There are about 30-40 agencies out there, and the one that are truly making money are Shutterstock, IStockPhoto, Fotolia, Dreamstime, and GraphicRiver. You might be thinking that it is good enough to make $5 dollar a month from unpopular stock agencies, but to be honest, you might not be making a single dollar at all. Yes, the performance is that bad.
I have recently uploaded my 200 vectors to DepositPhotos and I hope it can at least makes $10.00/month. I I do not have high hope on DepositPhotos but I must try to see if I am lucky enough to make it through. I will let you guys know my earning on DepositPhotos 6 months later.
For those who have not joined DepositPhotos, let me give you a bit of review on the features inside. The upload features is good and it did not demand you for too many information. Reviewing process is super fast (less than an hour), and I have a 100% acceptance rate with it. The contributor page contains a lot of useful features and it allows you to see the number of views, and other important statistic.
Although the site is not that active compared to the top 4 agencies, but I must say the viewing rate of my file is still in the acceptable range. I have a few views for every files that I have uploaded in just a few days time. This is a sign of life. And best of all, I already have 5 downloads in less than a week. 5 downloads in a few days is consider OK, but my target is to have at least $10.00 a month (that is equivalent to 34 download a month) . If it does not have such result in 6 months time, I must say this stock agency is a failure and is not worth uploading to.
Apart from having nice features for the contributors, DepositPhotos also have very good features for buyers. The search engine is good because it provides enough filtering features. I believe buyers have a good time browsing files and finding the things they want. For example, a buyer can filter by Best Match, Downloads, Newest, Oldest, Most Popular, and many more. You see, the more filtering features we have, the higher possibilities of our files being viewed.
The one thing I really dislike about DepositPhotos is the web design. It is rather ugly and it doesn't look professional at all. You feel like you are in a Web2.0 wannabe website. Just look at the gradient bar on top. That gradient bar color is a sign of noobish. Either the designer do not have good taste, or the CEO feels that such gradient looks interesting. I dare to comment on this because I am a web designer myself. Clients that are not internet savvy will always force me to use that kind of gradient and they will tell me it is the color for Web2.0 website.
Ugly gradient. |
All and all, I do hope DepositPhotos will emerge to become a top agency in the future. If not, I hope it can at least make a payout every 2-3 months. I know DepositPhotos has been doing a lot of marketing recently, but it might all go down to drain if the website still looks like that. The performances and features are awesome, but the web design is suck.
Thank you for all useful informations. Your blog is a great place where the beginners can find everything important about stocking. I wanted to ask you if you have any experience with Graphicleftovers.com? That agency is quite slow for me (I must say) but who knows. Maybe you should give it a try.
ReplyDeleteKeep up a good work!
I have just uploaded everything to GraphicLeftovers about recently. Lots of views with no sales.
ReplyDeleteGraphicLeftovers do not have good feature for buyers. You cannot filter result such as Newest, Most Popular, and etc. When this simple feature is unavailable for a stock site, how do you expect a buyer to search for the thing they want? Going through page by page is never a good solution.
So far I have 500+ views in about 10 days at Graphicleftovers for 200 vectors, but 0 sales. Unbelievably bad, right?
6 months later, how is it going for you at DepositPhotos? Are you making money there?
ReplyDeleteHello, and yes, I will be writing a review (after 6 months) for DepositPhotos soon :)
ReplyDeleteStay tune.
Thanks :)
ReplyDelete