Photographer Compares Microstock Sites To Pollution And Drug Dealing
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Taylor Davidson points us to a photographer bashing the idea that microstock sites like iStockPhoto help "create new markets." It's actually been really ...

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Gold Level Photographer Jim DeLillo Cancels iStock Exclusivity, First Stop ...
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From the Fotolia blog: "Fotolia University, an education program for microstock contributing artists, is the only one of its kind and will appear at various locations throughout the United States of America. Budding and veteran stock photographers will have the opportunity to broaden and brush-up their portfolios with training sessions hosted by leading industry contributors."

Excerpt below:

PR Newswire:

MacWorld has seven tips for would-be microstockers (see below). It's always helpful to read other people's summaries of the things that they find important. This is a decent list of basics.

1. Understand how it works: "...Selling stock photos is not easy money. It will take time to build up a decent sized portfolio (at least 100 pictures) before you see any sizable return..."
2. Think like a designer: "...Designers want photographs with ample amounts of uncluttered negative space so make sure you leave room for a headline or other text..." [Click the title above for more]

Dreamstime offers four extended licenses which could increase your earnings significantly: Increase Max Copies, Web Usage, Print Usage, and Sell the Rights. Each of these extends the ways in which the image can be used and pays a much higher premium. If you sell the rights to the image, you no longer control it and cannot sell it elsewhere, so use it with caution--noting that you can make a large chunk of change using this option (you can set your own price). Further details are below.

Sell Your Digital Images: Dreamstime pays $0.50 to $1.00 per basic download to the photographer (50%) and has a pretty good upload system. 

Buy Digital Images:
Dreamstime charges more for photos that have been download 100 times or
more, and again if they’ve been downloaded 500 times or more. They have also recently implemented a system where print and web images are separate purchases. You can currently download images for less than $1.

*Photo by Alan McDermott

It's interesting to look back on the microstock experiment I started a few years ago. I have been quite lazy this past year about uploading anything--and expected my sales to dry up because of it.

Make sure to look into referral programs on the various sites. Many of them will offer rewards for users that you refer to the site either as photographers or stock image purchasers. You can send your referral link to interested people by email or include the link on your personal website. Shutterstock and Dreamstime are particularly good for rewarding successful referrals.