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Microstock Photography What is Microstock Photography?
Microstock photography refers to a type of stock photography agency that deals primarily with licensing royalty free images. Photographers are allowed to join these agencies for free and upload their images to sell. Once uploaded, the photos go into a pending list until they are inspected for quality, at which point they will be approved or rejected. After being approved, the images are made available through the website for purchase.
Buyers do not actually purchase the ownership of the images. They simply pay to be allowed to use them for any projects they have. The way they can use the images is limited. Most agencies offer what is called an extended license. This means the buyer can use the images for larger projects, with fewer limitations, but they must pay a higher price. Every time a photographer sells a license to an image, the agency puts that money into the photographers account, minus a commission based on a percentage of the selling price. Once the photographer reaches a balance that meets the agencies required minimum payout they can request a transfer through various methods such as direct deposit, check by mail, PayPal or Moneybrokers. These minimum payouts range anywhere from $25-$100. The more you upload, the more you sell, the faster the payouts start coming.
How much you get paid varies from agency to agency. How much an image sells for is also dependent on which file size the buyer needs, if they purchase an extended license and how popular the image is. Several sites set the price by number of downloads. So, the more that image sells the more people will eventually need to pay for it. Your commission per photo can be as low as $.25 and go up into the hundreds. For many photographers, their ego kicks in, and they think they are better than $.25. They don’t think about the big picture. Say you take a shot, edit it and upload the image and you have a total of maybe 5 minutes invested in that one photo. Then you license the photo 100 times for the bare minimum of $.25. That’s $25 for one photo that took 5 minutes of your time. That equals out to $5 a minute or $300 an hour. $.25 is also the minimum. Most designers need more than what that license offers and tend to purchase higher priced images.
Sometimes a buyer will also contact the photographer directly if they have specific needs. In this case, you negotiate your own prices. Many of these buyers work for very large corporations. The largest job that I myself can claim is $2000 for 3 hours work. A contract that I received after the client purchased a $1 photo from me on one of the stock sites. This is not an often occurrence but it does happen.
The best thing to do is just dive right in and get your feet wet. Agencies will offer you a better commission if you upload exclusively through them. This is a bad idea. You will make way more money by licensing your portfolio through multiple agencies than you will from that extra commission from only one agency. Signup to all of them and start uploading your images. Some agencies will require you to submit a couple images for them to review before they allow you to mass upload. Before you submit samples like this, go through all your photos, looking at them at 100%, and pick out the very best images you have.
I have been selling microstock for 4 years now and since then many agencies have began to pop up. Below I have listed the sites that have made me the most money. I would recommend signing up to these and focusing your attention on them before moving on to any other agencies.
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