Can I make a living from MicroStock?

Can i make money from my interest in photography and illustration? That's what i thought when i looked online a couple of years ago and the search results on google that came up often included words like 'microstock' and 'macrostock'.

Seemed like a good idea and pretty simple. Take pictures, upload them and sit back and wait for the buyers to snap them up. hmmm Nothing is ever THAT simple though is it?

But nothing ventured, nothing gained. So in April 2008 i registered with Dreamstime.com and like most got a ton of rejections. Apparently next doors cat (cute that she is on camera) wasn't going to cut the mustard or be a best seller after all. Shock! hmmmm "ok" I thought.. and after a few more rejections i ended up with a 50% approval rating and about 6 photographs approved and for sale.

I did register with a few other agencies but pretty much gave up and concentrated on other matters in life until late summer of 2009 i logged onto Dreamstime to find $10 sitting in my account. Now that's not much and in 'English' it looks even worse at around £6. But, it occurred to me that if 6 images could make £6 (albeit over 18 months or so) then what could 100 make.. or a thousand?!

Time to give it another go and this time try to stick at it and learn as much as possible.

Certainly my first interest is photography before illustration but getting quality photos (and popular ones) on the stock sites is tough (and getting tougher by the year) with so many brilliant and talented photographers out there and having a good computer i decided to try to make it work for me and downloaded the free open source vector graphics program Inkscape:
http://www.inkscape.org/

Picked it up pretty quickly (although room for improvement and still learning what it's capable of) and was surprised to find that a submission of illustrations to ShutterStock (after being completely rejected the previous year when submitting photos of that cat et al) was accepted with 9 out of 10 approved. (One failed due to possible copyright issues as it looked far too much like an Ipod for ShutterStock).

So i was off.. I signed up with other agencies and am slowly making progress. Income is tiny.. i mean really tiny but it is growing ever so slowly and with only around 35 unique images i am still only just beginning but hopefully, over time and with determination, my earnings will start so look more impressive and i can make a living from Microstock. :)

BigStockPhoto submission

26th Jan 2010: Just signed up today with www.bigstockphoto.com and am awaiting the first approvals.

I was only allowed 15 to go for submission (as a new user). The FTP upload was ok and although i read that ShutterStock have bought BigStock i figured i might as well see where it takes me. I'll update this post when i get the results of the submission process...

Earnings Report Jan 2010

First month of the year over already and these are the updates along with earnings chart for the month:

Bigstock accepted further 15 images. Still 100% AR.

PictureNation back up and running after several months offline. I have uploaded all the illustrations i have for approval.

For the third month in a row Shutterstock seems to give me a consistent 10 sales a month with about 20+ images online. Uploaded and had approved further images towards the end of Jan (currently 30 images live and for sale) so fingers crossed Feb will see even further downloads.

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I thought i would post up earnings for Jan 2010 (told you they were small!).

Certainly better than each preceding month and growing slowly.

4 things to note.

1. Income is in £ (not dollars)

2. Portfolio size is based on what images were approved by the last day of the month. So those files could well have been added in the last remaining days of that month and may not always have been responsible for any increase in sales.

3. Although i have portfolios on many sites these listed are the ones where i have achieved at least one sale or more.

4. It is accurate but remember most sites have sales in dollars and as the exchange rate changes from one week to the next who knows what these amounts will look like a week after reporting or, eventually, when a payout is requested.

Editorial on Shutterstock

I came up with an idea for an illustration based on the Olympic logo and thought after checking that it would be ok as an editorial on shutterstock.. I figured it would pass as i had found other images of the logo (which is copyright/tradmark protected) on SS.

Graphic Leftovers stated very quickly after i emailed them that such an image would be ok if it was very abstract (which mine wasn't.) So i just submitted it to SS and DT where i have previously found Olympic non-abstract images.

It was approved on DT but rejected at SS on the grounds that "Trademark--Contains potential trademark or copyright infringement--not editorial."



© Photographer: Devonsun | Agency: Dreamstime.com

I emailed Shutterstock support over a week ago to get clarification on the matter but i haven't had a reply from them yet:

"Need some clarification on a recent rejection reason please. File ID: *******
Understood copyright aspects so submitted for editorial after finding similar
images on SS:
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-44659942.html
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-40801201.html

But "Contains potential trademark or copyright infringement--not editorial." was the refusal reason.
Is there a difference between illustrations and photographs when it comes to
acceptance for editorial?

Thanks. David"

Based on the reply from SS i may make "Olympic Construction" exclusive to DT. In any event i think i will have to contact SS again to get an answer.

Reply from Shutterstock

Well it took them a while to get back to me regarding my question about the Olympic Rings illustration and why it was rejected.
Seems my initial thoughts were correct and well, read for yourself in their reply:

"Hello David,

Yes there is a difference. The Olympic Rings you cited in the images below are actual newsworthy editorial shots of the Olympic Rings taken by submitters.

Your Olympic Ring illustration you submitted would not be considered true editorial as you created them yourself and it is certainly prohibited from being licensed for royalty free commercial use.

For more information you may see the following forum post:
http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=76361"

Actually, after reading (again) that post they mention, it doesn't really give a clear indication of their policy on such matters. All it says is "All Olympic logos and torches are trademarked designs. Unacceptable for commercial use."
It doesn't say "it's ok if you take a photo for editorial but not if you make it up from scratch" which would have been more helpful. But hey ho.. never mind. Dreamstime approved that image and now have it exclusively.

Feb Earnings + Updates

February was a better month again and the earnings total beat January with a total of £7.45 ($11.29).

At long last a sale on Canstock. (Actually 4 sales). That's been a long time coming. A.R there is 80%.

A little slow on Dreamstime during Feb. AR now 71.4%

Another sale on GraphicLeftovers and one for Istock (which i tend to get every once and while. Not bad when you consider only 4 images online with Istock.)

I can't, currently, add Vectors (EPS) files to sites like Fotolia and Istock etc due to the fact that Inkscape can't retain blurs and transparencies when saving as EPS. Hopefully that will be resolved in a later release.

First sale on BigStock netted me approx £0.32p. AR still 100%.

Shutterstock downloads a little less than hoped but still an increase at 12D for the month.

Still no sales yet on, Yaymicro, 3DStudio, Picturenation, Alamy, FeaturePics (although plenty of views there) or any of the others.

So, Feb was certainly a best month ever (BME) and i am really hopeful that with some quality submissions and some creative thinking i will push into double figure earnings for March... watch this space.



By the way. I tidied up the chart. Hope it looks more intersting and visually clearer.

Earnings Report March 2010

Well, March was pretty good and better than Feb. 

I had slightly less downloads on Shutterstock than i would have hoped for considering the larger portfolio size in comparison to the previous month but still had the most ever downloads of 13. 


I was very surprised to get a large sale on Canstock via fotosearch which netted me $19.80 (aprox £13.25) as well as my first sale at Scandinavian Stock Photo which sold for 3 Euros (my commission being 1 Euro/90p/$1.37).


Sadly no sales at Graphic Leftovers this month or any other site not shown below but i am currently uploading (finally) jpeg illustrations to Fotolia and Istock and getting views there as well as working on more images to get my portfolio to that all important 100 file milestone as quickly as possible.

April Earnings Report

Well, as expected, April's total wasn't very impressive. Without uploading any new material for the whole of the month i didn't even come close to the previous months figure.

I have spent the time looking closer at the Photomatix program and playing with the camera settings with a view to creating some decent HDR photos. A work in progress.....