In this post I will finish with the main reasons a photograph will be rejected. I will start off with the Not Stockworthy category and its very similar category - Too Many on Site. There are certain subjects that microstock sites have far too many of and don’t sell that well in the first place. Some of these types of photos will even anger the reviewer - who likely has to sit through endless pictures of seagulls and ducks at times. Most sites - IStockPhoto in particular - have long lists of types of photos that they do not want any more of. The most common ones are
- Flowers - Most sites have every type of flower you can imagine now. Certainly if you send an image of a flower and put in the description “pretty flower” it is almost sure to be rejected. However, if you take a picture of a flower that is not very common (such as a rose or rhododendron) and you include the species name and location of the flower it may be accepted. Even with roses - I suspect if you include the variety there is a chance it will be accepted.
- Fruits - There are endless pictures of apples, pears, and other types of fruits on the microstock sites today. They come in baskets of fruits, isolated fruits, fruits on sale, fruits falling, eating fruits, and every possible thing involving fruits. Do not bother submitting pictures of fruits unless they are a rarer tropical variety that is not already covered well.
- Sunsets - Pictures with descriptions of ‘Gorgeous Sunset’ are almost sure to be rejected. However, I have found that if I am very specific about the location of the sunset - and it’s a good sunset - it has a chance of being accepted. Some locations - I suspect Hawaii - are still overdone here and no matter how great the sunset is it will still likely be rejected.
In this post I will continue discussing the main reasons photographs are rejected from the microstock sites today. I have already discussed copyrights, noise, and focus. In this post I will discuss framing and bad lighting.
Framing
In simple terms, your picture must not look like a snapshot. A snapshot is typically defined as those millions of vacation shots that come out each year of random things. More specifically, a snapshot is defined as a picture that didn’t require thought and looks like it. OK, so maybe that’s not so specific.
In order to have a properly framed picture, you need to pay attention to the layout of the objects inside it. For instance, watch what is creeping into the picture. Very often trees and other things find their way into the picture. If you find a branch coming into the shot from the side, use Photoshop to clone it out. Over time you’ll find yourself able to notice this when taking the shot and reframe the picture appropriately.
If you are taking pictures of buildings, make sure the tops aren’t clipped off. Many stock sites will reject shots of buildings with their tops cut off - even very tall ones. In general the entire subject should be in the shot - though there are exceptions to this. Distracting elements also should not be in the picture. When taking photos of the beach, try to find viewpoints that have the least amount of garbage - then clone out the rest of the garbage in post processing.
Another interesting aspect of microstock photography is that very often the shot that sells the best has the subject in the center of the photo. This is against the rule of thirds and will make many artists cringe - but the truth is microstock photos are made to be sold - not to be admired.
In my previous post I started to discuss what types of things will result in a rejection. I started with copyrights and in this post I will cover noise and focus. Many of these will affect how you take the picture in the first place and in theory should improve the quality of your photographs.
I will start with a discussion of noise. What is noise? Noise are those little out of color specs that you see in an image. It is most common in pictures with a high ISO and an underexposed image. All microstock sites are uniform in their hatred of noise. While in some print and display formats (such as video) noise is sometimes desired, in stock photography it is universally despised. All images must be free of noise. The easiest way to avoid noise is to not take the picture with noise in the first place.
Read on for how to do this as well as avoid other common rejection reasons.
In this post I will begin to discuss the types of things that will result in a rejection. There are a number of things that will result in a rejection that include
Copyrights
Noise
Focus
Framing
Bad lighting
Not stock worthy
Similar images
Releases
Over the next several posts I will discuss all of these in depth. At the end of this series I will include a number of sample images. Today, however, I will touch on the extremely lengthy subject of copyright protection. I will begin by saying that this is an extremely complicated subject that I know little about. For instance, I’m not exactly sure what the differences are between trademarks and copyrights. However, I suspect that most of us don’t really care. What we do care about is whether we can sell a given picture. Therefore I will simplify this discussion into what you can sell photographs of, and what you cannot.
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.
IStockPhoto is perhaps the most widely known and widely respected microstock site. In conversations with graphic designers, this is the site I most often hear from them. For anyone wishing to get started in microstock photography, it is certainly worth your effort to contribute here. In my experience, earnings at this site are significant but less than with Shutterstock.
IStockPhoto is most well known for their per download pricing. Clients pay more for larger sized images. The photographer receives a cut from these costs - though that cut is much less than it is on other sites. Still, each download should earn you several dollars on IStockPhoto. They also recently started a subscription plan similar to Shutterstock. Downloads with their subscription plan earn significantly less but are not yet as common. Finally, IStockPhoto offers enhanced license sales that each earn you a bit less than the equivalent sale on Shutterstock.
