My domain name is alive again

After I don't remember how long, my domain startstock.com was not working, and the blog was accessible only via Blogger. I finally got a chance to sort it out by digging into my registrar's settings and Blogger control panel. Woo hoo! Startstock.com is on, baby! I have no idea what happened that broke it, but things are good again.

Stock photo sites - to pay or not to pay

I have not been posting for a long time, that's bad. So I am changing that right now. Today I will share my thoughts about the two breeds of stock photo sites.

Online stock photography sites can be split in two categories:

1. Sites not requiring you to pay them: usually you are not explicitly limited by the number of photos you can submit or the space they take, however rigorous quality checks are in place. Reviews may take a long time and majority of your images may not be accepted. Once the images do get accepted, you wait to get sales. After that, when a certain payment threshold is reached (common figure is $100), you get paid. The trick is that when you get your $100, the stock house makes about 5 times as much. Their commission ratios vary, but the level of about 25% is the norm. The more you sell and higher up the status ladder you clime, the better is your rate of comissions. If you go exclusive, it gets a bit better on the percentage, but it doesn't take a genius to understand that exclusivity drastically limits your chances you may have by offering the same images on other sites.

Pros: free to join, no space limits
Cons: low payout rates, harsh submission rules

Bottom line: you don't pay to get started, but once you go through rejections and do sell, you get very little money in return.


2. Sites requiring you to pay for their services: to get started you pay a monthly or annual subscription that entitles you to a certain storage space for your image files. What you get in return is flexibility in terms of what you can upload, which is either practically anything or something very easy to comply with (for example no questionable images, etc). You can expect to be paid when the site sells your images, and the payment threshold is usually between $50 and $100. Unlike the "free" sites, at least half of what you sell the images for is yours to keep, with rates as high as 85% going in your pocket. This breed of services doesn't usually offer or require exclusivity and provides you with better support, and often allows certain customization of "your" section of the site.

Pros: high payout rates, easy image acceptance
Cons: subscription fees, space is limited (though usually limits are generous)

Bottom line: if you're good, you will get more money since your sales will more than cover subscription fees. If you suck... well, you are wasting your subscription money. A "free" site won't take you anyway, so at least you tried.

In the next post, I will analyze some of the stock photo sites I have had experience with (or heard about from others).

Handling Rejection

At this point you should be submitting your images to all the sites I discussed and you probably already know that they will deny some (some would be a good thing) of your images.

Let me explain something to you about image rejection.

First, you have to keep in mind that people who review our images are photographers/website users just like us! They were recruited by the stock website because their own images are probably pretty good, which supposedly makes them "experts" in the field. Plus they must have plenty of free time on their hands, since image reviewing doesn't pay a whole lot, so they must be doing it mostly for fun. They just like judging other photographers' images.

This is where all the rejection madness comes in. Just think about it, there's a factor of competition involved - maybe if the reviewer has a similar image to yours, why would he/she approve yours? He/she would rather monopolize on their own image. Then again he/she might simply be in a bad mood and automatically find flaws in all images on that day, and you know the flaws can be found practically on any image if flaw is what you are looking for.

Take my advice, don't read much into the rejection reasons they provide. In general, reviewer looks for these factors in order of importance:

1. Image marketability - Can this image be used for commercial purpose?
2. Sharpness - Is the main subject in focus at 100% zoom?

That's it! Those are the two main requirements. The other stuff is minor. For instance if they like the image but find that you used irrelevant keywords, it'll get rejected, but you can just resubmit and use relevant keywords.

Another important factor to keep in mind is that there are many many reviewers involved, so chances are if image gets rejected once, it will not go to the same reviewer the second time you submit it. Yeah this sounds a little wrong, but hey you are in this to sell photos right? So its OK to be a little pushy!

Now go and upload!

Dreamstime rejects my pictures for noise?

