Matthew Botos

Thanks to Lee Torrens of Microstock Diaries, I got to attend PhotoPlus in New York this week and ask my question of microstock superstars Yuri Arcurs, Andres Rodriguez, and Kelly Cline. It was an interesting panel discussion that touched on many aspects of microstock and its impact on the industry and photographers.

The answers to my question, “What aspects of microstock photography do you find most personally satisfying?”, were that you can shoot what you like (as long as it’s marketable), and that it can provide overall business success and residual income.

The two biggest tips for success that were repeated again and again were that you have to approach microstock as a unique business and build a personal style to stand out in an increasingly crowded market. All of the presenters were chock full of numbers: return per image, per image costs, and income per site. Stylistically, all mentioned that customers become fans and go directly to their portfolio for images in that niche, or instantly recognize them in a search.

One statistic that blew my mind: Yuri said he sells 1.1 million images a year, which accounts for 6-10% of all microstock sales. It was also interesting to hear the panel assert that the total lifetime return of an image in microstock could equal or exceed the same image in macrostock, with volume making up for the low price.

A big concern from established photographers and macrostock shooters was technical standards and rejection. Paradoxically, microstock has higher standards than macro, the explanation being that this is an easy way for low-cost reviewers to filter the barrage of images. There were even a few examples of razor sharp images shot with a 50 megapixel Hasselbad being rejected for being “oversharpened”, but everyone said it’s part of the process and they just roll with it.

Future trends were touched on a few times; there seemed to be an agreement on a move to more casual imagery. To that end, Yuri said his team now storyboards shoots to get additional, natural scenes. They didn’t see anyone being able to bring enough buyers to rival the big agencies, as witnessed by the recent failure of Photoshelter and Digital Railroad’s stock offerings.

The overall microstock market seems like it will continue to grow; even Getty sees it drawing business from their established macrostock collections. And Getty’s actions certainly back up that prediction: they bought iStockPhoto, are trolling Flickr for microstock, and bought Jupiter’s microstock business. The latter was announced in the middle of the discussion, which made quite a splash!

Like it or not, microstock appears to be the growing stock format for the next few years; hopefully the above provides some insight on how to be successful at it.