So you've decided to start selling your photos or illustrations as microstock. But with all the different microstock agencies out there, which one do you pick? In this article, I will explain which agencies perform the best when it comes to selling your images.
Istockphoto
Istockphoto is the one that started it all. This microstock agency has been around since the year 2000, and it has the most clients. Thus, your chances of successfully selling your images on iStockphoto are very good. Istockphoto is also one of the more stricter of the microstock agencies when it comes to the quality of your imagery. This is partly due to the fact that Getty Images owns iStockphoto now.
For those of you who don't know, Getty Images is a company that sells high quality photos for large sums of money. But When Getty Images acquired iStockphoto years ago, the quality of the pictures was naturally raised. However, if your images are good then you can expect to make quite a bit of money with this agency. The amount of money you make per image is between a quarter and twenty five dollars.
Shutterstock
While Shutterstock may not have as many clients as iStockphoto, it is definitely one of the better sellers. However, Shutterstock is slightly different than most microstock agencies. Shutterstock uses a subscription plan to sell images. Basically, you're payed twenty five to thirty cents for each image that is downloaded. And like all of the other agencies, each one of your images can sell over and over again.
This adds up over time. At Shutterstock your newest images will do extremely well for a short period of time, and then people will move on. So you have to keep uploading every week or so in order to keep generating a large amount of revenue.
Dreamstime
Dreamstime doesn't sell as many photos as iStockphoto or Shutterstock, but they are the third best in the industry thus far. Unlike Shutterstock you don't have to continuously upload images to Dreamstime in order to make money. And it's unlikely that you'll earn very much at first.
You'll probably have to have around five hundred to a thousand images at Dreamstime before you make a decent amount of money. And you'll be paid between twenty five cents to a few dollars for each image that is sold.
And when I say decent amount of money, I mean around a hundred or so dollars a month with five hundred or more images. While that's not much money, just remember that it's passive income. In other words, you will keep making that money(more or less) each month for as long as Dreamstime is in business.
And if you have five thousand photos online with Dreamstime, you could make several hundred or even a thousand dollars per month. It's just a matter of quality and quantity.
As you can see, microstock agencies are an interesting way to sell your images. You may not make much money at first, but if you keep at it then you'll see better results with time.
