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Stock photography has been around for decades while microstock is a more recent invention. Micorstock differs from regular stock photography agencies on two main points: quality and price.
QUALITY
This is not to say that the quality is poor on microstock sites. Of course, some sights are better than others, but every image submitted to a microstock agency has to be approved or disapproved by a human being. And they’re getting more and more fussy about what they approve. As a buyer of microstock, you may have full confidence that you are getting a technically sound and compositionally fine image.
PRICE
The price difference between stock and microstock is astounding. Getty Images, the stock photography giant, can fetch several thousand dollars for an image, albeit the average price of a royalty free image is between $100 and $500. The average price at microstock agencies for royalty free images are $1 to $20.
SUBJECT MATTER
As a seller of microstock images, you must first ask yourself the question, does this image have commercial, editorial, or illustrative appeal? Is it conceptual? Does it tell or story? Could a company use it to illustrate a point? If you answer yes to any of these types of questions, your image will sell much, much more than say, a picture of a sunset. (oh, don’t even get me started on sunsets.)
As you are looking through your existing image library, ask your self these questions. While you don’t necessarily need to discard images of nature and, heaven forbid, sunsets, images like these must be fantastic and non-cliche for them to even be accepted into the agency’s library because, as you can image, it’s pretty saturated with them.
SUBMITTING THE IMAGES
Before you start submitting your images to the site, be sure you follow these guidelines:
Read the site’s submission guidelines. There are no universal standard or guidelines. Be sure you understand what their requirements are.
Look at your photo with an editing eye and objectively decide if it is a great and unique image. The process of uploading images is rather time consuming. Save yourself the time and trouble of submitting a mediocre image.
The image should be in .jpg format, saved with minimal compression.
Do not resize the image. Images must be in their original resolution.
The image cannot have any logos or trademarks of any kind anywhere in the image. Things such as the polo horse on shirts, a nike swish on sneakers, the VW logo on the car. All of these things must be photoshoped out.
If the image has any identifiable person in, your must provide a model release for each person, even if that person is yourself.
The same goes for property. You must obtain a property release for personal property such as cars, pets, vehicles, buildings and homes (shooting both exteriors and interiors), swimming pools, etc. The stock site you are uploading to will have examples of both model and property releases you can download.
Add appropriate keywords. Potential buyers find your images via keywords. It’s very important that you add a thorough and accurate list of keywords to every image. Your image will be in a database of millions, yes millions, of images, with thousands added every single day. Not only add the obvious keywords such as man, suit, and tie, but any concepts or emotions that fit the image. Many times a buyer will type in an emotion and see what comes up.
GETTING PAID
Most microstock agencies will only cut you a check when you have $100 in your account. Then, they usually mail you check, use pay pal, or do a direct deposit into your bank account.
You will not become a millionaire with microstock, however, you will bring in some money to pay for your expensive photography habit, or maybe even enough to pay for an exotic photography trip.
