25 Apr 2007 FeaturePics
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.
Dan Livitia
Posted at 23:40h, 01 MayGood 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
Martin
Posted at 13:01h, 17 SeptemberSure, 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
Jamie
Posted at 16:41h, 17 AugustI would stay as far away from FeaturePics as possible.
I joined FeaturePics when they were very new, and I uploaded most of my images. Then they started being picky about the images they accepted, they weren’t accepting my best images, and I had never had a sale.
I requested they close my account and remove my images because I could not remove the images myself. I decided last week to give them another shot, I uploaded some images, they were approved, I uploaded some more, and they were rejected with the reason “You requested your account be closed on 2/12/09” or something similar, so I emailed them about it, and to make a long story short, she told me this:
We don’t reopen closed accounts. (I did not request the account be reopened, I simply created a new account.) She told me my images were approved by mistake, and my account would soon be closed. I was very confused, as she was not very clear with what she was telling me, and didn’t answer every question I asked.
I asked if that meant I could no longer be a contributor, and I got no response. The next day I tried to login, the account was closed.
My advice: steer clear. Extremely shoddy business practices, and they are very picky about the images they accept, even though sales are extremely slow.
Yvonne
Posted at 09:43h, 24 JanuaryI’ve uploaded to this agency. None of my photos have even been viewed. This is odd, since on other sites like Dreamstime I can see the number of views climb daily (even if it is only a few a day). There seems to be no activity on this site at all. I will give it some time, but so far, not impressed.