Introduction to Microstock Photography – Shutterstock
Table of contents for Microstock Photography
Shutterstock was the first microstock site I signed up on and I must admit that I have mixed feelings about it. Regardless of my views on it, it is probably the best microstock site for earnings available today. Shutterstock was the first to pioneer a subscription plan. The basic principle is a customer purchase a ’subscription’ for each month, several months, or an entire year. During the subscription period, customers can download up to 25 images a day. Initially, Shutterstock would pay twenty five cents to the owner of the photograph for each download. Over time, as the subscription fees have increased so have the payments. Nowadays, your earnings depend on how much money you have made at their site – starting out at twenty five cents and moving up to thirty eight cents.
Recently, they also added an on demand service for customers that do not need as many images. This is closer to the model at IStockPhoto and other sites. Downloads of this type pay several dollars each to the photographer.
Shutterstock also supports enhanced license sales, the payouts for which depend on your earnings level at Shutterstock. Generally though this is $20-$30 – though these sales are far less frequent. Finally, they offer an archiving service that pays the photographer five cents for each image archived (in addition to the payout when the image was originally sold).
Shutterstock’s success is based on a rather simple principle that I and a number of others have disagreed with.
The basic principle is to highly favor buyers over photographers. While any photographer that has had an issue to discuss with Shutterstock has become enraged with their response, the truth is it makes good business sense. Their feelings are that people will be most happy when they have great sales – not when they are treated well. Recently a friend of mine found a picture of his on a book on Amazon.com. He felt that this violated the licensing agreements and e-mailed Shutterstock about it. They never responded with an accurate response – essentially telling him to take a hike.
However, what they have done is create a very appealing site for buyers. The subscription plan turned out to be genius – as other sites have since tried to emulate it. My sales on Shutterstock are currently far higher than any other site and comprise approximately 50% of my total sales.
Now let’s get on to some specifics.
Acceptance process
In order to be able to submit pictures to Shutterstock, you must send them ten images. At least seven of these images must be deemed worthy by the reviewer – otherwise you have to wait a month before trying again. Therefore it makes sense to send them your top ten pictures that you are confident will pass the reviewer.
Submission process
In terms of reviews, Shutterstock is in general not as tough as other sites such as IStockPhoto. Their reviewers used to be the most wildly inconsistent of all sites – but in recent months I have found IStockPhoto to be more inconsistent. Still, you are at the mercy of the reviewer that goes through your pictures. Some reviewers are definitely tougher than others. Added to this is that all pictures in your queue – regardless of when you submitted them – are reviewed at once by the same reviewer. Therefore small batches of pictures spread out over time tend to work better and limit the chances that your pictures will be slaughtered by a very tough reviewer.
In terms of the actual submission process, Shutterstock is one of the easiest sites to submit to. You have no limits on the number of shots you can submit per day or per week – unlike most other sites. This can allow you to quickly build up a portfolio. The process is also quite simple. Assuming you have keywords in the images themselves you only need to select at least one but no more than two categories per image. Unlike other sites, Shutterstock has only one level of category and there aren’t too many of them. This means that bulk uploads are quite quick.
Advantages of Shutterstock
Unlike other sites, images of a lesser quality will actually sell on Shutterstock – though you will not get many downloads. Still, almost every picture I have submitted to Shutterstock has sold at one time or another. This is certainly not the case with other sites. This is a result of the subscription model – editors are not as selective in their images and will download a number of them and decide later which ones they actually want to use. The subscription model also means they may occasionally download pictures that they like but do not need if they do not expect to reach the limit of 25 for the day.
This is the quickest site to build your portfolio on, mainly because they do not limit your uploads. The uploading process is also quick and simple. I find myself submitting far more images here than on IStockPhoto – not just due to the upload limits but also because IStockPhoto is a real pain to submit to.
Perhaps most important of all, this is the site where you’ll generally make the most money. If you only submit to one site, I would submit here. Of course, Shutterstock (unlike options available at other sites) do not prevent you from submitting your images elsewhere. In addition, I have found my sales increasing here while they have been falling at some other sites. I suspect that the market is slowly moving from more buyers than sellers to one where there are more photographers than buyers. This has lowered my sales at most other sites except for Shutterstock, where even when I do not submit I have found my sales increasing.
Finally, Shutterstock allows the submission of editorial stock, which many other sites do not accept.
Disadvantages of Shutterstock
There are of course disadvantages to submitting here. As I have already mentioned, if you have an issue with an improper use of a license or something else, don’t expect a response from them. They do not have a phone number of photographers to call and if you try (as I have) they will tell you to send them e-mail and hang up. E-mails sent to them will take at minimum two days for a response but several weeks is not uncommon.
I should also warn you about the forums – which remind me of all the bad things that went with high school. I would highly advise that you not tread there. I have not seen a useful thread in months and they are flooded with people with far too much time on their hands. My suggestion is to focus on submitting pictures and not get caught up in them.
Shutterstock is among the trickier sites to get accepted at due to their one month waiting rule. Many photographers I know signed up, were rejected, and never bothered to try again. The inconsistency of their reviewers doesn’t make this any easier.
Shutterstock, unlike some sites like IStockPhoto, does not accept artistic shots. This makes business sense, as these photos tend not to sell well. Still, I have heard several complaints from photographers who sent beautiful pictures there – only to have them rejected for focus or ‘not worthy as stock’. This of course made them quite upset as some of these images had previously won contests or are being displayed on walls.
Finally, Shutterstock does not allow you to resubmit images. You can post images you feel were improperly rejected on the forums and they may allow you to resubmit it. If they catch you otherwise you can receive a warning. After several warnings you will have to send ten new images to be reaccepted. Personally though, I find that if you wait several months and resubmit the pictures you will not have problems because the rejected pictures are deleted after several weeks.
However, for beginners I would not recommend resubmitting rejected images. More often than not, when I look at the image the reviewer is often correct. I will have more to say about this in a later post.
Conclusion
Despite its flaws, if you intend to get involved in microstock photography this is the site to use. It’s kind of like doing business with New Yorkers (which is where I believe they are located) – business is business but don’t expect them to be nice. Still, if you want to earn money in microstock – Shutterstock is the place to be.
Related posts:
- My first stolen photos Well, it was bound to happen at some point or another. Someone has stolen several of my photos. In this case they were real estate photos and ironically are not some of my better photos. Some time ago my wife, who is a real estate agent, had a listing that...
Tags: microstock, photography, review, shutterstock