Newb question - Best Stock Photo site?

[Dave2003]

Just wondering if anyone knows of a better paying Stock Photography website than Can Stock Photo (http://www.canstockphoto.com?r=513)? By better paying I mean pays the best commissions to Stock Photographers themselves Canstocks commisions are as follows.

Member Download
-----------Retail---Return
Small----$1.50---$0.50 (33%)
Medium--$3.00---$1.75 (58%)
Large----$4.50---$3.00 (67%)

Guest Download
-----------Retail---Return
Small----$3.00---$1.00 (33%)
Medium--$4.25---$2.50 (59%)
Large----$6.00---$4.00 (67%)

Compare this with Istock's (http://www.istockphoto.com/) commission structure which is not that great for Photographers (But it is cheapest for designers to download).

-----------Retail----Return
Small-----$0.50---$0.10(20%)
Medium--$1.00----$0.20(20%)
Large-----$1.50---$0.30(20%)

As you can see the return for photographers is ten times more on Can Stock Photo (http://www.canstockphoto.com?r=513). Does anyone know of any other Stock Photo sites that pay better than this?

People in othe forums where I have posted have mentioned IstockPro but There is a barrier to entry with Istock Pro that Canstock Photo (http://www.canstockphoto.com/search.php?mem=513&r=513) does not have, you have to have a minimum portfolio of 100 photos available to view online (at 100% of their original resolution), and if they think your portfolio of at least 100 photos is worthy and it is selected then you can become a member.

I dont have a portfolio of 100pics yet *sigh*

By the way My Istock Portfolio can be seen here (http://www.istockphoto.com/user_view.php?id=360977), and this is my Canstock Photo Portfolio (http://www.canstockphoto.com/search.php?mem=513&r=513).

[joelr]

AreaImage.com (http://www.areaimage.com/) is pretty cool
http://www.areaimage.com (http://www.areaimage.com/)

the rates are below

you can earn upto 40 cents per $1.00 download
upto $40.00 for a $50.00 download

you can choose what the price is.. obviously depending on what you think its worth, its definitly worth a look, also you can get a paypal payment after only $15.00

[robertwgross]

Dave, in your numbers, the right column says "Return."

That is the rate of return per image. However, it is possible that the total return is better from a different agency that has higher volume or better marketing.

Which would you rather get, ten commissions of a dollar each, or one commission of ten dollars?

Most of us would answer one commission of ten dollars, because you are less likely to saturate your market.

---Bob Gross---

[the7ferret]

thier is no good stock image website
Lets say newsweek takes your picture for $4.
And they print it on the cover of newsweek as many times as they want.
You get $3

A regular photographer would of sold a ONE TIME use license to newsweek for approx $5,000 for the front cover minus taxes. Take home (@ 44% tax)
He gets $2300

What do you prefere?

Pros of Stock photos sites:
Your name gets out.
Cons:
you dont get 1/2 of what your photo worth

Pros of doing it yourself
More money
Cons:
Hard to get your pics out there.

Any other people have input.

[WPG]

I'm currently thinking of starting a directory of photographers that sell photos on their sites both royalty free + licensing using paypal. still working out the details see if I want to do it. and all the back end of figuring out how to set it up etc. more code etc. but that's my idea. so that the photographer gets 99.99% and paypal gets there 0.01%

but the directory set up kinda like photoblogs.org but no ranking system. just categories of images etc.

[symes]

I thought of looking into these places as well but after reading IndyJeff's thoughts as well as the many who weighed in...I have to say that the images are worth more to me than to sell them no holds bar for cents...I figure my first real gig will be more rewarding...

Take a read:

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=61210

[max101]

I thought the same, I have many stock images sitting in my files,so what does one have to loose - they were currently unseen images, so I uploaded to www.totallyphotos.com and have had good results, they tend to pay a little more than others.

Good luck with this

[Mthorpe_Davies]

I thought the same, I have many stock images sitting in my files,so what does one have to loose - they were currently unseen images, so I uploaded to www.totallyphotos.com and have had good results, they tend to pay a little more than others.

