I'm a pro: 84 cents' worth.

[squirrel$$$bandit]

A few weeks ago I decided to try signing up with a stock photo agency. Why not? I have a lot of OK photos on my computer that are not particularly artistically important to me, but which are nice and/or interesting, why not try and make a few pennies off of them?

I signed up with Dreamstime, since the internet says they pay the most, among the micro-stock sites. I uploaded about 150 images, and they accepted 34. Many of the 34 were shot in the last couple of weeks, when I decided to make some really boring, "stocky" type pictures against a white background. To be honest, it was pretty fun to do this, though it doesn't exactly compare to shooting Kodachrome in an M2 on a sunny day. But I digress.

Anyway, yesterday I got two downloads. One of them was a picture of a office building in my town:

And the other I made as a joke, an effort to think of the stock-photoiest image possible. I scribbled some corporate inspirational notes on a pad and took a picture. I didn't even bother masking out the not-so-white background, the image was so incredibly stupid. Lo and behold!

So there you go! Of my total lifetime photography outlay of something like fifteen thousand dollars, I have at last earned back 84 cents.

Which I can't actually get until I make another $99.16. But still!!

 

[Bike Tourist]

Congratulations, mabelsound. I've been doing microstock fairly intensely for 3 - 4 years. It's provided me with an average of about $200 a month, but ti requires constant feeding of the beast. One agency had 500,000 images when I started with them but now they have over five million! It's a losing battle but can be fun if you don't have high expectations.

Were all your acceptances from film? I have had very few film images accepted, digital being normal. I recently returned to exclusively film, deciding to let the stock run its course, whatever that may be.

Good luck!

 

[Avotius]

Congrats! I did the dreamstime thing too, after a few hundred accepted images on there I didnt make enough back to pay the electricity used during the upload. I hate those stock sites now though, a new business model for photography that really hurts the photographers. You would be surprised how many magazines and other publications now just download an image off of one of those sites for a dollar rather then pay a photographer to do the work, and why would they after all?

 

[Frank Petronio]

And don't forget that by participating in Micro-Stock you help hasten the demise of your fellow professional photographers. Eliminating the competition - smooth move!

(joke, sort of)

 

[Gumby]

Good for you!

 

[tvagi]

not bad at all!
if you earned some money with a picture,you say shot just for fun,then just imagine what will happen if you try a little harder!😉
if you sell one picture a day,then in about 10 years you can pay back your investment of 1500$!
if you are good and sell 2-3 photos per day then you will pay back in less than 5 years!🙄

 

[Bike Tourist]

We have to face it — the internet and digital has changed every art form forever. I have participated in regular stock for thirty years, back when you shipped a bunch of transparencies off to the agency. During that time the most I ever made on one slide was $400. That only because the magazine Der Spiegel lost my slide and paid damages.

The thing with microstock is that even though one sale doesn't result in much income, multiple sales really do add up. I have measured the performance of my microstocks against the more conventional agencies and, over a year, the microstocks win out.

Yes, it is unfortunate, but that won't change the course of history.

You know what I miss? The old agencies used to send you tear sheets. Now, you never know who's using your images and for what.

 

[Al Kaplan]

A couple of years ago an old friend of mine in the ad business, Jon Sinish, told me that since I already have a fairly popular blog http://thepriceofsilver.blogspot.com I should hook up with Google's Adsense. Their computer crawls through my latest post searching out key words and then picks out ads that seem to match up with the subject. They put a block of three or four ads at the top of the blog. Whenever somebody clicks on an ad and stays there for a certain length of time money gats added to my account. Sometimes it's only one or two cents. A few ads pay in the one and two dollar per click range. It requires no effort on my part, and whenever it gets over $100 they send me a check. My last check was $109.

The blog itself attracts a wide range of people beyond its regular fan base because it covers a wide range of subjects, everything from local politics and history to photography, fishing, old girl friends, and my everyday adventures as a photographer. Also the text is google friendly. Most days there's a photograph and three or four paragraphs about the photo. It won't make me rich but it is free money.

