FeaturePics
Posted by Lee Torrens
In my travels I’m finding more and more microstock websites that other people are using that I’m not. I have considered many in the past and decided not to sell my images there. So many in fact that it’s difficult to keep track. This got me thinking. What better way to review and record the stock photography websites I consider than to write a blog post detailing my findings?
Here’s the first. It’s FeaturePics. They’re one of the website I most frequently see other microstockers using.
FeaturePics Details
| Web Address | www.featurepics.com |
| Google Pagerank | 6 |
| Google Backlinks | 1,170 |
| Alexa Rank | 28,846 |
| Image Stats | Not found |
| Minimum Image Size | 800 pixel short edge |
| Vectors | Yes |
| Footage | No |
| Licenses | Uniquely for microstock, FeaturePics offers both Royalty Free and Rights Managed licenses |
| Compensation | Commission is 70% of fee paid. |
| Pricing | Contributor sets price |
| Payment Methods | PayPal, MoneyBookers, Check |
| Payment Delay | 14-28 days. Commissions are held for 7 days until payable. Payment requests are processes on Mondays and paid the following Monday. |
| Referral Program | Not offered |
Comments on FeaturePics
FeaturePics have Google Ads on their website! Why would a successful microstock website need to monetize their traffic in this way when it takes their visitors away from their own website??
Their forum has 1,614 registered members but only 379 posts. Even if they’re archiving old posts, that’s a strange balance. I suspect that registered users of the website are automatically registered on the forum regardless of whether they create a forum post. If so, this indicates that the website has only 1,614 members, presumably spread across buyers and sellers.
Verdict
Uploading photos takes work, especially when you have a considerable portfolio. Our experience in working with websites with low popularity and traffic statistics is that the investment is not sound. It’s a catch-22. You can’t grow until contributors upload images, but there’s no return on investment for contributors until you’re big. We’ll keep watching the FeaturePics website and their statistics and if they break through we’ll reconsider. For now, FeaturePics is not for us at this time.
Posted April 25th, 2007 by Lee Torrens
Good review. I use the site all the time, mostly because they are local company (SF) and a promising underdog. I think that the reason for having Google ads on the site is simple as the fact that they give 70% of the sale back to photographers which is multiple of many other stock photo sites I have used. Not sure about the forum, but love the site.
Dan
Sure, FP is smaller and (yet) less known, but their unique license models plus the fact that you can set your own prices makes it my favourite to market my stock production. Had quite good sales figures lately overthere, too