Good luck with this

Max have you sold any on totallyphotos so far? I've got about 40 images up, no sales yet. The key wording on this site isn't the best in my opinion.

[Rob612]

Max have you sold any on totallyphotos so far? I've got about 40 images up, no sales yet. The key wording on this site isn't the best in my opinion.

I'll chime in on this... got about 150 almost never used pics over there, made a couple of sales. Not big money, sure enough, but I had fun with it... :)

[peterdoomen]

Since a few weeks I have uploaded ten pictures to shutterstock (http://submit.shutterstock.com/?ref=51806) to estimate what I would get each month when I would upload let's say 1000 pictures.

I must say that I am impressed with the result. Although the normal fee per picture is only 20 cents, it also depends on the number of downloads. And that depends on the fee formula of the stock site. With Shutterstock, they have a flat fee for 750 downloads a month. As a result, users will download a lot of pictures, even when they don't really need it. But you as a photographer still get paid.

I am fairly sure that my next lens will be payed with my shutterstock fees :-)

[max101]

Max have you sold any on totallyphotos so far? I've got about 40 images up, no sales yet. The key wording on this site isn't the best in my opinion.

Yes, got about 30 images up and had a couple of sales. I'm not keen on keywording in general, but I always think it has a strong effect on sales.
It's not the busiest site in the world (yet), but I figure it's a good place for me to gradually build up a portfolio and watch sales slowly pick up. They pay well and are still very new. I aim to get a few hundred up over the next few months and as the site gets bigger and better known I figure it should turn out more profitable than the 20 cent sites, and they certainly have some good feedback on other forums.
I guess it's a gamble - but as there's no cost, and as the nights get longer I'll get a lot more time to upload and keyword. In some ways it's a matter of principle too - I think my shots are worth more than 20cents, even if there are less sales ... for now :)

Good luck!

[ssim]

I've looked at some of these sites but I cannot justify my time to sell an image for even a couple of dollars. I would much rather they sit on my hard drive than sell them that low. For me it is how low can we set the bar. No one is going to make a living off of these 1-2.00 download sites and the market is becoming over saturated.

There are some sites out there where you can name your own price but they are very stringent about what they accept.

[Rob612]

I dont know. I have a lot of stuff that really sits on my hd without any use, and that's what Im putting in several of these sites (remember that they are almost all non-exclusive, so you can have the same pic on totallyphotos, shutterstock, areaimage, alamy etc). Just to see what happens.

[peterdoomen]

At ShutterStock, you get a low price per download (20c to 4 dollars per download) BUT they offer downloaders a flat fee per month (750 pics for $139), thus they download a lot. Even with a moderate stock of a few hundred pictures, I'll be able to get a reasonable check each month.

How do I know? Simple: I uploaded 10 representative pictures and waited for a month. Then I set a goal: 1000 pictures uploaded to the site. So the income in my test month x 100 is an estimate of the monthly income when I have 1000 pictures in my stock. Do the test for yourself: maybe it turns out well, maybe not. But how can you know without trying?

(Shutterstock referred by me: http://submit.shutterstock.com/?ref=51806)

P.

[Zero]

I joined up with www.totallyphotos.com recently. I haven't made a lot of sales, but they are a new site and have just opened in July. 4 sales aren't a lot, but to be honest, some of them were just sitting on my harddrive, and the first one that sold almost got deleted when I was cleaning up old files.

There are a few things I really appreciate about the site so far, that make me think that it stands out.

1. Actual people review the photos, checking for cloning marks, smudges, scratches, burnt pixels, etc. This means that the photos up there are a higher quality. They also have a 4 Megapxl minimum on file size.

2. the commission rate is fair. 50%. the prices rage from:
Low Resolution - $10
Medium Resolution - $15
High Resolution - $25

3. because they are new, I think you have more of a chance of getting in with a new site than trying to establish a name on an older site, in my opinion.

