Thankyou very much for your rewiews, they are honest and detailed. I’m interested in start selling my pic online, i have a nice portafolio about 1000 photographs that I want to sell, but before doing it so I want to make sure that is going to be worth it. Thou looking a your logistics about how many hours one has to put on shooting, post-processing, and keywording to make only $ 0.25 or $ 0.30 cents and hope to get thousands on downloads and feel stress out because you have to keep it up posting new images honestly, this kind of aproach might not work, I definetly appreciate my work, the time I spend shooting and editing, for this reason I might consider PhotoSehlter collection thanks to your reviews. The fact of the matter is that I desperatly need money to support my family.

So long,

Jeidy

I just read your blogs–it looks like you quit blogging about your experiences with microstock companies in December 2008. As a photography nut, I have not kept pace with new ideas, but I just started reading about microstock ideas in a photography magazine, and that’s how I stumbled onto your blog.

Thank you for sharing your experiences and microstock income. After reading your blog, I know I won’t be able to quit my day job; however, it gives me incentive to try out a few of these sites.

You shoot magnificent photos and I wish you continued success! Thanks again for the time you devoted to sharing info on your blog.

Cheers!

Great post and thanks for sharing you experiences. I’d love to get your feedback on an earnings tracking service we have been working on. Please drop me a line if you get a chance.

Sincerely,

Rahul

I’m mostly in this for the fun of it, though. After a while, I found that I was less comfortable with their business model than with those of other sites. An additional, important factor (to their low royalties) is that images get buried very quickly underneath the mountain of new uploads. On some other sites, you have a chance to “build the reputation” of an image. It seems to me that iStockphoto have a healthier search algorithm, with a more or less sensible weighting between freshness and popularity.

At Shutterstock, you have to keep uploading at a tremendous pace to keep your head above the water. I could never do that; there simply isn’t time. I don’t want to do it either, I want the work I put in each image to have a bit more staying power than it has at Shutterstock.

By the way, Lee, thanks for sharing your info with the rest of us on your excellent site!

All the best, Erik

I find it interesting that you find the 25 cent royalty at Shutterstock insulting while you’re happy with iStockphoto who pay 19 cents for blog resolution sales. See if this perspective provides any new openings:

- you’re loaning your portfolio to the agency for a month, and at the end of the month the more money they send back, the better they did their job -

Commission-per-sale is low across all microstock agencies. Your average at Fotolia was just 73 cents. Is that such a low way from 25 cents?

Plus, stick with Shutterstock for five months (at your stated earning rate) and your commission will rise to 33 cents.

Many photographers get attached to what they see they’re giving away for the money, and that’s fine. We each deal with these numbers in our own way. Perhaps consider Alamy as an alternative to microstock. A single sale each month there would eclipse your entire current monthly microstock earnings.

Either way, good luck, and keep having fun.

-Lee

For me it’s a no-brainer; I don’t have enough downloads on iStock to go exclusive yet, and I doubt very much that I will do so when I get the chance. With an acceptance rate of ~60 %, what would I do with the rest of my images? My guess is that the exclusive lot throw away a lot of potential income by signing up. On the other hand, they seem to be a tight bunch, spending a lot of time at the iStock forum. Maybe it’s more a social thing than anything else. I don’t have time for that. I like what Dreamstime do; they allow you to go exclusive on an image by image basis. Good luck!

Erik