Why Shutterstock Should Not Go Exclusive?

Many independent contributors have been dying to join Shutterstock exclusivity if it offers one. But up until today, Shutterstock does not plan to do it simply because it will do more harms than goods. Hey, isn't this is an opportunity of a life time for Shutterstock to kill all its competitors once and for all? No.

First, we have to understand from the contributors point of view. There are basically two groups of contributors. Those that make thousands of dollars every month, and those who make pennies.

The Successful earn 50% from Shutterstock and 50% across all other agencies.
The Failure earn 95% from Shutterstock and 5% across all other agencies.

The above is however, a hard fact. If Shutterstock offers exclusivity, the Failure will immediately join the offer without doubt. The Successful, on the other side, will dangle between the fence because it is such a risk for them to change what is already successful.

In the end, Shutterstock will build up a lot of EXCLUSIVE, BUT LOW QUALITY images/vectors. This will not only harm Shutterstock, but the big contributors as well. The only winner here is the Failure which fail to produce quantity and quality.

To comprehend more, exclusivity means higher pricing, ranking, and royalty percentage for contributors. So, if the majority of the exclusive contributors are the Failures, you can imagine how poor Shutterstock will become. We cannot compare Shutterstock and IStockPhoto here because IStockPhoto has the first-mover-advantage in the industry. IStockPhoto captured and forged the Successful one when they have yet to become successful.

Unless Shutterstock can offer a very delicious and lucrative exclusive offer, then it might have a chance to totally win the heart of the Successful contributors, and at the same time, eliminates all its competitors once and for all.

DepositPhotos Earnings

As promised on January 2011 on DepositPhotos Review blog post, I will report my earnings for DepositPhotos in the past 6 months. To be honest, I was only expecting to make $10 per month, but DepositPhotos performs far better than I expected. On average my earnings were about USD40/month for the past 4 months with about 250 vectors.

Most of the sales came from subscription though, which equivalent to $0.30 per download. I was hoping to get more Credit Download which normally worth $3.00 per download but this is rare.

Many regard DepositPhotos as a low-earners among other agencies, but to me, DepositPhotos has been a reliable and steady earners. I strongly suggest that you join DepositPhotos if you have a lot of vectors now because it is definitely worth a try. The uploading process is easy and smooth and the reviewers had been very lenient.

8 reasons why I have not submitted to VectorStock.com

VectorStock.com has been around for many years. It sells nothing, but vector. Many top vector artists have submitted to VectorStock simply because they do not have better options. They need to generate their income as much as possible.

However, I for once have not submitted anything to VectorStock because of the 8 reasons below.

1. VectorStock had denied my application as a contributor... twice. I have submitted the below two vectors in two different occasions, and their response is...

ARTIST UPLOAD NOT GRANTED.
Thank you for your sample submission.
We have reviewed your sample and do not feel your work is suitable for the VectorStock library at this time.
You may re-submit a new sample for reviewing if you feel you can illustrate a different style.
Visit the FAQ for more information.
Best Regards
VectorStock Team

Below are the two vectors I submitted to VectorStock on different occasions and both have been denied for not suitable.

2. I believe my sales will be poor and unworthy. Although, this page (most download) shows us that there are indeed sales, but the performance of their new files are utterly disappointing. Take a look at their latest vectors and browse the pagination up to as many as you can. You will see that 99% of the files have 0 download. I don't mind if older files will eventually sell, but try to browse up to page 1000, and you will still be seeing 0 download for 99% of the files.

3. They sell us cheap. For a start, you earns 25% of your sales. All your files are priced at only USD1. That means that if you sell a vector, you only make USD0.25. Mind you that this is not even a subscription rate download, but a totally on-demand download. You cannot compare this rate to site like Shutterstock because Shutterstock sells at least 1000 times more than a low earners like this.

4. VectorStock uploading process is lame. They want you to reduce your artwork size to 380 x 400. Ohh, please, you are actually troubling ten thousand artists out there just because your programmer does not know how to write a script to resize a JPEG for the website preview. I reckon they rejected my application earlier was because of this reason. Yes, I didn't create my artwork in 380 x 400, and if this was really the reason you rejected me, at least you should mention properly why am I rejected instead of saying "I feel this is not suitable".

5. Because they are selling our vector so cheaply, I feel that they are luring "thieves" into buying our vectors and then putting it up for free at file hosting site. The reason why these "thieves" put our vector for free in file sharing site is because of money. However, I will not discuss this matter today as it will take one whole blog entry to explain. "Thieves" will most likely target on cheapest stock agency and buy from them so that their earning margin is higher.

6. They don't have PR (personal relationship). When is the last time you heard about them saying anything at all on the Internet? They don't even have a news column and forum in their site for us to discuss their site related matter and doesn't even bother what everyone is saying about them outside. These are some forum threads about VectorStock and I don't see VectorStock sending a representative to comment.

http://www.microstockgroup.com/illustration-general/anyone-using-vectorstock-com/

http://www.microstockgroup.com/new-sites-general/new-vector-only-stock-site/msg17099

When you don't send someone to comment and to clear things up, you are basically losing your creditability. Take a look at Graphicleftovers, they are good at PR. I have recently wrote a review about Graphicleftovers, and they really care enough to send someone to comment and to clarify things up. I love them.

7. No marketing effort. I can't see their advertisement anywhere in the Internet.

8. No site upgrade. You never ever see the site improve or degrade before. Do they even have a team of programmers? Have they given up?