4. You can talk to the helpdesk there via email, and get rapid, intelligent replies to questions. I found they are very helpful. As well, I made a few suggestions about the site and one of them was implemented. (not that they'll do everything, but at least they appear to consider it).

My guess is that it is really aiming to hit the "mid-market" in stock photography. They are very active, and I've heard that they are really going to be making a push in marketing.

[peterdoomen]

Zero,

Indeed, these four criteria are worth a lot. There are some "other stock sites" out there that for example don't tell you why a photo was rejected or send you bogus reasons. Rapid and real (as opposed to canned) answers from their help desk or actual reviewers also speeds up the match between you and the site.

Concerning the commissions, it depends. If you have a rate of $10 per photo but noone actually downloads anything, it's not worth investing your time. If you have a lower rate of only a few cents but your photos are downloaded a lot, it can mean a significant financial advantage.

Again it's best to evaluate: upload a small amount of representative pictures (let's say 10), wait a month, look at the earnings of the 10 pictures. Then multiply with 100 and you know what you'll earn with a decent stock of about 1000 pictures.

I made about $6 in the first month with only 10 pictures up. Not a big deal, but suppose I'll be at 1000 pictures by next year and I get a monthly check of $600... That's only about three months and I can step up from my Canon 70-200 f/4 to the Canon 70-200 f/2.8 IS.

I've chosen ShutterStock (http://submit.shutterstock.com/?ref=51806 ) and so far, it works out very well. If in the future, it starts to wear down, I'll upload my stock to another site. (BTW a good reason to keep your stock separately on your hard disk, complete with keywords and all).

PeteR.

[miklav]

Thinking of the discussion whether to sell via online stock sites and whether it puts your own value down and harms the business of professionals - there was an interesting discussion a few weeks ago in dpreview forum. I don't have the direct link but I remembered a couple of points that I think are useful:
the world is changing, the business is changing. the new business model of micro stock agencies is there whether you like it or not. you can't fight with that, but you can decide whether you use that business model or you choose another one.
the restaurant business was not killed by McDonalds and Burger King; they operate in different market niches, the photography business also have various niches and micro stock will not kill the "real photographers" market (though it affects it of course).

Indeed sites like iStock will not give you much money unless you are really gifted and devote much time to that -- but that's the point I want to make.

If you know you aren't exceptional, but you like photography and have unused archive of many decent pictures;
and if you do not have time/wish to be completely devoted to selling your work,
and if the same time you wish to get SOME income from your unused acrhive without much effort

-- then why not give it a try? And if it becomes a success you may try other options later... you may wish to devote more time and effort if you have the proof that your work is sellable.

Another quotation from dpreview forum:
"I was with iStock for about 18 months, before I moved to Alamy. Of my 200 or so images on iStock, I moved 100 of my best to Alamy for a trial period.
It took nine months before I was convinced to extricate myself from iStock altogether, having earned $3000 from Alamy in that period. My total earnings for the whole time I was on iStock were $259."
(hope I don't violate any policy by posting the link here: http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1014&thread=14822925&page=1)

-- again this may not work that well for everyone, and obviously dealing with Alamy requires significantly more time and effort from the photographer (making large hi-res tiffs, burning them on CDs, mailing them...)

[peterdoomen]

That's indeed a consideration too... with my stock program, I've been able to upload about 230 pictures in about six weeks. Furthermore, I keep a daily estimate of how much I would earn when I reach the goal of 1000 pictures up. I won't tell you the actual estimate ;-), but I'm fairly sure that within a few months my hobby will pay for itself :-)

P.

[Eagle]

Peter,
How is Shutterstock working out for you? Are you making the money yo expected or at least near it?

[simatbirch]

As far as i can make out these microstock agencies such as istockphoto are ruining stock photography for people seriously commited to using stock as a serious form of income.

I don't understand why people use these sites that pay a pittance, such as 10p per photo, when Alamy and other reputable agencies would pay hundreds of pounds for the same image. If things continue at this rate stock photography as a going concern will disappear altogether. Please people, realise the worth of your work and use a decent agency.

