Microstock preliminary experience

By Jacques Bron on Monday, July 07 2008

As I wrote in a previous post, I have setup accounts at Fotolia and Dreamstime. My experience so far is that both sites have nice and intuitive interfaces. They both exist in several languages, although Dreamstime non-english languages are still in beta and sometimes translations aren't accurate. This is not a problem for me as I use the english version of these sites most of the time. Fortunately, both sites let you upload photos using FTP, which makes your life easier when you have a series of photos to upload.

Here are some remarks about this personal experience:

Time for review is long, very long...

The time before your images get reviewed (ETR or Estimated Time for Review) and eventually accepted and visible online, is a bit long. For instance, on Dreamstime, which display the remaining ETR, my average time is 70 to 100 hours which seems VERY long to me. Waiting four days before knowing if your images are accepted or not is a bit painful. In my experience, Fotolia has a slightly shorter ETR, but unfortunately, they don't display the ETR. Fotolia only shows a colored icon indicating that your file is still waiting for approval.

File rejection is inconsistant and sometimes surprising

Well, at least, in my opinion...Reasons invoqued by the reviewer of the file are sometimes too vague or non adapted. For example, I had a photo of a baseball game before a storm, that was accepted on one site and rejected on the other. The reason invoqued for rejection was that the main subject of the photo was a person and that I didn't upload a model release. Here is the photo :

The main subject of this photo is a person ?? Wow... who is doing that review ? How many model releases should I get for this photo ?

Another strange thing is that some files are accepted on one site (and begin to sell quite quickly) and they are rejected on the other. Why ? I don't know. Reasons for rejections are sometimes mysterious, like "Our agency applies a pre-established set of criteria, against which each image is checked. In order to maximize your sales we reserve the right to select images to be included in the database. (...) Unfortunately, the images you have submitted were not selected, etc". That's ok if another site with strict quality criteria had the same answer and had also rejected the photo. But it is not alway the case. The other site accepted these images without any problems, but they rejected others...Anyway, all that process is interesting and I guess I could benefit from such different appreciations on my photos and thus improve my photography skills.

Now here are some tips

I hope they will help you get more photos online :

• File size is important if you want to sell. Three megapixels is the minimum required.
• File quality is mandatory. These guys really look at your photos and they don't seem to spend a lot of time on each of the thousands of photos they review everyday. Your photos should be well exposed, well composed, without any color cast (unless it is an effect done on purpose) and well focused. They should not have any technical problem like little small spots caused by dust on your camera's sensor.
• Read the blogs and faqs of  these sites. They frequently have interesting tips on what kind of subject they are looking for and how  to maximize your sales.

All this beeing written, it's an interesting experience to have your photos reviewed for a sale process. It is even more interesting to sell them and begin to receive emails of new sales !

Have fun taking photos and why not selling them to the market !