Since the blog is picking up speed, I have now finally found the time to write a report about my first year of experiences with microstock photography.
First I want to write about experiences that I have made in this first year with picture agencies and microstock photography. At the end I will provide you with a summary of the profit I made in my first year.
I started to supply microstock agencies with images in 2009. My brother, an equally enthusiastic hobby-photographer, had pointed out to me that he makes money with his pictures on the internet. Of course I thought that I can do the same and registered with the tax authorities and the following agencies:
Until then I had only taken pictures for the family photo album, but this with a lot of enthusiasm. I had absolutely no experiences with stock and microstock photography!
One of the pictures of flowers mentioned in the text, but this one was accepted
I can vividly remember when I submitted pictures of flowers, more specifically various dahlias – exceptionally good ones, so I thought.
I was convinced that these would become absolute top sellers which would be sold many times. Well, one can dream, right?
Many of these pictures were rejected and until now only 3 of these “fantastic” images were sold, e.g. through Fotolia. These days I wouldn’t upload a single one of them. Picture agencies have large quantities of pictures of flowers with very high quality. So you can save yourself the trouble unless you can offer really good images.
I should have looked at the abundance of pictures of flowers, perhaps then I would have saved myself some frustration. 
On the other hand, flowers are a great temptation for every beginning stock photographer because they
- can’t run away
- can’t move (you can take hundreds of pictures)
- don’t require a model release
Through the microstock picture agencies I learned very quickly that my previous “old” themes were not very marketable (cue pictures of flowers). This manifested itself in the beginning in very high rejection rates. Aside from limited marketability also focus was a main reason for rejection.
Reason for rejection focus
I always thought that my pictures were sharp. The agencies taught me otherwise. Since then, I examine my pictures with 100% zoom to judge their focus. This is only possible this way.
Now, I am able to learn and after an initial adjustment period there were almost no more rejections due to lack of focus.
In general there are quite some differences regarding rejections. Dreamstime, for example, is very picky if you upload too many pictures of one session. Even if the pictures are quite different they are easily rejected with the note: “Too many similar themes”.
This is handled somewhat more pragmatically at other agencies. Only if you really upload several versions of the same or very similar details you can expect rejection.
Reason for rejection chromatic aberration
First a brief explanation what this actually means. I can image that not all of you know what “chromatic aberration” means. In the beginning I didn’t know that either.
Chromatic aberration “CA” refers to an aberration of the objective, more specifically, of the lens. It arises when light with different wavelengths or color is refracted differently.
This results in red/cyan or blue/yellow fringes especially at edges of strong contrast. The most critical agency in this regard is Istockphoto. Here I had to and have to postprocess images with CAs. Note that none of these images was rejected by the other agencies.
My experiences grew slowly
With time I got a better feeling of what is marketable and what is not. I concentrated slowly on the production of pictures of predominantly people. In this case the effort is much higher, because you have to pay the models in general and require model releases, but the sales opportunities increase accordingly.
Now I just do photo shoots almost exclusively with models and an accurate shooting schedule.
The tagging got better
The topic tagging was initially an annoying topic for me. I thought: “great pictures don’t need tags”. Well, I learned a lesson here too, because without good tagging the chances of selling a picture decrease tremendously. The picture of dahlias above, which was one of my first uploads, has only 11 tags.
Nowadays I use at least 50 tags per picture. This takes of course more time, but if you take the time to take a picture, postprocess it and want to sell it, then proper tagging is part of the process.
My ministudio turned into a professional home studio
This is my photo studio
Even before I started with stock photography I already had a small home studio with 2 flashes and 2 softboxes which I however did not use very often. With the start of my microstock occupation I continuously upgraded my studio.
Now I have 4 flashes (Elinchrom) with 600-400 Ws luminous power, as well as corresponding softboxes, beauty dish, tripods, two remote-control releases, and exposure meters at my disposal. My newest acquisition is an Octabox by Elinchrom with 175 cm diameter. This gives very soft and great light. I will describe my studio in more detail in a later post.
Floor plan of my professional home studio
Here a little advertisement on my own behalf. If you live near Rosenheim or Munich, you can rent my studio cheaply. Here some information about renting the studio near Rosenheim.
Knowledge through books
I gained further knowledge aside from experience through various books. Especially one book has helped me with my microstock photography. Robert Kneschke, a professional stock photographer, wrote the book called
Stockfotografie – Edition ProfiFoto: Geld verdienen mit eigenen Fotos
In the upcoming category “reviews” I will review this and other books which I have read and can recommend.
This way I developed myself further in this first year, which also resulted in increased sales.
Profits and milestones in my first year as microstock photographer
Here the hopefully exciting and informative conclusion with my milestones and profits at the various picture agencies.
- Fotolia: Bronze level (100-1000 downloads), total ranking 3,360
- Istockphoto: Bronze Canister Level (250 – 2,499 downloads)
- Shutterstock: Level 2, this means I receive $0.33 USD per regular download instead of $0.25 USD. You achieve this level if your sales range between $500-3,000 USD.
The numbers of my images after one year microstock:
- Fotolia: 964 images
- Shutterstock: 911 images
- Istockphoto: 292 images
- Dreamstime: 904 images
My sales in my first microstock year:
- Fotolia: 883 Euros
- Shutterstock: 998 Euros
- Istockphoto: 523 Euros
- Dreamstime: 263 Euros
My sales with the picture agencies in my first year
If you now want to start your own microstock career, you can sign up at the following links with the agencies: Fotolia, Shutterstock, Istockphoto, Dreamstime .
Please feel free to share your stats with me here. It would be interesting to know how you are faring currently or in your first microstock year.
