November Microstock Report

This is November's Microstock Report:

Shutterstock led the pack once again.  Along with Istockphoto, they're one of the biggest agencies that deal with licensing photographs and vector illustrations.  It's strange that all this time Shutterstock has maintained an average over $100, whereas www.istockphoto.com (which had a couple of months with the century mark about a year ago) has faded, and was overtaken by Dreamstime last month.

Vectorstock is a site that a few vector artists don't care for - the reason why is that the payouts are very low per image.  I'll have a ton of sales each month (which i like because I visit each site at least once a day, and it's a lot more fun when the dollar amounts change, even if it's just a little), but it only amounts to just over $20.  I like to stick with them though because sales are sales - and Vectorstock is one of the more consistent selling sites I'm affiliated with.

There are a bunch of other sites that I signed up with that aren't really doing much of anything.  Crestock is one of the original sites I joined and it's made zero monies in four of the last five months.  Some other dud stock sites (for me) are Stockfresh (which just started, so I'm waiting to see if that changes) and Veer (another new site, but another one that doesn't sell much).

With that said - I think it's better to have a portfolio of illustrations across a variety of microstock agencies.  It means that more businesses and people in need of images have a better chance of finding your stuff and purchasing the license.  If you're thinking of selling your own vector artwork (or photographs) - I'd say start with Shutterstock - it's one of the easier sites to get into (you have to have 10 images approved, but their approval process is lax compared to an agency like Istockphoto).  But once you get going, I'd suggest at least signing up with the big three (Shutterstock, Istockphoto, and Dreamstime) and then think about the rest.