About Stock Photography - Part 1: Biggest Earners

Since the first time I picked up a digital camera in 2005, until now, I have signed up to quite many websites selling stock photos. I will try to list them here and write a few words about each of them from my experience.

• Shutterstock: it is by far the best earning website for myself. I have now over 3300 images there. Over the past couple of years sales have dropped significantly though. In 2008 I was making from $150 to $250 a month, but right after the first waves of the now famous economic crisis hit, the sales dropped exponentially. Nowadays it is getting more and more difficult to get in as a contributor and they seem to like studio type photos the most on this website. The payout per download varies from 0,25c to $28 and there is no exclusivity program. My most downloaded image:

• Dreamstime: amongst my top earners, Dreamstime is not that difficult site to get in, but the number of downloads I get there is much smaller than on Shutterstock. The payouts vary from 0,22c to around $20. There is an exclusivity program here, but I have not tried it (I think that if you have a very high number of images, submitting to more than one agency is the way to go and it would be too much work to keep track of what is exclusive where). They take a bit longer time to deliver your money (around 2 weeks usually), but you will get it. Clients seem to prefer nature and travel type pictures here. My most popular image:

• Fotolia: in close competition with Dreamstime when it comes to earnings for me, Fotolia has a good interface for submitting, and is reasonably easy to join. Reviewers seem to be moderately harsh and they seem to not have a certain preference for either studio or nature/travel type images. The payouts range from 0,25c to around $15. My most popular image:

• Istockphoto: it is by far the stock agency with the harshest reviewing system. I have to say that their uploading interface seems to be designed only to make contributors' lives as difficult as possible. For each keyword you have, you have to go through a long list and pick what you actually meant. You can only upload a certain number of images per week. I guess they try to keep their numbers under control like this. From the point of view of a purchaser, it is a very good website, although you can have surprises with the images costs. Exclusive images tend to be very expensive. As a contributor, I don't know much about their exclusivity program, so if anyone reading this does, please share the information :) As for earnings, they range from as low as 0,13c to a few $ per image. It does take them a few weeks to send you the payouts, but I have had no problems so far. My most popular image:

One of the most useful tools is the free online keywording tool on Yuri Arcurs' website. Yuri Arcurs is probably the most famous stock photographer, the one "who made it big". His images are top sellers and he owns a big studio in Denmark. For me personally, stock photography was very useful to improve the quality of my photos. Thanks to the harsh reviewers on various websites, I have learned a lot over the years.

I currently have close to 20.000 photos on all the websites combined. If you want to learn more about these websites and opportunities, click my links or read further on the Microstock group website.