April is known for having frequent showers in the UK. However, I don’t think even 30 days of rain could get me down this month, as I had a lot of good news.

As you know from the last post, I had 4 images accepted for the “In the News” page on Dreamstime. I think the section is a great idea, unfortunately it has yet to take off as far as sales are concerned. Dreamstime itself  pays $5 for each accepted photo in this section, which is a unique offer for microstock editorial photos.

I was also accepted as a contributor on Shutterstock this month on the 6th time of trying. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again and again and again, oh boy was I bored of trying. Anyway, now my photos are even cheaper, yes they now have a value of 25 cents a download, get them now, this offer won’t last forever. Oh, I just read the small print, apparently this offer does last forever. However, Shutterstock is apparently one of the biggest earners for a lot of people. In the 2 weeks I’ve been with them, I’ve had 21 downloads with just 15 images, so it could be promising. UPDATE: After 1 month, I’ve had 55 downloads with 23 images online. As you can see, I’m not managing to get many images online, this is because most of the photos I send are rejected. So they’re pretty tough. It’s still worth it though, as the images have such a good sell through rate. Plus my editorial images are selling just as well as the commercial rf images. If I could get a few hundred photos online, I could start to earn a few hundred dollars a month from Shutterstock. Hey, life is nothing without dreams!

I don’t have any connections with photographers apart from online connections, which have mostly been recently through microstock sites. So I was happy to discover that an online friend of mine was coming to Bali this month. She is a Russian Microstock photographer and an extremely successful Microstock photographer. This was also the first time I have met anyone submitting photos to Microstock sites, so I took the opportunity to pick her brains in an interview. Unfortunately, with her English not being the best and my Russian being a little rusty, we only got through a few questions before succumbing to mental exhaustion. It was still an interesting insight though. UPDATE: This is the interview along with a few of her photos. https://microstockposts.com/interview-with-microstock-photographer-tatiana-morozova

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4 thoughts on “April Showers

  1. Congratulations Komar on getting into Shutterstock! I made my first attempt a couple of weeks ago and got rejected within five hours (7 of my 10 shot down for “poor composition”). They had all been accepted by Istock and other sites. Your initial sales sound very exciting. Even at 25c these will add up quickly once you have more files accepted. I had always thought that Istock was much the same but with 96 files and only 8 downloads to date, obviously not. Someone on Microstock group said recently that whilst it is hard to get into Shutterstock, once you are in they accept virtually everything. I have no idea if that’s true (obviously!) but might suggest that they make it hard at first to cut out time wasters and non serious contributors. Just a thought. Regards, David

    1. Thanks David. My last submission took me 3 weeks to choose the 10 images. Yes sales are quite astonishing, obviously the 25 cents a download has something to do with it. My editorial photos sell well too. However, i still have a 50% rejection rate. The longer you do this, the more you get used to rejections and the less it bothers you. The only big agency that won’t accept my application is Stockxpert, which is ironic as I discovered microstock through them. I even tried to humour them by applying with the username “Oranghutan”. Needless to say, it didn’t work. However, I’m not submitting to Istockphoto or Fotolia, their painful uploading processes and the high rejection rates I have with them, doesn’t make it worth it. I am enjoying submitting to the few agencies I’m with though. Dreamstime is my top earner, but I’m sure Shutterstock will eventually overtake it. David, I’m sure you’ll keep applying to Shutterstock, I hope you get on in fewer attempts than I did.

    1. Thanks so much. Still peanuts at the moment, but the monkeys are happy.

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