I have made a $1.40 in a couple of days on one site lol Well it might not sound like much but I am still excited by it :) I couple of days ago I thought stock was boring, but now that I am making money so easily I don't care :p
This is the first time i have gon e looking at shutterstock, or any stock site. I was floowing a thread abot a start up company on DPC forums.
I see a few things on shutterstock that bother me...
We take all of our own pictures and aggressivly bid on content - we do all of this so that we can offer an economical solution to royalty free stock photography.
Seems to be an un-truth. they take WHAT pictures? agressively bid...20 cents is not agressive even in a third world country.
Yes, even after your membership is up you can continue to use the photos that you downloaded within your membership. Umm, so for 20 cents your pic can be used in any way forever...i feel used just thinking about it.
You may modify an image and use it -- however, you may not claim copyrights to that image. ShutterStock continues to own any images that have been modified by you. "Shutterstock" owns...Hmmm.
Everything is ultimately converted into JPG by our system- so we prefer JPG/JPEG. However, you are welcome to upload TIFF's When i was doing catalog work JPG was not of acceptable quality, and that was web (newsprint) quality - low end.
one place it says Yes. ShutterStock's Submit Terms of Service is not exclusive; therefore, photos that you submit to ShutterStock can also be submitted to other agencies. and in another Most of our photos are exclusive to ShutterStock.com and cannot be found anywhere else. Perhaps most folks only submit most of their work here. For 20 cents, why go elsewhere, huh?
Hmm, not sure i like the overall sound of this. Not sleazy or dishonest, but seems like they are taking advantage of the photographer.
But, hey, if it works for you! $1.40 is $1.40 more than i have made on my photography!
Well its a whole $1.07 more than DPC has gotten me in a year and it only took three days.
Its not really about the 20 secents though. If you have a gallery of 1000 photos on stock, you can literally make thousands of dollars a year (people on istock actually do). And once your photos are up, they are there forever, so you can still be making money from that image in 10 years time. So you will get more than just 20 cents.
However i won't compain if they do wish to up the price ;)
You might want to peruse this thread for a more thorough discussion of Shutterstock and RF stock sites in general.
There are also several other threads on the matter. At least two DPC member have made over $100 there since we "invaded" the site in mid-October 2004. Personally, I have about $14 "in the bank" but with only a few (47) photos in my gallery there; a friend I referred has about twice the download rate I have.
Generally speaking, the photos I'm "giving away" for 20 cents would be of "no value" elsewhere; that implies they are not taking away from the market for better ones, but rather creating new markets for new products.
i only have 6 photos, and only 4 that have sold. I feel like $1.80 in a few days is really good for that :) Imagine if I actually did have more photos what i would make lol
