Wax Bomb - one of my top sellers
picture of waxbomb

Tom's Microstock Photo Sales Page

Some of this page is a little dated, as I have been at this for some time now, The results page (see links at the bottom) have the results of last month updated. In any case, there is plenty of info in here if you are willing to wade through it, maybe I'll make it all look nice and neat some day, meanwhile...

I have been experimenting with microstock photography. The pitch is you can make money off of photos just sitting on your hard drive collecting electronic dust. The reality is a little different - it is possible to make some money, but it does take some time and effort to get the photos on your hard drive into saleable form, and taking new ones for sale takes some work too. It is highly educational though, and there is potential for some good money if you either put in a lot of work or get extremely lucky. I suppose some talent and decent equipment wouldn't hurt either.

There has been some controversy about microstocks devaluing photographer's works, and there is some merit to that argument, although they are also providing an entrance to many people (such as myself) who don't have the time, equipment, connections, or portfolio to get in any other way. In any case, I think digital shook up things more than microstocks did, and the cat is fully out of the bag. My little contribution won't make much difference in any way. There are heaps of people with nice digital cameras and internet connections.

brief history of my microstock activity

I joined Dreamstime July 2006, but didn't have much time to upload photographs until around Thanksgiving of that year.
At first I was just looking through my old photos for ones that I thought were particularly nice, or at least potentially stockworthy. For recognizable people photos, you need model releases which I didn't get through the years, but I suppose I'll start now, if I ask you to sign one, this is probably why.

The username I came up with for these sites is "Pancaketom". While I wouldn't say these sites are a rousing financial success and I will be able to live large off the income, I am already retired in a manner, and a little goes a long way for me (and one can always dream). In any case, It gives me a good excuse to play with my camera more, and increase my skills with digital image capture and manipulation. It is also something I can do without a fixed address or schedule. So far, I haven't calculated my hourly rate, and I presume it would be miserable, maybe I'd have made more money collecting recycling. However this wouldn't be much fun in the winter, it wouldn't help my photo skills improve, and there would be no residuals. If you are interested in seeing my portfolio on Dreamstime, here are some links...
Pancaketom's portfolio on Dreamstime
If you are interested in checking out Dreamstime as a whole, here is a link....
Dreamstime microstock page
If you feel like joining up, let their cookie stand on your computer, or type in code res181321 when you sign up. That won't cost you at all, and will have some tiny benefit to me. Thanks.

In November I joined Shutterstock. You have to send them 10 photos and have 7 accepted. They also have to be over 4 MP for new photographers, curiously enough my 4.0 megapixel camera does not take 4.0 megapixel photos, so that is a bit of a pain. I just squeeked in with 7 accepted despite one being rejected because I didn't have a witness for my model release (that was for me). Anyway, the link to my portfolio there is :
Pancaketom's portfolio on Shutterstock
Shutterstock for photographers

I joined Featurepics (FP) in April of 2007. It has a number of things going for it. 70% goes to the photographer, you can set the price, and you can do rights managed images. I don't know how the sales will be though, especially if the price is set high. This is a possible place to put one of a kind photos at a higher price though, or full resolution copies of panoramics. In any case, I haven't really gotten very far with it yet, but if it works out, it could be a good middle of the road place to sell pics. here is their link. my photos for sale on FeaturePics
After a few weeks on featurepics, I have had a few sales. I like the ability to organize photos into collections there, and although there are still a few quirks and bugs in the system, the administrators are super fast about fixing them and getting back to you. I hope it takes off. I had a few sales the first month there, but none in May. I am still hoping that it takes off. There will be more on FP later.

once again, using that link with cookies enabled or typing in referrer code 82046 when you sign up would benefit me a bit and not decrease your return.
Shutterstock also has video, and I uploaded 2 timelapses I had made. Much to my surprise, one day one sold and I got nearly $30. I'll have to see if I have anything else suitable, but without a video camera, I am pretty limited (they don't want video from a still camera, although my new one does pretty well - one I took of me bouldering was accepted recently and has since sold) In 2008 SS will lower their prices for video a lot, and unless sales pick up a lot, it will hurt.

