Comments on: Cheap stock Photography

By: Marinko

Marinko — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 17:56:08 +0000

Cool. I like microstock photography. If you asking me, my list is;
Shutterstock
iStockphoto
Fotolia
Dreamstime
Featurepics

The las one is very good stock site because you set price, not them, so you can say how much you want for your image. Also they generate frames with images so you can put them on your own site (like I did) and promote yourself.

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 02:27:40 +0000

I find that my portfolio sells 4 times better at ShutterStock than iStock. That is both total revenue and downloads.

By: Roger

Roger — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 02:56:06 +0000

Not managed to find another site that compares to the sales (money wise) that iStock is providing. The second and third best seem to return about half the amount that iStock offers and these are Shutterstock and Dreamstime.

All in all its not worthwhile becoming exclusinve to any stock site unless you don’t have the thime to upload to more than one site. It can be very time consuming.

By: John

John — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 15:05:18 +0000

I just started and am waiting approval at, iStock, Shutterstock, toatllyphoto
I look at it as a challenge and figure I will at least lean something.

By: Paul Sutcliff

Paul Sutcliff — Sun, 16 Apr 2006 15:59:27 +0000

As a contributor to and purchaser from http://www.totallyphotos.com I have noticed a trend towards more sales over the past couple of months on this site (I never contributed to istock as prices were just too low). Wondering if the purchasers are coming from istock?

I guess people who sell on istock should be able to say.

By: emmerse

emmerse — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 06:10:26 +0000

you can check out http://www.123rf.com too.

By: Marcos Peebles

Marcos Peebles — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 15:36:05 +0000

Nice article,
we run a little web/print agency in Brussels, Belgium.
We use istock a LOT (and sxc.hu). And only hope istock won’t be ‘contaminated’ by getty/imagebank philosphy which is: pay hard, see few.
- I understand that my point of view is customer based: I’d rather pay less and see more (my customers ask for that, I guess yours too)
- I also understand photographers have to make a living. There’s a place for every budget, hope they keep that in mind. Otherwise istock will die and others will take the market.
Interesting thing: istock raised their rates as from jan 06, so it’s a mere coincidence Getty bought them, or is it not? Strange things happen…

Cheers

By: Photoshop Tutorials Blog » Blog Archive » IstockPhoto joins Getty Images

Fri, 10 Feb 2006 09:17:47 +0000

[...] Istockphoto announced yesterday that they have reached an agreement with Getty Images and is now part of the Getty Images family. I have mentioned IstockPhoto before in my Cheap Stock Photography post, but here is a small presentation. IstockPhoto was the pioneer in microstock photography, they have launched almost six years ago and created a community of contributing photographers, that, allowed them to sell stock photos in very affordable prices (0.5$ at first). Since then they have grown and they now have a library of almost 625.000 royalty free photos and illustrations. Getty Images on the other hand, is the leader in professional stock photography and the dream of many professional stock photographers. They accept only a handful of contributing photographers each year and only accept the best of the best. [...]

By: mark

mark — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 05:28:58 +0000

thnx for this list. I foud one of those sites very useful.

By: Dimitris

Dimitris — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 05:16:08 +0000

Hi Brad, the reason I am not exclusive with Istockphoto is simple. when I first found about microstock sites about a year ago the upload process at Istockphoto was a pain while other stock photo sites like shutterstock (a subscription based agency) were offering FTP upload and no upload limit so I have build up a portfolio quite easily at those sites in very little time. On the other hand I never really started uploading photos on Istockphoto (although I have been accepted as a contributing photographer) because of the upload process and the high rejection rate. Right now I am using Istockphoto only for purchasing photos and I don’t have a portfolio there.