Yuri Arcurs a blog about selling your photos online

Microstock Vs Macrostock, Micro stock and Macro stock

Microstock vs. macrostock. In the industry of selling licenses for the use of pictures in advertising, magazines etc., known as “stock photography,” there are generally two major traditions:

• Traditional pricing, also called high pricing, traditional marketing or “macrostock” describes an old industry that until recently has had a monopoly on the market for over 50 years. In the old days, licenses for pictures were sold and marketed through catalogs and sent to customers by mail. Individual pictures were often licensed for amounts anywhere from $500 USD to $10,000 USD, depending on usage. In those days it was extremely hard to be accepted as a photographer at the different stock agencies and to start selling stock—some photographers would work for years to build a portfolio to show the agencies.
• Micro payment selling, also called “microstock” describes a new and highly competitive form of selling stock. Here, pricing depends on the resolution of the picture you buy. This allows for a “micro” or minimal price for ultra-low resolution images. When it was first introduced, this upset a lot of traditional stock photographers – including me. Taking full advantage of the internet for distribution of the images (instead of catalogs) and inviting everyone with a digital camera to submit pictures (provided their pictures were good enough), in many ways, microstock became the direct opposite of macrostock.

The early years in microstock. When did microstock start?


When microstock started back in 2004, the price difference between a RF full-res bought via macrostock and RF full-res bought via microstock was about twenty to one and often more. Today the difference is about ten to one and sometimes five to one. Over the years it is expected that the two pricing traditions will merge and only a small margin will remain between micro and macro prices.

I sell my pictures within both industries, but primarily focus on microstock for the time being. I do this based on a set of considerations and ideas about the future development of the industry.

The best microstock agencies are: 

Istock, Fotolia, Shutterstock, StockXpert, Dreamstime, 123RF, Bigstockphoto, Crestock

Having microstock as your workplace


From a professional photographer’s point of view there are many problems with submitting material to microstock. Some are small and some are so big that most professionals stay away. I will mention a few here:

1. Model sourcing. To be successful in microstock you have to submit material to as many agencies as you can, which all have different user right agreement and user restrictions. This makes it literally impossible to hire professional models, because the restrictions are not consistent from one microstock agency to another and are often misleading or simply too vague for a professional agency to “run the risk” of allowing their models to be hired by you for a microstock shoot.
2. Uploading and online management of 1000 images to all the most prominent microstock agencies takes over 200 hours – that’s five weeks of full-time work for just 1000 images. I have two full-time assistants working on this aspect for me alone. Quite an expense for selling at “micro” prices.
3. Extremely under-qualified content members – also called inspectors or reviewers. Because of the “micro” prices involved, the agencies do not have enough money to hire professional and highly trained content members for inspecting material submitted to the agency. This means that most professional photographers will have people judging and reviewing their pictures who are way under the professional level of the photographer. Getting inconsistent and almost random rejections is unacceptable for the professional and results in an almost chaotic management situation when submitting material to ten or more agencies – all rejected material has to be re-uploaded and submitted again. All this so that the photographer can sell his images for $1 USD or lower.
4. No customizable contracts or agreements for photographers with special needs.
5. No legal support for misuse of images in microstock, except for exclusive iStock members.
6. No pricing/commission difference between a grandmother with a point and shoot camera and a user like me who has over $200,000 USD invested in equipment.
7. Copying, duplicating and ripping off good images happens constantly, and personally, as the number one selling microstock photographer, I have between ten and fifteen photographers who pretty much do just that. The agencies do not react to this or reject copied material, which makes it very hard to be successful. These days, I have to make my money in the three months or so from when I launch a new concept series to when it is ripped off completely.
8. Microstock is one big mix of highly professional photographers and highly unprofessional photographers, so having microstock as your workplace can be very tiring. Peer-to-peer conversation and correspondence is important when striving for excellence, but in microstock the forums are primarily filled with bullies and know-it-all but really know-nothing types. Nevertheless, this is your workplace if you choose microstock.
9. Publicity and fan-ship. If you become successful in microstock you should know that you are much more publicly exposed than traditional stock photographers. Direct emails and phone calls are very common. In the middle of the night the phone will ring with some Chinese designer on the other end who has forgotten the time zone difference, or someone will ask me if I could please send him a cropped version of a specific picture now that he has paid $1 USD for it.

These are just a few of the challenges in this new industry. However, there are also many upsides to microstock. If you are about to enter microstock as a photographer, you can read my “Two minute quick guide to microstock,” which will mention most of the things you need to know about where to sign up, what agencies to submit to, income level etc.