Introduction to Microstock Photography – Other Sites
In this post we will discuss the other microstock sites that are available. The two primary sites we will focus on are Fotolia and Dreamstime. However, there are also other sites. Fotolia and Dreamstime are the third and fourth largest microstock sites available today – though not necessarily in that order. Approximately six months ago, Fotolia was easily the third largest site in terms of sales. In recent months though, this has clearly moved in favor of Dreamstime. In fact, next to Shutterstock, Dreamstime has seen the largest increase in sales for me and if it continues at this rate next year it could start overcoming IStockPhoto in sales.
In general, for all sites except for IStockPhoto and Shutterstock I pay very little attention to them. When I have pictures to submit, I submit to them and I check my sales each day. However I never really pay attention to which pictures they accept and reject and I never resubmit rejected photos to them.
I will now cover these sites in more depth.
Fotolia
Fotolia was the second microstock site I joined and has one of my largest portfolios. This site has changed tremendously in the last few years. When they first started up, they offered to pay photographers for each image submitted. As a result, Fotolia quickly built up a large collection of poorly taken photographs. After some time, they wisely decided to comb through their collection and remove photographs that never sold – reducing their photograph count significantly. Then there was the version upgrade – an example in how not to engineer a product – that had their site down for over a week and so alienated customers and photographers that I thought for sure they would go out of business.
However, survive they did and they rebounded a few months after the disastrous server upgrade. Although my sales there have roughly remained the same, they are now in fourth place in sales behind Dreamstime.
Fotolia provides both on demand and subscription downloads – which like IStockPhoto they recently added in order to better compete with Shutterstock. Payouts are around 35 cents for subscriptions and a few dollars for on demand. Most downloads are still on demand. However, image sales are much slower than at the other sites.
Fotolia, like StockXPert, has a very low tolerance for any pictures of modern buildings. While Shutterstock and IStockPhoto will accept pictures of any modern buildings known to not be copyrighted, Fotolia will always reject them. As a result, some of my more popular photos do not sell on there which has likely limited my sales.
Some key advantages with Fotolia are the easy acceptance policy (you do not need to submit any photos for acceptance) and the quickest turnaround for reviews of all microstock sites. Generally photos are reviewed within 24-48 hours and give me a good preview for what the other sites will do.
Reviewing is rather tough on Fotolia and seems quite random. Whether they are more random than other sites is difficult to tell because I honestly don’t pay attention to their rejections. One big disadvantage is they do not provide any actionable info on why the picture was rejected. Instead they will say something like “quality of the picture” in terms of the rejection reason. They also often refer to pictures by number – meaning you have no idea what picture they are talking about without further investigation. Interestingly though, they are the only site where you can look up who purchased your photos.
Fotolia is relatively easy to submit to. You can use their flash uploader or upload via FTP. You then just need to click a few buttons for each image and select categories. However, their web site is not very usable in that you must continually go to the main page and select an image to edit. This means that uploads on Fotolia take longer than Dreamstime or Shutterstock but not as long as IStockPhoto.
My recommendation is to start out with Fotolia instead of any of the other sites. Acceptance is easy and you will receive quick feedback on your photos. Therefore it is the easiest site where you can determine whether you have acceptable pictures for stock. Once you have a small number of shots accepted there, I recommend you use the same pictures to join more profitable sites such as Shutterstock and IStockPhoto.
Dreamstime
Dreamstime has rapidly come on lately and is now solidly in third place for me in terms of earnings. They appear rather like a poor man’s IStockPhoto but they are definitely worth your time in terms of submissions. They offer a good number of helpful blogs on their site and their reviews are relatively uniform. In general I find it easier to get images accepted here than at other sites which may be a reason for the increased sales. You can choose for individual images to be exclusive to Dreamstime – which is required if you enter their contests – but there is little reason to do this. You will always make more money by submitting to multiple sites.
Dreamstime has a relatively easy submission process. I often submit my pictures via FTP and then only need to select the category for each image. Their site allows you to easily select the categories from previous images so new submissions often move quickly.
I don’t really have a lot to say about Dreamstime. They have been a solid seller for me but I haven’t interacted with them very much. Still, they are well worth your time to submit to.
StockXPert
This site has by far the lowest sales of all the sites I submit to and is probably the only other site that is worth your time. It is by far the easiest to submit to as you do not need to select categories for images. Simply upload them via FTP and then click a single button to submit them in bulk – making this site the easiest of all microstock sites to submit to. You don’t even need to add keywords – though you will if you want your images to sell. Their site is also amazingly confusing. Recently StockXPert has been hit with controversy over changes in their licensing plans. A number of photographers removed their accounts there but I kept mine with the hope that the new sites would increase my sales – for the most part they have stayed the same and don’t amount to much. Still, despite the low sales they are so ridiculously easy to submit to that it is probably worth the effort.
Other sites
There are of course tons of microstock sites out there. The only other site that I do not submit to but is probably worth the effort is Alamy. Alamy is actually a traditional stock house but they have eased their submission process to make it much easier. Still, you have to significantly upsize your images that you submit there – meaning the submission process is much slower. Sales are also much slower there but the earnings are higher when you receive a sale. At some point I will likely sign up here as it is likely worth the effort. I know several photographers who submit there and they make on average about $30 a month. This would put it around fourth or fifth on my list of earnings sites but if I can come up with an automated way to submit I will likely submit there.
Other sites include CanStockPhoto, BigStockPhoto, CreStock, and SnapVillage. None of these are worth your time as sales are very low. SnapVillage, though started by a reputable name in Corbis, is also an example of how not to start a web site. Another site – LuckyOliver – known for their very fair treatment of photographers – went out of business recently. I suspect many of these other sites will soon follow suit.
Depending on the images you sell, there may be other sites worth your time. There are a number of sites limited to a certain geographic area. For instance, if you live in Scandinavia there are sites that specialize in that area as there are with some other countries.
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Tags: alamy, dreamstime, fotolia, microstock, photography