prints are pretty much dead.

This means that at the moment I've got around 7% of my SS portfolio selling each month (by number of total photos sold vs total number of photos in portfolio). I'm not sure if this is a good measure?

It also means I'm making virtually no progress in all other sites. I'm wondering if there's anything better I can do there?

I have also just started iStock (using qhero) it's easier to upload now but the review process has been extremely slow in Jan and I've only got 80 photos or so in so far (1 sale).

SS portofolio for reference - shutterstock.com/g/guyn happy to share other portfolio links if relevant.

Thanks
G.N

Hi guys,
Just out of curiosity does my approval success rate effects sales in any way (aka would contributors with higher success rate get better visibility etc?)

Hi guys,

So after having a rather inactive account in Shutterstock for about 2 years (with about 30/40 images, generating 100 dollars over the year mostly from a single photo) I've decided to step up my game and try to take this a little more seriously.

In the past 3 months I've uploaded roughly 400 new images, moving most of the earning to new photos and in December coming close to 10$ (9.52 so far). I'm also uploading to a few of the other sites (Fotolia, pond5, 123rf and dreamstime) - but they generated a total of about 4$ in the past 3-4 months (iStock seems too complicated as it requires a different upload process, and I can't figure out what to do with Envato).

I'm trying to figure out how well I'm doing, get some feedback on my photos and basically figure out where to go from here the goal is 100$ a month. What should I do next? I'm at around 450 images, aiming to get to 1000 in a few months (a lot of backlog needs keywording) but wondering what else I can / should be doing?

Shutterstock profile is - https://www.shutterstock.com/g/guyn

Hi guys,

I've opened a Shutterstock account a couple of years ago, uploaded a few photos and completely forgot about it.
Last month I came back and realised I made about 100$ which is not a lot but still a nice surprise so I've decided to give this another go.
I now have about 250 photos uploaded to Shutterstock, Fotolia and Dreamstime (and a few others). While I am making some money on Shutterstock I've made 0$ on all other services.
I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong and would love to get some feedback. I realise not all photos are great, but most of them (I think) are usable.

My Shutterstock gallery - https://www.shutterstock.com/g/gnesher

Any feedback (serious please) would be really appreciated.