istockphoto.com

[sergio]

I stay away from royalty free imagery because that kills the photographer in the long run. You will have no control whatsoever for your work after you sell it. I have a nice business on licensed images which I think sell better if your images are good. Though competition is fierce so is the world's appetite for images. You just have to develop a sense of what to shoot and whom it might appeal. If possible try to develop a personal relationship with a stock library and they will guide you at first in the type of photography they need for their clients. Upload libraries never worked well enough for me.

[Eli]

Digiteyesed. I totally understand where you are coming from. I know many professional photographers are opposed to this because it undercuts their business.  I'm just not sure I can get into a better priced stock agency, especially as I'm still working full-time in my other job.  I was thinking this might be a way to make a little money and see how my photos sell.  Hopefully move on to a better RF or RM agency later when I can switch over to photography full-time.

[Digiteyesed]

There's no point complaining about the existence of these services.

I'm not complaining these services, I just don't intend to submit my photos to one. Keywording and uploading images is a lot of work, and I'm not going to go through the exercise for pennies on the dollar -- I get a better ROI spending that time shooting new images. Others may find cut rate royalty free works for them, but I have no interest in it.

There are enough people out there who will pay decent $$$ for a high-rez image of a barn (or in the case of my latest sale, a tractor)...

http://www.digiteyesed.com/portfolio/image...05/08/00616.php

...that I can take the proceeds from a few sales and purchase myself a new goodie like that Canon 70-200 EF L lens I've been drooling over.

How many thousands of downloads would I need at iStock to pay for an $815 lens? Better to be a poor performer in a high paying market than a high performer in a low paying market, I always say.

[Robert Roaldi]

Sean,

There's no point complaining about the existence of these services

That comment was meant generically and not targeted at anyone in particular. Sorry if you took it that way. And I am glad to hear that you have a market for your work. Aside from benefits to yourself it helps enlarge that market for everyone. BTW, like the tractor.

I am contributing ti Shutterstock under a pen name using shots I take with a Fuji Finepix F10 6mp compact mostly at lunchtime..  Enormous fun!  Its so whacky, it works.  Good luck to them, its the free market at its most free....they are carving a huge slice of the low-end market, so why not join in the revolution?

But for your more considered work, you'd be better off with a more regular agency.  I manage a small one of our own, and I have also begun to contribute RM work to Alamy.

Agree completely. I would say that it would be a mistake to put a finely crafted work of art up on a micro-payment site. Wrong place for that. Especially so if you already have a market and clientele ready to buy your best works for closer to what they are really worth.

In fact, I would go farther. Those sites usually have a minimum acceptable resolution, about 3-4 meg on the ones I have paid attention to, and I think it would be a mistake to supply them with anything much above that minimum. You should get what you pay for in life and their clients don't pay much. But they don't need much either or they'd be looking elsewhere. Steak is better than burger but sometimes you just want a grilled cheese sandwich, to stretch a metaphor.

[Eli]

There's really no forum for questions on selling images so I'll ask it here since I'm a landscape photographer.  Has anyone here had any luck making any money on istockphoto.com or any other royalty free image service?

thanks,
Eli

[Digiteyesed]

Has anyone here had any luck making any money on istockphoto.com or any other royalty free image service?

How does one make money at pennies per download? I'm used to getting paid anywhere from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars for the use of an image. I can't understand why people give their work (and their control over it) away for next to nothing.

[Robert Roaldi]

Every market has its own suppliers. When a publisher is looking for a 2 inch photo of a rural barn for a tourist brochure, they're not going to pay hundreds of dollars for a high rez fine art shot. A 3 to 4 meg low cost photo from an on-line stock agency will do just fine for their purposes. If that lower cost service was not available, they wouldn't turn to the fine art shooter, they'd send out one of their flunkies with a camera.

There's no point complaining about the existence of these services. There's a market for them. Not every picture is a work of art that's worth hundreds of dollars. Not every budding photographer will be able to sell their photos for hundreds of dollars, no matter how good they are.

The low cost on-line low-rez stock agencies have a particular niche and making money with them requires high volume since the payout for downloaded photo is minimal. That's the game and it's not for everyone. Our society has outsourced garment workers, auto workers, IT workers, and now legal and medical work to wherever they can get the cheapest rate. There was never any reason to believe photography was immune.

[Quentin]

Humbug     The micropayments agencies like iStock and Shuterstock are growing at a phenomental rate.  Shutterstock has 12,000 contributing photographers, and while some of the work is nothing special, there is also some very good material there too.

I am contributing ti Shutterstock under a pen name using shots I take with a Fuji Finepix F10 6mp compact mostly at lunchtime..  Enormous fun!  Its so whacky, it works.  Good luck to them, its the free market at its most free....they are carving a huge slice of the low-end market, so why not join in the revolution?

But for your more considered work, you'd be better off with a more regular agency.  I manage a small one of our own, and I have also begun to contribute RM work to Alamy.

Quentin

[Digiteyesed]

Good luck to them, its the free market at its most free....they are carving a huge slice of the low-end market, so why not join in the revolution?

Mainly because I'm lazy and would rather get paid well for doing very little. That, and I'm picky about how my images are used. ;-)

[maxim]

well i get the message that digitaleyes is saying

but where does the market for you kinda of work
and pricing exist ?

how do clients find you
when the stock market are sooo prevalent