Microstock and Macrostock?

[bwhatnall]

Hi guys,
I have been doing quite well out of microstock sites such as shutterstock, dreamstime and istockphoto over the past year, and its better now the US doller is worth 1.67 AUD, means I get payed more than people in the US thanks to currency conversion.

Was wondering wether anyone else out there submits anything to microstock? And weither they do well out of it?

Does anyone know of any macrostock, (high price stock librarys) libraries in australia?

[latch]

I have recently discovered the microstock industry, and have had a go at submitting some images to Fotolia and Dreamstime and Shutterstock. I have made very few sales, but my portfolios are tiny - I wish I had more time to try and capture some of my stock photo ideas.

I have to confess that when I first came across the microstock industry a few months ago, I got a bit excited and wondered if I could use my D70 to earn enough to get a newer camera. With really good cameras so readily available these days, the competition is very fierce and I suspect that there are much better ways for me to earn money.

So although I don't expect to make much money through these sites, I'm going to continue participating for a little while. I really relish the challenge of learning some new techniques and finding out a bit more about the industry.

[Alex]

Hi,

For the past 2-3 years I've been on some micro sites such as shutterstock, fotolia, dreamstime and istockphoto. I only have a gallery of a seious site on shutterstock and they are, in my opinion, by far the best from a submitter's point of view, microstock gallery. I have a fairly big gallery (approx. 2500 photos) with them and get regular payouts even though I do not shoot delibrately for microstock. Now with the Australian dollar being down, the payouts are even better. I can also recommend istockphoto, however they are extremely picky in what they accept and the submission process is a pain.

Recently (past 6 months or so) I joined Alamy which is a macro site and my gallery is still quite small (over 500 images) however I did make a couple of reasonable sales there. Alamy is massive though (almost 14 mil images) compared to shutterstock (5 mil) which is catching up! Overall, in my opinion, I think the divide between macro and micro will narrow (at least in term of payouts).

Cheers
Alex