As a conclusion, I have decided that I will not upload to them. If you have anything to say about Vectorstock, please comment on the comment box below.

CanStockPhoto Review (The New Big 4)

Despite the ugly and only 125 pixel square banner it has, CanStockPhoto should be one of the Big 4, not Dreamstime. The ever popular microstock industry's jargon, the Big 4 consists of Shutterstock, IStockPhoto, Fotolia, and Dreamstime have always been the talk of all vector contributors in the world because of their success.

Nearly over a year in microstock industry, I realize that Dreamstime sales is actually very bad compares to the other 3. Just for a record, I have made a total of $482.69  in about 11 months at Dreamstime having 233 vectors with Dreamstime. On the other hand, I have 118 vectors with IStockPhoto and I make over $400.00 every month at IStockPhoto. Apart from the bad sales, Dreamstime vector uploading process is the craziest and longest among all.

Enough about Dreamstime, let's get back to the main topic. Yes, CanStockPhoto should be one of the Big 4 because the sales are much better than expected. I made about $100.00 per month with 250 vectors at CanStockPhoto. Apart from the easy uploading process, CanStockPhoto loves all my works. I have 100% acceptance rate at CanStockPhoto. They values my work and they sell them with a good price. Every sale averaged between $1.50 to $5.00 at CanStockPhoto. For a comparison, majority of my sales at Dreamstime ranges from from a pity $0.24 to $0.35.

Like many other stock agencies, CanStockPhoto should revamp their web design. It is mediocre. Period. I have involve in the Microstock industry for nearly a year now, and I have only joined CanStockPhoto in last 2 months because I have doubt with CanStockPhoto. The design of the website looks unprofessional and it feels incomplete. On the other hand, I must give praise to their programmers and marketing department because the functionality and the sales of the site are much better than anyone can expect.

CanStockPhoto - Mediocre web design

In my opinion, no bottom stock agencies should sell cheap. You simply cannot win the pricing war anymore with Shutterstock. Many CEOs thought that by lowering the price to $1 per vector would gain them competitive advantage, but this is wrong and it is proven wrong. Vector pricing should be about $5.00 to $15.00. Money earned from this should be spent on marketing. Come to the end of the day, it is all about exposure of your company. IStockPhoto sells our vector in an expensive way (about $15.00) and with the money earned, they can have even more aggressive marketing. Buyers who can only spent a pity $1.00 per vector are most probably not someone who will actually buy again because they are poor. If they cannot spend $10.00 per vector, they probably will not spend $1.00 per vector. They would rather download the vectors from illegal site than spending $1.00 for it. Do you want to sell shoes at South Africa or do you want to sell shoes to Roger Federer? Think!!!

CanStockPhoto does sell our vectors cheap in subscription package, but in a way, CanStockPhoto is able to attract its buyer to buy a lot in credits. I have got a couple of Extended License in just 2 months at CanStockPhoto and that is something.

To summarize this, I think CanStockPhoto is in the right direction. I hope they keep it up and hopefully one day later it can be truly recognized as one of the new Big 4. Until then, good luck to CanStockPhoto and I wish this company all the best.

Graphicleftovers Review

I have become a contributor for Graphicleftovers for 3 months now. Uploaded 155 vectors there, and I have made 6 sales with a total $18.72. You can set your own pricing for your items. Graphicleftovers pays you 52% of the sales made. This is a very good deal. Furthermore, the uploading process is one the easiest.

There are many great comments about Graphicleftovers if you search over the Internet. But to be honest, I think this site needs some improvements. I wonder why the team in Graphicleftovers has never thought of doing something simple to improve the overall sales performance of the site.

I got a huge number of views (over 1000) in the first 10 days when I uploaded my vectors to Graphicleftovers. Then, in the next 3 months, I only have about a thousand views. There is no longer sales in my vectors and there are reasons why this happened.

Graphicleftovers does not have a good search engine. Period. I do not know for sure how the default search works, but basically, you can only filter your search by

Vectors/Images
GL Collection/GL Personalities
Vector Price ($1 - $20)

Where is the search for:

Relevency
Newest
Most Popular
Most View
Most Download

These are some very basic features a search engine must have, and Graphicleftovers only program some useless database query. This is the very reason why your images hardly get exposures even if they are good. Of course, they do have this GL Collection where your vector is handpicked by the inspectors, but who are them to judge whether a vector is good or bad? Beauty is in the eyes of the buyers. A good vector means more downloads/view/popular and those are the necessary key elements of how to sort your search results.

More annoyingly, the search result page only returns you with 20 results per page. This is undoubtedly difficult to navigate the search results. Graphicleftovers should show at least 100 results per page. Apart from that, they should show the search results in full screen, and not in a stingy 960 pixel width division. We are in the modern era where most of the people already have a big screen. Take a look at all those successful sites like Shutterstock, IStockPhoto, Dreamstime, and Fotolia. They all have full screen in their search result page. This is not rocket scientist, and every web designers can design a liquid layout.

Stingy 960px width and only 20 search results per page.

All and all, I am pretty upset with Graphicleftovers as they do not even have the two most fundamentals feature in their site. I must say that although Crestock sales is as bad, but at least they have push the site features to a very high standard one.

I hope Graphicleftovers read my blog, and they can pay attention to the two features I mentioned above - Search Filters + A Liquid Web Design.