IStockaholic

Up to half a year ago I mostly did photography as a hobby, going for long walks in the mountains always bringing my camera to shoot whatever I came over. Digital photography has enabled me to create photos at a higher rate than I would ever have imagined, filling up the harddisk in no time. But thats a different story all together.

My wife, family and friends kept saying that they loved my pictures and that I should start showing them to the world instead of having them lying around on my computer and some of the better ones hanging on the walls. I never really thought about it that way and wondered if I should try to show them in a gallery or something. After some months I started reading more about online stock photography sites and came to like the idea of uploading a picture, having it sold over and over again and making some money. Digital photography is becoming increasingly an expensive hobby, and I saw that my "wish-list" at B&H was growing faster than I would ever be able to afford as I ventured into different styles of photography.

I started looking around and tried an online stock agency where I could upload a small version of the picture and if there was any sale the buyer would contact me through the agency. I would get paid according to the use, so a sale could mean anything between $50 to $1000. I uploaded some pictures, nothing spectacular, about 10 pictures, and waited... Nothing happened, not a single sale still. I got impatient and thought I'll have to try more places. After some time I found another place www.shutterpoint.com where I could upload a full JPG version and set the price as I wished. It had a system where people could rate your pictures too, and it was quite fun to watch which pictures was considered good. Eventually I saw that the site seemed overly focused on the rating thing, and everybody gave 9 or 10's out of kindness - even really bad grainy out of focus pictures got good ratings from some just because they had rated kindly to others. I realised that there was just too many bad pictures there for buyers to even find the good stuff - hence less sales. In the 5 months I have been there I've sold two pictures at $25 each. Not much but at least some.

Well, then I found another place: www.istockphoto.com which I immediately fell in love with. It had its own pricing policy depending on the size of the download and each image had to be approved by an image inspector. And from the quality I saw there I knew they were very picky about the quality. I got sales almost immediately after my first uploads and I was quite hooked, regulartly uploading and checking sales. It was really addictive - and still is. Now the only gripe I have about this place is the royalty I get - only 20% of the sale! Thats not much, especially when you think of the prices where a high res picture is sold for $1.50 - veeery cheap in other words. I can imagine this place as a big blessing for designers and it opens up a marked untouched before. Thats why it is a successful business too with an amazing number of downloads every hour. I immediately noticed the popularity of this place when one of my pictures was chosen "Image Of The Week" (IOTW) with the picture placed on the front page after login. This picture is now closing 200 downlads in under a month and is set to go for the most popular page soon (it actually was there before as one of the higher rated pictures with pure 5/5 ratings until I got one 3/5 rating from one guy that dropped me off the list).

At IStockPhoto we have an expression - IStockaholic - and I must confess I am one, visiting the site several times a day to see whats selling and talk in the community which is an excellent one. If you are a designer you will love this place - you cant get better stock photography for such low prices anywhere. If you are a photographer you have to decide if you feel a 20% cut is fair. Still you will be competing with some very fine photographers, some having over 90.000 downlowads by now. In time those cents will make you a dollar... :)