No microstock agency has come as close to joining the top earning agencies as Depositphotos has done in its mere two years of business.

But this agency is weird.  Very weird!  Here’s why:

They launched into a bloodbath of controversy due to association with a file-sharing network. They copied the best strategies of various top microstock agencies adding almost nothing new. And a policy of strict anonymity for staff and owners compounded suspicion and fed conspiracy theories.

Yet the company has been very successful. The strategies they copied were well chosen. And they spent a lot of money in all the right places. They’ve just passed 5 million files exactly two years after launch. And many serious microstockers report that Depositphotos is among their top 5 – 7 earning agencies.

Let’s take a closer look at this weird but successful microstock agency and see if we can help you make your decision about contributing to Depositphotos.

What’s [NOT] Different about Depositphotos?

There’s not much in the Depositphotos business model that we haven’t already seen in the industry.  Here’s some of the winning strategies that Depositphotos chose:

• Smart search – most new microstock agencies lack variety and sort options when they launch but Depositphotos gave buyers great search results from day 1
• API – realizing just how many sales come via partnerships and system integrations, Depositphotos also had a functional API from day 1
• Lucrative affiliate program – new agencies can’t trade on a reputation for generating sales, so affiliate programs must make up for it which the Depositphotos program does, though a little weird (see below)
• Contributor incentives – boosting submissions with paid uploads got Depositphotos to a record-breaking 5 million files in just two years
• Taking submissions by hard drive – accepting bulk submissions with a release spreadsheets lowers the barrier for big contributors to participate
• Split site – contributors get separate accounts at a separate and familiar sub-domain: submit.depositphotos.com

This lack of originality doesn’t just apply to strategy. Site layout, logo design and terminology are all familiar to anyone in the industry. Even model release structure and wording are plainly derived from another well-known microstock agency.

But copying has its advantages. Their strategy was already proven so they launched with lots of confidence.  And they backed it up with great programming and well targeted marketing. At launch, Depositphotos looked and felt more like the top agencies than a startup.

So what is actually different?

• Payment by SMS – buyers in certain countries can pay for photos through their mobile phone bill, replacing credits with SMS messages. This is an original innovation.
• Free Trial Subscription – buyers get a 7-day subscription for 5 photos per day free of charge, yet contributors still get paid for the sales.
• Credits actually cost $1 – most other agencies have complicated the pricing and pushed them up over time. However, at Depositphotos, 1 credit actually costs $1, and 50 credits costs $50. Discounts are available above 100 credits.
• Exclusivity is full ‘photography’ exclusivity, not just for Royalty Free licenses or image exclusivity. I’m not sure what the strategy behind that is, but Depositphotos isn’t pushing exclusivity at all.

Details

Depositphotos Background

Depositphotos was launched by Dmitry Sergiev, the current CEO, who previously worked with a file sharing site, Depositfiles.com. When Depositphotos launched, forum chat alleged it was possible to download pirated collections of stock photos from Depositfiles.com. Apparently Dmitry left Depositfiles before starting Depositphotos, and that was the extent of the association. Nevertheless, together with the connected names, it has been a constant public relations battle for the company ever since.

It was plainly evident that Depositphotos was launched with massive financial backing. And they used it effectively, building their portfolio with cash incentives, marketing extensively within the industry, and building a solid and functional system.  They also took additional funding recently in the form of $3 million from Jersey-based TMT Investments.

The company now has operational centers in three different continents: Accounting and official headquarters in Fort Lauderdale; programming in Moscow; and, review, sales & marketing teams in London.  And yes, headquarters in the US means we must submit the all-too-familiar tax forms.

Anonymity

Microstock agencies need contributors to trust them with their portfolios and buyers to trust them with their credit card details. Anonymity doesn’t inspire a whole lot of trust, but that apparently didn’t occur to Depositphotos until recently. They’ve been working on their anonymity issues since early after launch, but still haven’t figured it out:

• No staff are ever named on the website
• Email comes from anonymous addresses (service@, support@, marketing@, etc)
• No staff existed on LinkedIn (until recently, see below)
• Even their domain registration details are hidden.

However, we are finally starting to see the Depositphotos staff come out to play:

• Marius Klatt, Sales Manager operating from London, who we met at Microstock Expo
• Olga Kravchenko, currently manager of the partner program, was also at Microstock Expo
• Dmitry Sergiev, Founder and CEO, now finally on LinkedIn
• Elena Flanagan-Eister, head of US Sales & Marketing, attended Visual Connections NY
• Igor Kaliuzhnyi, head of Eastern & Western Europe, quoted in all press releases
• Vadim Nekhai, Marketing Manager
• Jamie Joyce, Marketing & Advertising Manager
• Shawn Rize, SEO Specialist
• Igor Shoifot, Advisor (via TMT Investments), also attended Visual Connections

Split Personality Social Media

It’s taken some time for Depositphotos to get their social media strategy on track, and it’s still not without major issues.