I also joined USphoto, but I don't think I have had any sales there ever, and I haven't uploaded very many pictures.

I signed up for iStockphoto in February 2007. The application required 3 photos and a 10 or so day wait. Then you have to submit photos through a rather cumbersome process and wait about a week to see what happens. The first few have been accepted, with one sale for all of .46 the next day. Supposedly sales are pretty regular here after a while rather than immediately like SS. Sales looked good there and increased a lot until they changed the search at the end of June and cut them in half.

my istock portfolio

I signed up with StockXpert (SXP) in October 2007, but have not gotten enough images up to evaluate it. They have had some reviewing issues. (Feb 2008 update - I now have over 200 images up there, and sales seem to be pretty slow, around .10 per image per month so far.)

Dreamstime pays more per sale (usually 1$), but the rate of downloads is less. Shutterstock works on a subscription model and only pays .25 per sale, but the rate seems to be higher. It also appears that their search engine favors new submissions, so the rate will fall off as time passes unless an image is popular or obscure enough to be among a very few images in a search. The type of photographs I tend to take aren't necessarily the top performers in microstock (the perfect picture would probably involve beautiful women in business attire and technology illustrating some hot new business jargon) - not some grubby climbers or beautiful scenery. I have taken a bunch of isolated items, especially when visiting my parents who have a lot of old things to take photos of. Some of those seem to be doing ok. However on various fora, when people post their most popular images, they are often scenery or some very simple images. Illustrations seem to do fairly well too.
I hope to update this with a bit more data on the differences between the sites and how things are going with my experiments in microstock photography, although the month to month details I will document on my microstock results page.

acceptance and refusals

One thing I have noticed is that what is accepted or sells at the different sites can vary wildly. In fact what is accepted seems pretty random at times. A poorly focused or high noise image probably isn't going to fare well om microstock sites ever, but I have had 2 nearly identical pictures where one is accepted and one refused for various reasons, the main one I could see being it was 2 different submission batches. Also a picture that is rejected for no commercial worth sells well on another site. I am fully convinced that a picture that is accepted one day might be rejected the next or vice versa. If nothing else, it is perhaps worth signing up for more than one site so that you can submit to both. I am guessing that the sites will become more picky in the future, increasing minimum pixel sizes and rejecting good pictures of the sorts that they already have a lot of. However I have had images refused for having "too many" when I couldn't find any similar images on their site. They might even start deleting non selling photos from their sites. I think there will be some sort of shake up, maybe into a 3 tier system. Really cheap or nearly free decent pictures, pretty cheap good pictures, and then expensive traditional stock photos and contract photography.
Different sites seem to have different things they will accept or refuse.
Shutterstock seems to be really down on grain or noise in photos, but that may change. I have had all 12 of a batch accepted at SS, and only 4 of them accepted at Dreamstime. In other cases, it goes the other way. Istock seems to be more accepting of film images but is down on obviously manipulated images and I often get rejected for the mysterious "artifacts are visible at full size" and even more mysterious "distorted pixels". I can't really figure out exactly what DT wants, but it seems rather batch dependent. That is one reason not to upload huge batches, as having an entire batch rejected is frustrating enough with small batches. There isn't much one can do about "this isn't stockworthy" or "this isn't what we are looking for" sorts of rejections other than take some other type of picture or find somewhere else to send it.

what sells

Hopefully the sites know what sells and will accept images accordingly, but ultimately, the buyers are what matters. I haven't noticed any great trends on one site selling one particular type of image more than others.
Shutterstock does seem to favor recent submissions for a week or two. After that sales seem to decrease to some slower steady state. I haven't had a long enough stretch without submitting there to see how low the final steady state might be though, but they held up ok for about a month, but then started dropping a bit in the second month before I started uploading again. Very popular images manage to stay at the top of the searches, and very obscure images don't have to compete with many images, but don't get very many sales.

