My latest images for sale at Shutterstock:

Wednesday 13 October 2010

Exclusivity at iStockphoto comes to an end

My exclusive notice period at iStockphoto expired yesterday, but my crown and image pricing didn't change until this afternoon. It feels good. I will always be grateful to iStock for the start and training they have given me, but I am ready to move on now. I don't believe that the company I joined in 2008 is the same company that exists today, which has made this decision a lot easier.

With that in mind I submitted my application to three agencies last night: Shutterstock, Veer and Dreamstime. The first two have an application process which requires ten images to be submitted for review before you can begin to contribute. Shutterstock require seven out of the ten images to be accepted in order for the application to go through. I am not sure what the Veer qualifications are, but I can say that I have passed both company's assessments already! Shutterstock took just four hours to respond that I had been accepted, while Veer reached the same conclusion some time during the night. I thought it would take several days to be processed, so I was very surprised at how quickly it all went through. On Shutterstock, seven of my initial ten images were accepted and on Veer the number accepted was nine. I was very pleased that in both cases the rejections were for deemed copyright issues, rather than technical reasons. Dreamstime take four to five days to review images but don't require a contributor assessment beforehand.

When I woke up and found my Shutterstock acceptance email I went straight to the site and was very pleased to see that I had a sale already. Only 25c in the pot, but it feels great to have made a sale from only seven images available.

9 comments:

  1. Bridget, unless they've changed things since I applied, Shutterstock requires SEVEN of 10 to be accepted, not 3 of 10. You are the first person I know of to have been accepted on their initial application. Perhaps things have changed, but just as likely you sent them a very impressive set of 10. Congratulations!

    Ken

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  2. Thanks Ken, I have to admit to smugly remembering your dire prediction when I was accepted!

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  3. Hello Bridget. I just got your message at iStock.
    I haven't read all of your posts but I thought I'd give you my opinion on Exclusivity. I'm a member of 12 different stock sites. I have two accounts at a site called 3D Studio. One for Exclusivity and the other for non-exclusive images. Most other sites won't allow you to have two accounts like that but I found this very useful at 3D Studio so I took advantage of it. Basically I submit all of my images to all the stock sites. If I get some of them rejected by all those site, say due to minimal market value or some other reason, I send those to the exclusive account at 3D Studio. That way they have a home somewhere and could still make me some money. I only retire an image if nobody wants it. So far 3D Studio has accepted all the images I have sent them, including the rejects from other stock sites. I haven't made any sales there yet but I have gotten over 35000 views.

    Just something to think about.

    Steve

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  4. Hi Steve - yeah, I did look at 3D Studio and sent them one or two images, but was appalled to discover that they don't actually inspect images at all. You can just upload any old thing and it becomes live on the site for sale immediately. As much as I may gripe about the inspection process I do believe it is entirely necessary to have some sort of quality control to protect our customers. So Im afraid I wont be sending them any more and may remove the six or so files I have there,
    Cheers,
    Bridget

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  5. ps - I think I will be on 12 sites by the time I have finished applying/uploading too.

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  6. Hello Bridget.

    3D Studio does have an inspection process. It is just more liberal than the others. A few of my images had to be labeled for editorial instead of commercial because I did not have model releases. Those same images would have been rejected outright on the other sites. Like I mentioned, I send images to 3D Studio that the other sites don't want. The exclusive 3D Studio account also gets 75% commission compared to 30% to 50% for most of the other sites. I'd rather have a chance to sell my rejects somewhere than nowhere.

    Just my opinion.

    Steve

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  7. Hi Steve - my images were definately not inspected at all - they were available for sale as soon as I had hit the 'submit' button and even cached into their searches right away. You say you haven't made any sales and to be honest I am not surprised - they are a 3D agency, not a stock agency and a lot of their photographic images are quite poor quality. The whole point of submitting there would be to make some money so I'm sorry, you haven't convinced me!

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  8. Hello Bridget. Don't worry I'm not trying to convicne you, just making a suggestion. I haven't made any sales for my Exclusive Account yet, but I did make a sale on my non-exclusive account with them. The image sold for $12 and I got $8.40 of it. And I already know that the images appear right away in their searches. But if they do have some kind of issue with it they will let you know usually within a couple of days.

    I'm not advocating that you choose to put your best images with them, but since their quality standards are lower than sites like iStock and Fotolia they would make a good place to send those images that the high quality stock sites don't want.

    When I first got into stock photography back in 2006 my rejection rate was over 60% because I was still learning. But I did not want to delete those old images because I felt there was a market somewhere for them. When I found 3D Studio about 6 months ago and saw that they did not have the same quality standards as the other higher end stock sites I figured I had nothing to lose by sending them my old rejects. *LOL*

    Even if they don't sell in any great number at least they're on display somewhere. ;-)

    Steve

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  9. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that unlike iStock and many other stock sites 3D Studio sends out payments each month regardless of the amount in your account. That $8.40 I made from my first sale with them was paid through PayPal at the end of the month like they said it would.

    Steve

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