They initially registered their social media presence as a person rather than a company, becoming a Friend on Facebook and a Contact on LinkedIn.

Fortunately someone has woken up to how creepy this is and established a Facebook Page instead, which actually has smart and interesting content behind it.

Yet just when we though they’d figured it out, they start posting contributors’ images at high resolution and without watermark on their Facebook Page.

Contributor Incentives

Depositphotos is currently paying 10 cents per accepted file for the first 500 of new contributors, making a maximum possible upload incentive of $50. Previously the amount was 20 cents making the maximum $100.

But what’s even more appealing is the assistance given to qualifying contributors through their Special Program for Large Contributors. Not only will they negotiate terms, they’ll take your portfolio by hard drive and categorize, attach releases and submit it for you.

Referral Program

While appearing generous on the surface, the Depositphotos referral program reveals more of the weirdness of this agency

• Payment for referring contributors is great, but it only pays for subscription sales, not credit-based sales. Weird, right?
• 15% buyer referrals sounds great, but it’s calculated after subtracting the contributor royalty!
• It doesn’t specify that referrals are paid for the life the referred account, but it doesn’t specify an expiry limit either
• The cookie duration is a mere 3 days while most other microstock agencies set theirs for 30 days

The Verdict

Depositphotos seems to have proven itself trustworthy over the past two years, operating without any major scandals. And that the staff are coming out and attending events provides more comfort.

Their ability to generate sales is also well proven based on public comment from established microstockers.

With a solid submission process and an open invitation for serious contributors to submit in bulk, there’s also little risk of not getting a return on the effort of uploading.

Add all that together and it seems like it’s now both a profitable and safe decision to contribute to Depositphotos.  You can register here.

[This review was originally published June 2, 2007 and updated December 13, 2011]

As the pioneer of the microstock subscription model, Shutterstock still dominates that part of the market, selling more photos than any other microstock agency and earning their place among most microstockers’ top earning agencies.

The nature of the search function means photos sell well when they’re new.  Those that sell particularly well in the early weeks maintain high search positions and continue selling well. Those that don’t fare so well quickly fall to the back of the search results where they generate fewer and fewer sales.

New uploads also boost sales of your entire portfolio, encouraging contributors to upload consistently and creating the situation known in microstock as ‘feeding the beast’.

Shutterstock was the second microstock agency I joined and is consistently the second highest earning agency for me, behind iStockphoto. For many other microstockers, it’s their most lucrative agency.

Shutterstock Background

Shutterstock launched in 2003 but according to Alexa stats didn’t start getting popular until 2005.

Founder, Jon Oringer, in a story very similar to the founding of iStockphoto, launched the site by offering his own photos for sale.  The genius strategy he used to differentiate himself from iStockphoto – already well established in the market by that time – was to combine the crowdsourced microstock business model with the subscription payment method that was available at many non-microstock (traditional) stock photo agencies.

Being the only microstock subscription agency for many years helped propel Shutterstock into the top tier of microstock agencies where it remains a strong performer today.

The company has always maintained a graceful simplicity, outright rejecting exclusivity opportunities, avoiding personalization functionality (member profiles, ratings, etc), and maintaining straight-forward subscription plans.

Shutterstock Details

The Subscription Business Model

From the contributor perspective, the defining factor about Shutterstock is that it highly favors new images. The resulting strategy of contributors is to then continue producing and uploading. This works well for Shutterstock and has resulted in their building the largest collection of content among all microstock agencies.

This strategy also works well for buyers. With the subscription model buyers have already downloaded more of the images they’ll need from the existing portfolio, so they can then concentrate on the fresh images coming through. However, the subscription contract does limit ‘stockpiling’ by prohibiting use of images the buyer hasn’t already used six months after downloading them.

Almost all microstock agencies now offer subscriptions, but none can match the sheer volume of downloads that Shutterstock achieves. An important factor in Shutterstock’s continued subscription dominance – and one that’s not so contributor friendly – is that subscribers can download images at the highest resolution without paying any more. Other microstock subscriptions put limits here to protect the income of both the agency and contributor, but to the disadvantage of the buyer.

Cool Features

• Ultra-convenient stats – Shutterstock provide all sales (photos and footage) and referral earnings on a single convenient page with a row for each day of the month (also see updated keywords tool and lightbox stats)
• Move the Watermark – when the subject of your image is on one site of the frame you can move the watermark position so it better protects the image
• Lucrative referral program – Shutterstock’s referral program performs extremely well when referring contributors and has full data reporting.

