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Microstock photography
Microstock photography is a subset of regular stock photography. The business model of microstock is to sell images at generally lower prices and have a completely automated online sales process. Photos that are sold through microstock agencies such as istock, shutterstock, dreamstime, fotolia etc are generally sold under a royalty free license. This in a non exclusive license which allows repeated use of the image without further royalties due so long as the further uses of the image still fall under the original terms of what is acceptable. For instance even though commercial use is fine with pretty much any royalty free license often you will find that things such as reprint rights, extended distribution etc may require the purchase of a more expensive “extended license”. If ever you are in doubt just read through the license documentation carefully and if still unsure contact the agency you are looking to purchase the image from to get their advice on which license best suits your requirements.
Microstock agencies
The microstock marketplace is a very different place these days from not that many years ago when the term “royalty free images” was barely heard of and istock was just a little start up website used by a niche group of designers. These days the competition is fierce with dozens of online stock agencies vying for their share of the market. Istock are actually the last agency you should consider these days for either purchasing or submitting as almost ALL other agencies offer similar quality at lower prices and pay higher commissions to their photographers. Agencies like Shutterstock, Dreamstime, Fotolia, 123rf, Bigstock, Depositphotos etc have much of the very same work you’ll find at istock (and a lot of work that you won’t) but are actually worthy of your money and your photos. Across in the sidebar I’ve provided a couple links to my folio on some recommended agencies.
But what’s wrong with Istock?
Istock ended up evolving into the big bully in the microstock playground. They did this by setting industry low pay rates to submitters along with industry high prices and overall poor customer support, and the clunkiest/most annoying submission interface in the business. These days they’ve been eaten up by Getty and prices have shot up further along with commission rates dropping even further. While other agencies pay up to 50% to their non-exclusives the base commission rate for non-exclusive submitters at istock is now only 16%!! Getty is able to get away with this by purchasing up the competition and closing it down – they are creating as much of a monopoly as they can and that only means even worse things for submitters and customers alike.
What if I want to sell my work as microstock?
Microstock forms a huge part of my income and to be honest I’d be fairly lost without it. I love the fact that I can shoot what and when I want and so long as it’s decent work I can throw it at the agencies and earn some dollars from it. Total freedom – awesome. As such I can certainly recommend it as a way to make a living. However the ins and outs of getting into stock photography is probably an article in and of itself. I do have one such set of three articles that I wrote a few years ago, though they are out of date in some ways the general information holds true so feel free to check them out here: So you wanna make money from your photos. Though I do plan on very soon creating a revised version of those articles with everything updated to 2012 so stay tuned, perhaps even subscribe to my RSS.
Microstock in the blog:
Posted by Ben Heys on April 3, 2008 with
Quick links to microstock agencies: Shutterstock Stock Xpert Bigstock Dreamstime 123 RF Fotolia Istock How to kill noise without a ninja Ok so I get occasional emails from other microstock shooters (or those looking to get into it) frustrated about the whole ‘noise’ thing. So I figured I’d put together a bit of a piece on how I personally go about combating it. This piece wont focus on any of the third party plugins, like noise ninja or neat image as I don’t personally use them. All tools here can be found straight in photoshop. Before we enter... Read More ››
Posted by Ben Heys on August 19, 2007 with
Tips to succeed Here we come to the tips and techniques part of the article. Now bear in mind I’ve only been submitting to stock agencies for about 6 months and even that time could be best described as part time. So I’m no expert, in fact I could well be talking through my ass. Nevertheless I have put some time into it and discovered a few things that just may make your life a little easier if you are planning on going down this path: #1 Keyword, title and describe your shots in PS Please don’t tell me... Read More ››
Posted by Ben Heys on August 10, 2007 with
Microstock: The players Shutterstock Now if you’ve taken even a cursory glance at the table on the previous page it should be immediately evident that if there is one stock site you want to be on – this is it. There isn’t too much to complain about with shutterstock, sure they are a little more discerning with their content than the other sites (bar Istock & SXP) but when you have the industry presence they obviously do, you can afford to be. In fact it could well be part of the reason why they do so well –... Read More ››
Posted by Ben Heys on August 9, 2007 with
Quick links for photographers: Shutterstock Dreamstime Fotolia 123 RF Bigstock Istock My Introduction to MicroStock Photography A few months back, around the beginning of the year (2007) I decided to do a little experiment and post some shots up on a couple microstock sites. I didn’t expect much out of it as my work was mostly fashion and art nudes, not drops of water, mobile phones or business people shaking hands. Nevertheless my shots started to sell better than I’d expected and so I delved a little deeper into this experiment. To be fair I really haven’t put... Read More ››
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