23 Apr 2007 Show Me the Money!

When looking at becoming a microstocker selling photos online, one of the obvious questions that arises is, ‘how do I get paid?’.

This question can be broken down further:

• by what mechanisms can I get the money into my hand or bank account?
• how long does it take for the money to arrive?
• how often can I get paid?

This table answers these questions for each of the six microstock sites that I use.

*PayPal delivery time is an average of my experienced wait times between request date and payment delivery date, calculated over the past 3 payments from each microstock website.

I use PayPal for all these sites. I’m already a big user of PayPal for both personal and business transactions. It was an obvious choice for me when I started out with Microstock. If other microstockers are already using Moneybookers, it may be an equally easy decision for them. Check is the slowest of the payment methods due to its non-electronic nature. Most websites give an expectation of 3 – 6 weeks for delivery. CanStockPhoto also discourage the use of checks by having a higher payout threshold, and Fotolia and BigStockPhoto don’t offer it at all.

Shutterstock seem to be the only stock photography website who limit payouts to one per month. They pay accounts with a balance over $75 (default is $100 but can be changed in the options) at the start of each month and there’s no mechanism to request a payment sooner. This makes sense from an operational point of view, enabling them to be more efficiently with only one payment process per month. You just need to be selling enough photos to get your balance over $75 by the end of the month.

Once the money is in your PayPal or Moneybookers account, it’s a simple process to withdraw the funds to your bank account. Both these providers enable you to link your account to your normal bank account in order to both deposit and withdraw funds. Alternatively, you can obviously use the funds in your PayPal or Moneybookers account for online purchases rather than withdrawing the funds.

I guess that the vast majority of microstock photographers would use PayPal or Moneybookers to bring home their commissions. I further guess that PayPal is significantly more common than Moneybookers, based on Google and Alexa resources, and the fact that Dreamstime – not a small player – doesn’t bother to offer MoneyBookers as a payment alternative.

I’m interested to know how photographers who use MoneyBookers find their services. I’m exceptionally pleased with my PayPal experience. Additionally, it would be interesting to hear from microstockers who regularly receive payments by check, if there are any.

Updated 2007-04-29 to include StockXpert

Updated 2007-05-28 to include LuckyOliver