Earning Performance

Many contributors cite Shutterstock as their highest earning agency. Others are quick to point out that the per-sale / per-download earnings are very low.  Regardless of how you look at it, Shutterstock is the most consistent earning agency in microstock.

Earnings really kick in after you pass the various pay-rise milestones of earnings, where your per-download royalty rises from 25 cents, to 33 cents with $500 in earnings, to 36 cents with $3000 in earnings, up to 38 cents with $10,000 in earnings. (earnings are calculated on all income, including referrals)

Verdict

Whether or not to contribute to Shutterstock is perhaps the easiest decision for microstock contributors to make.  Shutterstock is a consistent performer with high earnings, particularly for consistent producers.  Their system is straight-forward and the team are smart, friendly, and considerate of the plight of contributors.

What to do Next?

If you want to sell photos at Shutterstock, the first step is to register and then submit your application. I have advice on passing the acceptance test and more general advice on getting started. If you have any questions or problems just shoot me a message through my contact page and I’ll do my best to help you.

The videos from Microstock Expo are now ready! Get full access at videos.microstockexpo.com.

Check out this taster video: (It’s better with the volume up loud!)

Turns out preparing the videos takes almost as much time and effort as the conference itself, which is why it took us so long. There’s 10 hours of finished footage which Amos cut from two HD cameras and multiple audio sources of the mics and presentations.

Finding a suitable place to securely host and serve that amount of footage isn’t straight forward either – the team at Clipsan have been super helpful setting it all up for us. Thanks also to Timelapse Berlin for the awesome timelapses.

You can access all the videos for €99 or individual sessions for €20. Attendees have all been sent discount codes.

Once paid you can watch them as many times as you like.

That link again: videos.microstockexpo.com

PhotoDune has now been online for four months. Having just announced an increase of non-exclusive royalties from 25% to 33%, it seems a good time to do a formal review.

In the short time the latest Envato marketplace has been online, we’ve seen a lot of positive signs:

• The collection size at PhotoDune is growing quickly, already above 400,000.
• Top contributors have been publicly saying great things about the early sales at PhotoDune, including Andres Rodriguez, Pressmaster and CandyBox Images.
• The public sales stats of top contributors on PhotoDune is demonstrating impressive sales performance for such a young microstock agency.
• And perhaps best of all, the CEO of the company, Collis Ta’eed, has been spending a lot of time communicating directly with microstock contributors both on PhotoDune’s own forum and Tyler’s MSG forum.

So let’s take a closer look at PhotoDune.

What’s Different About PhotoDune?

There’s no shortage of things that set PhotoDune apart from a regular microstock startup, and also distinguish it from the established agencies.

The primary difference is the background of the company, having successfully grown eight other digital asset marketplaces over the past five years. This experience not only gives Envato a head start with the technology experience, but brings a large existing customer base right in to PhotoDune.  Envato membership passed 1 million members in September, most of whom are buyers with registered payment details.

The team has also used some original ideas to differentiate the agency from established microstock agencies.  First, the previews are huge!  They’re heavily watermarked to make them un-usable, but buyers get a very detailed view of the image before making their buying decision. Second, extended licenses are priced based on the size purchased.  This original idea is based on direct buyer feedback and helps open up the market for extended usage while still generating higher prices for uses that require bigger files.

PhotoDune Details

Pros and Cons

PhotoDune has great sales volume for a such a new entry.  Leveraging their existing buyer base and technical competence has given them a huge advantage which they’ve successfully converted into consistent and growing sales volume.

Submission is not the best, but far from the worst and the Envato team are making constant improvements. Uploading your existing portfolio requires the usual laborious submission work, similar to most mid-tier agencies.

A low commission rate was a mark against PhotoDune at 25%, but now that it’s 33%, it’s much easier to swallow.

Prices are not the highest at PhotoDune. We contributors tend to prefer new agencies that don’t undercut existing ones, as much as we realize that makes it difficult for the new agencies. The largest size at PhotoDune is only $9, which is much lower than at the top microstock agencies, but not as low as many new entrants.

Some contributors have taken issue with the low price of extended licenses when sold at smaller sizes, but given the limited things people can do with such small sizes, we’re not actually giving away as much as some make it out to be.  It’s at least a positive thing that Envato have listened to their buyers and made the original move of pricing extended licenses by size.

The Verdict

It’s pretty easy to upload to PhotoDune and sales are better than at any new startup microstock agency since, well, they’re probably more lucrative than any other microstock agency was after just six months.

Their reputation for listening to contributors is also second-to-none, so while making the difficult “balance between agency sustainability, buyers needs and contributor needs”, they seem to be keeping everyone happy so far.

So it’s a pretty easy decision for most serious microstock contributors. PhotoDune will clearly be a worthwhile addition to your distribution workflow.

You can sign up with PhotoDune here.

