As many of you know, I spend some time submitting my pictures to various microstock sites. I currently submit to five agencies – Shutterstock, IStockPhoto, Dreamstime, Fotolia, and StockXPert.
Lately I have been extremely busy and have little time to submit pictures. As I slowly started submitting a few, I noticed something very interesting.
What I noticed is that IStockPhoto sales have slowed considerably in recent months. In the past, IStockPhoto vied with Shutterstock as my top site and a few times took the lead. However, that has changed now.
Today, IStockPhoto is fourth for me in terms of sales. Only StockXPert brings less. Another problem is that submissions take a long time on IStockPhoto due to their archaic upload system and their own keyword vocabulary. As a result, it takes me longer to submit to IStockPhoto than to the other sites combined. It is even more annoying that after submitting the photo my shot is rejected for a keyword that is pertinent. For instance I had a picture of Jerusalem rejected for using the keyword “Israel”.
Another interesting thing occurred when I was searching for some photos for a friend a few weeks ago. I was rather stunned that, despite their claim to having an advanced keyword system, I was unable to find the pictures I was looking for. I had much better success on Dreamstime and Shutterstock.
Therefore, I have ceased submitting regularly to IStockPhoto. It simply isn’t worth my time. I will not close my account there though and I will submit pictures that sell well on other sites.
However, the future of IStockPhoto right now does not look bright.
Posted 1 year, 4 months ago at 12:53 pm. 1 comment
This is the last post of the Introduction to Microstock Photography series. I hope that this series has been helpful. In this post, I will go through the final set of examples.
This is a panorama of the Jerusalem city walls at night. The taking of the shot has an interesting story itself. I took this with my Sigma 80-400 4-5.6 OS at 400mm and 5.6. When I first submitted the shot, it was rejected due to softness. I was quite surprised at this because I used a tripod, mirror lock, and a remote shutter release. The tripod itself was on sturdy concrete. How could it be soft?
To my surprise, when I examined the shot at 100%, it was soft. The simple fact was, the Sigma was too soft at 400mm and 5.6. As a result of further investigation, I sold this lens because I could no longer depend on it. Eventually I will buy a new telephoto, but right now I rarely need one and I’m waiting for Canon to improve on their 100-400mm lens.
The next step I did was shrinking the size of the picture down. This often works when the shot is a bit out of focus. Shutterstock accepted the picture and it is a good seller. IStockPhoto rejected the shot – and it is an interesting point why.
In this post, we will continue with the examples we started earlier. We will start with what most people want from microstock photography…
This image was rejected for poor lighting. It is a complete isolation that took me some time to accomplish. I took this picture explicitly for stock. The result… I wasted my time. This is an example of why you should only take the pictures you like, rather than take pictures just for stock. If you take only the pictures you want to take, only the extra time spent adding keywords will be wasted if the image is not accepted or does not sell.
Interestingly, some time after this shot was rejected I post processed it a bit more and it was accepted.
In this post I’ll mention a hodgepodge of strategies that I have found useful for microstock photography. Keywords are extremely important. I typically spend more time getting the keywords right than I do post processing the image. Always make sure you get these right – because they’ll strongly affect whether the picture sells.
Often the best selling pictures are those others haven’t thought of. Try to be a bit inventive and try some new things. Some of my best selling images were ones where I thought “let’s try this”.
However, my best selling images by far are those I took on vacation. Sometimes I have even paid for a good portion of the vacation itself. Especially if you go somewhere exotic, always remember to bring your camera with you and think about stock when taking photos. Very often I see a shot that I wouldn’t have thought to take otherwise – but I feel it may be worth a try as stock. Sometimes the sales of the shot shock me. Just remember when shooting outdoors to try to take shots during the late afternoon or early morning. Often this means I have to get up quite early on vacation, but I always find the pictures are worth it – whether or not I sell them as stock.
Keywording is immensely important if you want your images to sell. Once in awhile I receive e-mails from photographers mentioning that their pictures do not sell. When I take a look at their portfolios, I see beautiful pictures with horrible keywords. Put simply, keywording is more important than workflow. Many photographers spend hours editing a single picture only to give it horrible keywords. In this post I’ll attempt to provide some guidance on keywording.
Without proper keywording, buyers will never find your picture. No matter how beautiful it is, buyers will never see it. Therefore, you need to make as full use of the keywording space as possible. Most sites allow you to use up to fifty keywords and I suggest that you reach this limit for many of your photos. This does not mean you should keyword spam. Many sites automatically catch keywords such as “teen” and “sex” and ban you if you are found keyword spamming. Your keywords must also be relevant to the specific picture. Choosing a large number of relevant keywords people would actually use is as much of an art as a science.
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.
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.
This month was quiet on the submissions side – most of the month was spent with either myself or one of my kids sick. Also the weather at the end of the month reduced the amount of time I was able to shoot. Nevertheless, I still had a record month thanks to some extended sales at the beginning. I exceeded the $350 mark for the first time and I am slowly approaching my goal of $1000 a month.
The following are some details I noticed about each site this month.
I had thought due to the fact that February is shorter, I would have a more difficult time getting good numbers. This turned out to be far from the truth, as a I had a new best month ever. My previous goal was to make $250 this month, and I wound up with $321, breaking the $300 barrier for the first time. I have decided, however, to not set my goal in March to $350, but instead to set it at repeating $300. The following is how each microstock site did for me.
