Microstock Diaries

We often hear photographers complain that the only people making any money in the stock photography business are the agencies. Or variations of the theme. Personally, I don’t understand the complaint. To me it makes total sense that agencies are more profitable than photographers...

iStockphoto have announced the Premiere Collection they started building in December will be launched today branded as the Vetta Collection. They also announced intentions to start serving localized search results based on geographically aware user behavior data that they’re already collecting...

Prominent German photographer Robert Kneschke wrote a comprehensive news update on Polylooks on his blog. He generously agreed to translate it into English for me to publish here. The dice are rolling. There’s a new player in the microstock game...

Newly crowned Microstock Celebrity Jack Hollingsworth has started promoting his upcoming stock photography cruise from Rome to Venice. I asked him if he could show us some of the shots he’s made on these cruises and give us a taste of the instruction he gives participants in a guest post...

Fotolia have recruited their second ex-iStockphoto executive in as many months after having just appointed Garth Johnson as SVP of North America. Last month they announced iStockphoto co-founder Patrick Lor as Fotolia President of North America...

This month we add Jack Hollingsworth’s microstock earnings to the report, providing an entirely different perspective. Jack has roughly 4,000 very simple images from a recent studio session which were originally intended for another purpose...

The microstock market continues to grow and evolve and increasingly rapid rates. The month of May showed lots of strategic maneuvering among the top players, all seeking to boost their market share. Microstock News Getty Images made another step in absorbing the Jupiterimages properties...

Shutterstock have announced that they’ll be withholding 30% tax for non-US contributors in order to comply with US tax laws...

PhotoXpress is a new free photo website launched by Fotolia earlier this month (May 21). It offers 350,000 images sourced from the Fotolia Free Section with thousands more added daily. Depending on their level of registration, members can download between 1 and 10 photos per day...

In the traditional stock photography market, Jack Hollingsworth needs no introduction. Those familiar with him and his career will be surprised to see him appear here labelled as a ‘microstock’ celebrity. But there’s a good explanation. Jack is entering the microstock market...

This is a guest post by elite stock photographer John Lund. Who better to learn about generating stock photo ideas than the master of conceptual stock? We all know that old phrase “Practice makes perfect”. In the case of ideas for stock photography it certainly holds true...

It has been seven months with effectively zero uploads to my microstock accounts. I expected my earnings would have dropped significantly after such neglect. But no, some agencies continue sending me more and more earnings each month...

In relation to the massive news of the last few months, April was relatively calm. That’s not to say that there weren’t any interesting developments...

Mashup developer, Bob Davies, creator of the picNiche.com keyword tool, has created two microstock FireFox toolbars. One for microstock contributors and the other for microstock buyers. Useful Tools The contributor toolbar is designed to make life easier for microstockers...

As I mentioned on Monday, microstock is up! I set a new all-time earnings record this month. Interestingly, this has happened after almost four months without contributing (m)any new photos. Microstock is known to require constant uploading in order to raise or even maintain earnings rates...

Big news continues to change the microstock landscape each month this year and March was no exception. Microstock News The biggest news of the month was the resignation of Bruce Livingstone as CEO of iStockphoto and SVP of Getty Images. The official announcement and forum thread has the details...

A common question in recent times has been whether microstock will suffer or thrive as a result of the slowing global economy. Within the context of seasonal trends (March is always a great month for microstock) the question has been answered, at least for now...

Microstock agencies provide real-time data on the performance of your portfolio. This information enables you to analyze what works so you can improve your contributions and repeat your successes. But collecting and combining the data from multiple agencies is a lot of work. Until now...

Crazy results this month! Very high earnings (for me) after yet another month of zero new files added to my microstock portfolios. Dreamstime responded as expected with earnings dropping in line with my lower contributions...

The microstock market was abuzz in February. Look at all this news! I said last month that the microstock market was going to look very different by December, but I’m revising that to March! Microstock News iStockphoto launched iStockaudio in beta with 10,000 files...

UGCX was amazing! The photography track was full of amazing speakers from all parts of the industry who each presented fascinating and useful information. I won’t go into the detail of each session, but here’s a sample of what was said, announced and presented...

January’s results put 2009 off to a great start for me, despite many fellow microstockers reporting less-than-pleasing results. The Relevance of Earnings Reports...

2009 is going to be BIG! There are lots of projects brewing and one gets the feeling that microstock is going to look very different by December. New ideas, new opportunities and new challenges abound...

Now that it’s possible to sell stock photos at a wide variety of prices, photographers are taking advantage of the opportunities in a wide variety of ways...

Three months ago I wrote about UGCX, the User Generated Content Conference & Expo. I mentioned that there was a long list of committed speakers who I couldn’t name until they had been confirmed. Well, they’ve now confirmed and I can tell you who they are! So who’s going to UGCX...

One of the reasons many traditional stock photo buyers don’t buy microstock is risk. Microstock agencies offer no guarantee that the images they sell are legally sound, but traditional agencies do. Vivozoom aims to change that by creating an agency with microstock pricing AND guaranteed images...

After looking back on 2008, let’s take a look at some of the trends which are likely to be frequent conversation topics in 2009 within the microstock market...