[simatbirch]

Bump - for the people continuing to inundate micropayment sites!

[thesupe87]

There are so many micro sites now...I currently submit photos to 8-10 of them. Right now I'm averaging about $200 a month, with about 200-400 images (keep in mind some of my sites only accepted 200, since they're more picky - other sites accept a lot more images)

I whipped up a little informative website, that offers a lot of good advice about micropayment, and marketing your own photos (not always for .50 cents - some of these sites allow you to name your own price, and then you get 70% of the sale price as commission)

www.freewebs.com/micropaymentphotography

check it out ;)

[MattyB]

off topic slightly, anyone know how long it takes canstockphoto to accept an application usually? :\

[peterdoomen]

Peter,
How is Shutterstock working out for you? Are you making the money yo expected or at least near it?

Considering the size of my gallery, I'm making 94% of the money I would like to make from it. Next Paypal payment will arrive within a week.

I've also written a booklet with ten tips, for those who want to try it:
http://www.aboriginemundi.com/photo/Ten-Tips-for-Success-with-ShutterStock.pdf

P.

[Eagle]

I've also written a booklet with ten tips, for those who want to try it:
http://www.aboriginemundi.com/photo/Ten-Tips-for-Success-with-ShutterStock.pdf

P.

Very nice booklet Peter. Out of the sites I've tried I'm doing the best at ShutterStock.

[peterdoomen]

Very nice booklet Peter.

Thanks. I hope it helps.

Out of the sites I've tried I'm doing the best at ShutterStock.

With me the same.

Can you tell me how many % of your gallery is downloaded daily?
With me, it is between 3% and 8%. That means $7,5 up to $20 per day when I reach 1000 pictures in my gallery. How many days is that before I can buy this nice 70-200L f/2.8 IS? :confused:

P.

[Eagle]

Can you tell me how many % of your gallery is downloaded daily? :confused:

P.

Peter, I probably average about 2-3% downloaded daily.
About 65% of my pics have been downloaded.
I need to get more pics on though, to have 1000 would be cool.

[thesupe87]

I am finally seeing sales on SS in the $5-8 range, consistently - that's with a portfolio of just over 250 pic. This is awesome - can't wait until I can average $1000 a month from all of my sites, that would sure help me pay the bills!

If anyone else is interested in starting out with micropayment, I've compiled a small website with my experiences and photos here: www.freewebs.com/micropaymentphotography - check it out when you get bored.

[simatbirch]

Why are you guys continuing to sell your images for a pittance?

[PAS Photography]

Well Ive been doing a dabbling in the micro stock sites with images Id never see income from.
Ive been on shutterstock for 6 weeks now. My total earning is $131.00. My image gallery has grown to 180 photos to date. The past week my average is 12.5 downloads per day which is about $3.00. Ive had two $20 sales in that time frame.
Granted Im not one for selling my images for pennies but with the growing popularity of these sites and no end in site for them, I figure mayas well be part of it. I guess I compare it to when Digital first came into the picture, and everyone shooting film said it would never catch on... well now if you are shooting film you are ancient and left in the dust (unless your shooting med. format).

Here is my gallery if your curious to see what I have posted. http://submit.shutterstock.com/?ref=66057
http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?page=1&gallery_id=66057&sortby=popular&rows_per_page=8&thumb_size=small

Id like to hear from others on their progress with these sites.

Paul

[liza]

In answer to the OP's question, a good and legitimate stock agency is www.alamy.com.

As for microstock agencies, just say NO!

[thesupe87]

My progress is getting better by the month! I'm telling you, I'm only at about 3-400 images on each of my 8 micro sites (3 of those 8 I still haven't earned enough to hit the payout yet). I am receiving regular payouts from 5 of my 8. My average monthly earnings on micropayment stock photography as a whole is in the $300-$400 / monthly average now. This is just 5-6 months after I began. I work at this maybe 1-2 hours a week. Do the math. Even if I spend 8 hours a month, and make $300...that's almost $38/hr. Now if only I actually had the time to produce more images...

;)