The first Microstock Expo took place in Berlin earlier this month, produced by Amos Struck and myself.  Attended by over 150 people, 20 microstock agencies, 12 traditional agencies and 8 service providers, the room was jumping!

Lee Torrens and Amos Struck opening the Microstock Expo 2011 Conference

The program was extremely well received and the speakers did a fantastic job sharing their expertise.  Feedback from the event overall has been overwhelmingly positive, confirming our decision to make Microstock Expo an annual event!

It’s an Honor

For me personally, the biggest success that came out of Microstock Expo was the response from the industry.

Sponsorship sold out in under two weeks.

Speakers were enthusiastic and we had no trouble filling the program with top experts on each topic.

We also had 12 great exhibitors fill the large expo room.

And of course ticket sales were solid from the day we announced the event right through to some walk-ins on the opening day.

The fact that such an enthusiastic response was generated for an event with no history, and created by two first-time event producers, was a true honor for me. Thankyou to everyone for your confidence in us.

Conference attendees make their way back into Microstock Expo

Thankyou!

Those who attended the event are likely already tired of hearing me say this, but thankyou to everyone who was involved and supported us.

Thanks to all the sponsors for their financial support without which the event could not have taken place. They all came on board very early, taking a leap of faith that the event would deliver value on their money.

Thanks to all the speakers for giving us the content that made it so easy to sell tickets. Lending us your name to promote the event, traveling to Berlin, and then delivering such well-prepared presentations ensured attendees got great value for their money.

Speakers of the Microstock Lifestyle session at Microstock Expo

Thanks to the exhibitors who enthusiastically shared their products and services with the audience and provided so many cool give-aways.

Demonstration of the Pixolution search technology at Microstock Expo

Thanks to all the attendees who came and participated so enthusiastically in the event.  It was great to have so many people from different parts of the industry and different parts of the world there to share viewpoints.

Robert Kneschke speaking during the audience discussion at Microstock Expo

Thanks to Vita Valka for the amazing design of the brand, the program and all the attractive visuals for the event.

Thanks to Mark Milstein for sending us Adam Berry who shot such wonderful photos of the entire event.

Thanks also to the great staff at the hotel and the amazing Audio-Visual team who made the event so slick and professional.

Thanks to Ellen Struck who took so much of the logistics off our hands with the badges, showbags and registration, and Julia Struck for additional registration support.

Ellen Struck counting down the PitchFest time limit

Thanks to Luis Alvarez for organizing the iStockphoto Fashion Shoot Workshop which was very popular with the participants who got some great stock shots out of it.

Stock photo produced at the iStockphoto Fashion Workshop at Microstock Expo (Copyright Andresr)

Thanks to Willie Thomas for his hospitality, organizing an impromptu stock shoot and the awesome moving-camera time-lapse videos of the conference (coming soon).

Most of all, a personal thankyou from me to Amos Struck, my business partner on the event and close personal friend, for being passionate enough about the event to make it happen, and organized enough to have it ready with just five months preparation!

Photos and Videos

We’re putting most of the official photos from the event on the Facebook page and there’s some more on Twitter too.

We have 16 hours of HD video footage of the event which we’ll make available for online purchase as soon as we finish cutting it and get it uploaded. This is no small task!

Group shot of some of the speakers of Microstock Expo 2011

Press Coverage & Feedback

There’s already a lot of press coverage about the event.  Here’s some that we’ve spotted so far:

• Our own post at Microstock Expo
• Microstock Group Live thread
• Giorgio Fochesato, here and here and here (translate button at the top)
• Robert Kneschke: What I learned at Microstock Expo
• CEPIC: First Microstock Expo in Berlin was a success
• Pictorial Online

The feedback we’re receiving from attendees is surprisingly consistent. Lots of enthusiastic feedback praising the program & speakers, the professionalism of the production, and the great hotel. Most of all, many people are using the word “fun” which is something we worked hard to embed in all aspects of the event.

Audience watching the action at Microstock Expo 2011

Check out some of the comments we pulled from Facebook and Twitter on the Microstock Expo post-event blog post.

Thanks to all the attendees who’ve provided feedback so far. Please keep it coming.

Microstock Expo 2012

The decision to repeat the event was made around the time the sponsorship sold out.  At that time we knew there was interest and everything that followed confirmed that.

There’s still some big decisions to make about 2012, such as where in the world to do it, what time of year, and weekend or during the week.  But we’ve already decided to include tracks for photo, video and illustration, with more hands-on workshops and longer portfolio review sessions.

If you’re not already subscribed to the Microstock Expo mailing list, be sure to do so to get the updates on the video and hear the announcements for the next event.

Thanks again to everyone involved and I look forward to welcoming you again to #MEXPO 2012!

Lee Torrens and Amos Struck at the conclusion of Microstock Expo 2011