OK I know it's a pointless rant and I am just venting, but I wanted to record my endeavors along the way, and this is one of them. Apparently, the two most recent images I sent to Dreamstime are rejected because:

The image contains a large amount of noise artifacts. Please fix this issue using noise-removal software and resubmit. You can also check this thread: http://www.dreamstime.com/thread_109

I can accept rejections quite well, when they make at least some sense. Lack of composition, too many subjects of a kind in the database, or what not, I am fine with that. Even noise, when there is some noise. But these two images went through one of the best noise removal Photoshop plug-ins - Imagenomic Noiseware Pro, and they're literally noise-free.

Here is one of the images (another one is quite similar as far subject and noise goes) and a few 100% crops:

Are they kidding or they just clicked the wrong button? I hope they were tired and clicked the wrong button... Fine, I will move on :) And that's another reason I like ShutterPoint - no such nonsense there...

Stock business and stock prices

It appears that traditional stock photography industry is suffering financial crisis. As many photographers and industry observers have predicted, microstock photography business has, in fact, eaten into the profits of stock image giants.




The stock performance chart above compares Jupiter Media, Getty Images, and S&P 500 index for approximately three years back. Even though both Jupiter and Getty own microstock businesses as well, we can clearly see the signs of trouble. I'd guess that their traditional business would probably do even worse if these companies did not diversify by acquiring some of the microstock internet properties.

Choosing the right microstock website

If you had the chance to look at the various microstock websites, you might have began to form preferences. Most of them look nice and clean - a good environment to sell your images.

However, the important factor here is sales. In truth, uploading images to all the sites out there is a tedious process because it involves keywording, categorization, waiting for approval, etc. I believe that there is a certain point where spending the time for uploading just doesn't make sense if insignificant returns are expected. The best thing is to only upload to sites that sell well.

From my research, the top selling sites are Istockphoto and Shutterstock. Dreamstime is right behind them in sales. While these three sell common stock images well, ShutterPoint is good for selling images that are "different."

Therefore, my top picks for microstock sites are:
www.shutterstock.com
www.shutterpoint.com
www.dreamstime.com
www.istockphoto.com

Let me explain this further. In the above list of four sites, three have free membership and one (Shutterpoint) charges a membership fee for joining. The three free sites (Shutterstock, Dreamstime, Istockphoto) are the top selling sites right now. Shutterpoint.com's plans start from $12 for 6 months, BUT - the BUT is bold for a reason - they do not reject images, like the three other sites. Because you will be paying a membership fee, they do not reject your images. On the other hand, the free sites have an approval process and your images must meet certain standards to be excepted. Be assured that at least some of your images will be rejected by the free microstock sites, Istockphoto being the most restrictive in approvals.

You may still be wandering why I picked a paid site even if it's not considered a top-selling site. Well, the reasoning is that Shutterpoint is good for selling images that get rejected by other sites. These images are usually not cookie-cutter. They may be imperfect in terms of lighting or composition, but believe it or not, they have value to some people. These image buyers look around on all the top-selling sites and do not find what they need because many images there are standard-looking. They want something specific and often find it on Shutterpoint. I call my Shutterpoint collection "the dark collection" or "rejected images."

So there you have it. There are four sites you should be submitting to if you want to make money.

So you want to sell your photos?

Join the club! Many of us newbie photographers bought our digital SLR cameras, took some pictures and said "WOW....I can capture pretty nice shots...maybe they are worth something..."

Well, I am currently exploring different websites that accept images for sale and I am going to save you some time and get right to the point, as I did some of the research already.

First, you will need to decide on pricing of your images. Do you think they are worth a lot? If you are a realist like me, you'll soon understand that it is much simpler to get into the microstock photography market rather than the traditional stock photo industry. Microstock-type websites accept image uploads and offer a minimal payout for each image. The idea here is that you will make more money selling a cheap image many times rather than selling a more pricey image once (if at all).

For now lets stick with microstock websites. We can progress into the macrostock image industry as we gain more experience.

Some of the popular microstock websites are:

www.istockphoto.com
www.shutterstock.com
www.shutterpoint.com
www.dreamstime.com
www.123rf.com
www.fotolia.com
www.bigstockphoto.com

Have a quick look at these sites. I will explain the details and differences between these sites in future posts.