 

[Avotius]

a few years ago Sun Microsystems had a thing where they were looking for stock photos for their companies use. They paid 500 dollars a pop and 2000 for full access to a photo. They did not have to and at that time the micro stock thing was already going on. I really admired them for what they did then, supporting the people who took the photos, and I really admired them more for choosing 5 of my pictures to add to their collection. Now its hard to imagine that kind of thing going on. Also if you watch the NG channel you might see M. Yama****a doing endorsements for Sony, guess why? One little clue is that in a interview with "This week in photography" David Griffith (photo editor over at NG) said something along the lines of "if we cheapen the photos then we cheapen the thing NG pioneered for so many years" well...smoke

 

[squirrel$$$bandit]

Part of the problem, I suppose, is that at one time, you needed specialized knowledge and tools to make a technically excellent boring photo. Now anyone can do that, with very affordable and readily available equipment.

Bike Tourist, most, not all, of the images accepted were digital. I dunno...the fun might wear off pretty quickly, especially if I don't make much money at it. I'm thinking I'll get my online images up to 100, and take a break and see what happens. It's a little like doing a crossword puzzle, figuring out what to upload...or what to shoot in the first place...it isn't completely mindless, and fills up some time, but it isn't very, uh, nourishing to the soul.

I'm the kind of person whose anxiety needs constant soothing, so I like to indulge in tedious projects. If I didn't I would probably be an alcoholic.

 

[squirrel$$$bandit]

One question, for Colin and others who have abandoned microstock. What are the alternatives? Sending a portfolio to Getty or something? How does one make the transition into semiprofessional photography?

 

[Kevin]

Yesterday my wife found a Euro on the pavement. She had to bend down to pick it up.

 

[squirrel$$$bandit]

Well, I have a few albums on iTunes that I actually get money for every once in a while...maybe like 25 bucks every 3 months. I figured this was the photography equivalent of that. And I just uploaded these pics a couple of weeks ago, and come to think of it...who the hell buys stock photography online between Christmas and New Year's? Maybe I'll be earning entire dollars once the fiscal year is in full swing. 😉

 

[russianRF]

Most microstock agencies won't pay out until you read the $100 mark. I'd bet something like half of their submitters never reach that mark -- free photos for the agencies! Even if they do pay out one day, they get to keep the money on their books interest-free.

I've submitted to a couple of microstock agencies, and have been nothing but disappointed. I don't think the agencies are revolutionary so much as evolutionary. They're a stop-gap until the Internet brings tools effecient enough so that phtographers sell to customers directly.

I too regret signing up with them, now that I've got roughly $50 split between dreamstime and istockphoto. If anything, it's just amazing what a market for visual cliches there really is out there...

 

[Bike Tourist]

Most microstock agencies won't pay out until you read the $100 mark. I'd bet something like half of their submitters never reach that mark -- free photos for the agencies! Even if they do pay out one day, they get to keep the money on their books interest-free.

I've submitted to a couple of microstock agencies, and have been nothing but disappointed. I don't think the agencies are revolutionary so much as evolutionary. They're a stop-gap until the Internet brings tools effecient enough so that phtographers sell to customers directly.

I too regret signing up with them, now that I've got roughly $50 split between dreamstime and istockphoto. If anything, it's just amazing what a market for visual cliches there really is out there...

Actually, one of my three pays at the $30 mark, another at $75 and the third, which is more upscale, pays for each sale. You are so right about the boring cliches that are encouraged. They also are horrified not only by grain but by backlighting, side lighting, selective focus and, well, almost everything that would make an image interesting. I don't have a high opinion of most reviewer's qualifications. But, it's their ballgame.

 

[squirrel$$$bandit]

Yeah, they rejected everything I gave 'em with a shallow depth of field. I was actually really surprised at this, as lots of advertising uses that kind of photo now.

 

[sanmich]

That's just me, but I would rather never sell a picture in my life than sell it for 50 cents.

 

[enochRoot]

true, but real design and advertising firms also hire professional photographers and don't mess with this type of stock.

Yeah, they rejected everything I gave 'em with a shallow depth of field. I was actually really surprised at this, as lots of advertising uses that kind of photo now.

 

[kbg32]

Royalty free? Shame on you!

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You know how many images you have to give them to reach your first $100??? It took you 30 to reach $.99.

 

[Al Kaplan]

So far today I've made seventeen cents on my Adsense accout!