Tag: istockphoto

  • Comparing 10 most essential microstocks

    Comparing 10 most essential microstocks

    Note: This article is about making money online by selling your photographs. The top 10 most essential microstock agencies are analyzed here. Microstock agency are marketplaces for buyers and photographers.

    There are now tens of microstock agencies out there and new agencies pop-up quite often, some being closed too like LuckyOliver, which was quite good actually and many contributors loved it. The microstock market is certainly booming right now and will continue to grow, even big names in the traditional stock industry turned their views on microstocks, Getty Images owns now the oldest microstock agency – iStockphoto and is preparing partnership with Flickr, Corbis created SnapVillage, InMagine has it’s microstock clone – 123RF and other alliances and acquisitions will probably follow. There are now in my opinion 4 big players in the microstock market: iStockphoto, Shutterstock, Dreamstime and Fotolia which all have the biggest collections of over three million pictures and have most of the market share. Then there are two agencies that follow the “big four”: 123RF and BigStockPhoto, both in the market for quite long and with a large database of clients and contributors.

    I decided I’ll try to compare and analyze these 4 + 2 biggest microstocks today from the contributors point of view and present you with some statistics. Beside these 6 biggest agencies I included another 4 agencies with high potential for the future, but there are of course other few agencies out there that can present some value too. So I might say it’s the list of 10 most essential microstock agencies today! (more…)