My latest images for sale at Shutterstock:

Tuesday, 25 January 2011

A plan for smaller agencies

I am now getting up to the 100 images accepted mark on most agencies (apart from Shutterstock - of course). I think these are 100 fairly saleable images so I would be expecting to see reasonably regular sales. It is clear that some agencies can achieve this and others can't. I have come up with a new benchmark with which to measure agencies to decide if I should carry on uploading there:

I will stop uploading to any agency that I haven't been able to take a payout from after one year. I will stop uploading sooner to any agency that is overly picky about which of my images it accepts and/or makes the uploading task so arduous that it stops being worthwhile.

So far the following don't look like they will make the grade:

Crestock
123RF

Bigstock and Deposit are definately on notice.
StockFresh I will cut a lot of slack to give them time to get up and running properly.
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6 comments:

  1. Unknown26 January 2011 at 23:36

    Interesting. I'm not contributing to Crestock or Cutcaster (and have no intentions to do so), nor am I with Deposit. I am on the others you've mentioned, and so far no sales, but no real problems getting uploads accepted. Particularly Stockfresh. They've taken everything I've submitted and rejected nothing. They've been the most accepting, thus far. And Alamy is looking that way too, so far.

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  2. Luis Santos27 January 2011 at 23:17

    Hi, thanks for sharing your inside experience! I have been doing it from my beginning also but never were exclusive, nice to meet you and have a nice day

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  3. Pep20 February 2011 at 17:41

    Just came across your blog. I salute you for your action. I have never been exclusive with any of the microstock agencies but started out with Shutterstock and expanded from there. One of my best agencies in the past few years has been Fotolia. When I first started with them I was getting nearly 40 cents on the dollar. Following iStockphoto's lede, this year that has been reduced to 25 cents on the dollar. It is sad how greedy these companies are.

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  4. Anonymous8 March 2011 at 08:00

    What's happening in Indie land? Enquiring minds need to know! Update soon?

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  5. Anonymous12 March 2011 at 07:09

    For the type of work I do, aside from Shutterstock and Dreamstime, the only one making any good numbers for me is graphicleftovers.com. I dropped, yaymicro, 123rf. fotolia - all a waste of time for me, some with uploading that is just downright stupid.

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  6. Anonymous19 August 2011 at 02:30

    How are things going, Bridget?

    Beano5

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