Microstock earnings set to increase
Selling images and photos to make money online from microstock agencies continue to be my favourite method among money making opportunities. It’s been a while since I reported on my earnings from microstock photography, and since then a few microstock agencies have increased their payout rates for members.
In April, Shutterstock increased its payout from $0.25 per image to $0.30 for members who have sold more than $500 worth of images. I have just crossed the $500 sales mark myself, but would have crossed it sooner if I’d been submitting images more regularly. Since theirs is a subscription model – the minimum is $199 per month for a maximum 25 downloads per day – buyers tend to download the maximum they are allowed which means they tend to buy more to stock up for future use compared to pay-per-purchase.
Shutterstock displays the newest images by default, so if you are hardworking enough to upload a handful of images every week to keep your portfolio on the first few pages, you get more exposure and can reach the $100 payout without much problem as I had when I first started. Shutterstock buyers don’t tend to click into deeper pages, much like how you don’t normally click on deeper pages for Google results.
Fotolia had a revamp to its system and site to become Fotolia V2 and along with that, increased its payout rate to members where 1 credit equals $1.36 from $1.00 – a 30% increase. There were some teething problems as Fotolia faced glitches in its payment and image uploading systems, but these have since been resolved and Fotolia is one of my best performers in microstock with total earnings of over $300.
BigStockPhoto is the latest microstock agency to announce an increase in payout although it is due to the increase in price that buyers have to pay for images. Presently, buyers pay for images in credits where 1 credit equals $0.50. Come November, the larger images will cost more credits thereby enabling members to earn more. Small images though, will stay at 1 credit.
Although BigStockPhoto is one of my slower earners, I’m still using them as it provides another stream of income without my having to do anything. Their minimum payout is a low $30 which is easily reached. The images I have there are still making me money and I’m quite happy to just leave them there and maybe add on to them now that bigger images will earn more. So far, I’ve made over $80 with them.
Other microstock sites where I sell my images are Dreamstime with earnings of about $250 and StockXpert with earnings of almost $300. Although these earnings are not phenomenal by any standards, they should be looked at in proper perspective.
Unlike other more prolific members who have a few thousand images in their portfolio, I have a very modest portfolio of between 80 to less than 150 images for each microstock agency which I spent about 2 months or so creating. Since then, I’ve not been actively adding onto my portfolios, so that result is satisfactory to me but I’m definitely going to make more time to create more images as it is a much better source of recurring income than blogging.