As I might have said earlier, the jury is still out if this is worth my effort monetarily. Since I would be spending a lot of time taking and messing with pictures anyway, it wouldn't be fair to use all of the time I have spent with my camera and computer against the income. I think there also might be some sort of critical mass for the number of photos up where your own photos start attracting buyers to your portfolio. In any case, what will really make the difference is how well sales hold up over time. If so, it will be worth it, if not, then it will have been a learning experience. If I can upload the photos I would be taking anyway when I have some free time and a decent connection and make some money off of them, that would be nice. If I end up spending a lot of time taking photos I wouldn't bother with on my own and processing and uploading them only for a small return, then it isn't worth it.

Beaver Falls, up Havasu Creek
this sort of pretty picture doesn't seem to sell well
but I did sell one!
picture of Beaver Falls

My impressions of the 3 after March 2007 are:

SS - best earner, most predictable and fastest review times, but it seems like you need to keep uploading to maintain sales unless you have top-notch or very obscure photos. only .25 per download, but by far the most downloads (I averaged double digits per day last month). Starting in May, photographers with over $500 in income there get .30 per download. I expect to hit this mark in June.

DT - worst earner of the 3 at this time, Slowest review times, possibly the pickiest, might be picking up some steam though. They seem to have the search that results in the lowest number of completely bogus responses.

IS - Lowest % commision for the photographer (something like 80-20 if you aren't exclusive), most cumbersome, limiting, and annoying upload process, possibly best earner with a bigger portfolio, sales are less likely to drop off without fresh uploads (but if they tweak the search engine, it could really change sales). They seem to be very picky with reviews, often with correct (but nitpicky) rejection reasons. They don't seem to have the same definition of artifacting that I have though. Their search seems to be the weirdest, as their "controlled vocabulary" is rather arbitrary, and doesn't necessarily default correctly.

It is interesting to watch this business progress. I think the macrostocks in a way brought this on by denying access to most amateur photographers with technical and other hurdles. Then when microstock started, they denigrated it (possibly with good reason, some of the earliest uploads are pretty sad). Now they are trying to get a piece of it (Getty bought IS), Corbis says they will start or buy up a microstock (Snapvillage). I also think that the microstocks are getting a lot pickier and in many cases the quality of the photography is quite similar to much of what is on the macros (but not even close to the cream of the crop). Hopefully the microstocks will continue to increase their prices and payouts for the larger better photos and someone like Flickr won't start giving stuff away for free to cut the bottom out completely. I think the proliferation of decent reasonably cheap digital cameras has done more to change the old school way photographers made money. Microstocks are more of a byproduct of talented amateurs trying to make a buck rather than the cause.

It appears that Featurepics is more of a site that will sell stuff for you, but only if you send the traffic there. It has a number of ways to link from your page such as these below...



My most popular images at FeaturePics.com


This is based on the number of clicks these photos have had, not sales.

You can also put a collection on your pages...

My panoramic image collection at FeaturePics.com

I think the value of FP is that it allows you to store and sell images online at a price you set without having to implement all of the sale stuff yourself, yet you still get 70% of each sale. Unfortunately, they don't seem to do too much marketing, so that is up to you. They seem to be quite responsive to their users, and will make changes and implementations based on their suggestions. I am not impressed with their search or the volume of sales though.

To continue with the experiments, in January 2008 I applied to Alamy, which is a macrostock site that allows internet uploading. You have to upsize the images according to a rather confusing archaic system - upsize based on the size of an 8 bit TIFF file, then save as .jpg. (a much easier way to describe it is over about 16.8 megapixels. Anyway, I got in, but with only 4 images, I haven't gotten any sales yet. Check out the links below...
Stock photography by Tom Grundy at Alamy
Stock photography by Tom+Grundy at Alamy

What do all those acronyms and words mean?

While some of these definitions are simplistic and by no means complete, it gives you a clue.


To see a more detailed analysis of sales from month to month and on the various sites, look here: my microstock results page, and for a page with suggestions on how to start, go to my microstock how to start page


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