The overall review process and sales are much more difficult on this site than on Shutterstock. Only the best pictures will sell and average pictures will generally earn nothing. Most likely because of this, the reviewers are much tougher.
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.
Today I will continue this series on microstock photography. I will begin by discussing the different types of ways you can sell pictures. There are multiple types of licenses that are available, with differing rates of payment. Not all types are supported by all sites. Actually, no site supports all license types. The following are the main ways that it is possible to sell.
Limited use - This is a very limited license that allows images to be used only by non-profit organizations. As far as I know, only Alamy supports this model. While Alamy is generally a traditional stock house, they currently support a limited microstock model where non-profit organizations can purchase licenses for far less money.
Editorial - These are basically newsworthy pictures. Editorial pictures do not require model and property releases, but also cannot be used for advertising campaigns. Good examples of editorial pictures are those found in newspapers of various politicians. These politicians did not consent to their pictures being released, but because they are newsworthy no release is necessary. Various news web sites may use these pictures. However, editorial photos sell much less often than standard licenses. Today only Shutterstock and Dreamstime support editorial pictures.
Standard license - This is the license for the vast majority of pictures. This allows most uses for pictures except for large commercial runs. The license contains limits to how many times the image can be used and the resale of items containing the picture, but these limits are acceptable for most uses.
Enhanced licenses - These licenses have far fewer limits and are much more expensive. They are much less frequent than standard licenses but over time you will see them. Enhanced licenses are prominent on both IStockPhoto and Shutterstock. Typically the payouts are much higher than for standard licenses. While standard licenses pay anywhere from 25 cents to several dollars, enhanced licenses pay from twenty to fifty dollars.
Note that the licensing terms for standard and enhanced photos vary from site to site.
Submission process
I will now discuss the general submission process that is common to all sites. The following are the general steps for submitting a picture to a microstock site. In later posts, I will give more details per site.
1) The first step is to obviously take and post process the pictures.
2) Send the pictures to the site. Various sites support HTTP, flash, and FTP upload. FTP upload is generally the quickest, though I have found flash upload to be easier to use sometimes. HTTP upload - where you select each file - is generally the slowest way to upload.
3) Select keywords for each image. Actually you should have done that as part of step 1 by adding the keywords directly to the image. Still, most sites require you to click a button to use the keywords from the image or to correlate their keywords with yours.
4) Select categories for each image. All sites have categories and all except for StockXPert require you to enter them. Categories vary from site to site. Some sites have quick ways to categorize, but this is still generally a manual process.
5) Many sites have one or more standard checkboxes you must check. These basically signal that you understand the agreement and the photo was indeed taken by you.
6) After some time, the site will review the image and accept or reject it. If the image is accepted, it is added to their collection where it may sell.
In the next post, I will begin to discuss the different microstock sites and my opinions of them.
This is the first part of a multipart series on microstock photography. For a bit over two years, I have slowly become more involved in this strategy for selling pictures. There are quite a few guides out there on the Internet about this subject, but I suspect that my philosophy on it will be a bit different from the others.
Before I get started, I want to let you know whom this series is intended for. People that meet the following criteria are most likely to benefit from this series.
1) You are already familiar with the basics of photography. You are very familiar with terms such as shutterspeed, aperture, depth of field, noise, etc. You know about the rule of thirds and what makes a good picture vs a poor one.
2) You have a stable job that is paying you enough that you are not worried about paying the bills every month. You certainly wouldn’t mind earning some extra money, but you are not dependent on it. The money you make from selling photographs is intended to pay for more photo equipment, not change your standard of living.
3) You already take pictures often and have a good idea what types of pictures you enjoy taking and what types of pictures you don’t.
4) You are not a photographer by profession. During the day you do something else.
If you meet these criteria and are not already participating in microstock photography (or are just beginning) then I hope the info in this post and the ones that follow will be of use.
Well, to be honest, this month sucked! My sales fell considerably with approximately a 24% decrease. Right now, I’m not currently sure what the reason for the falloff is, but I suspect that it is seasonal. Last year between March and April at Shutterstock I had a 24% drop in sales. I noticed that the sales drop seems to affect all sites - not just a single one. If the pattern from last year holds, then I should see improved sales in May as last May was a very good month for me. The good news, though, is my real estate jobs have been picking up, more than making up for the slack in stock sales.
The following are breakdowns of how each site did.
