Corepics is represented by the following agents, where you can buy our high resolution stock photos. The agents below are listed in random order.

1. Dreamstime
2. Featurepics
3. Fotolia
4. Crestock
5. iStockphoto
6. 123RF
7. Stockxpert
8. Bigstockphoto
9. Shutterstock

If you do not have an account with these agencies , then please register for a free account using the links to the agent that appeals most to you. Our agents will set you up with your account within minutes, and then you’re good to go. You can always trace us through this site, so make sure to check back regularly and find out what we’ve been up to.

If you already have an account with any of the agencies, you can log in to your account and follow your routine. Chances are, that if you use the tags used on our site, you’ll come across our photos.

Click the link below to read our stocksite analysis from a buyers’ perspective!

1. Dreamstime

If you are specifically looking to buy one of corepics images, Dreamstime is the place. Dreamstime has almost all our images in its collection. As Dreamstime prides itself as a top microstock agency, sourcing from individual (semi)pro and amateur photographers, the Dreamstime collection contains the more unusual, artistic and specialty themed images. With a generally good quality level, the 5,000,000 images in the Dreamstime collection will offer yu the oddities you are looking for. Using the forum for your image requests will require some guidelines, as contributors tend to spam (pimp, if you please) their irrelevant images, too. On the bright side, Dreamstime’s staff provides excellent support. Dreamstime resides in the top tier of microstock. | sign up | browse our portfolio at dreamstime |

• Subscriptions (10 a day): 1 month: $128,99 | 3 months: $369,99 | 6 months: $679,99 | 1 year: $1299,99
• Subscriptions (25 a day) : 1 month: $239,99 | 3 months: $659,99 | 6 months: $1249,99 | 1 year: $2399,99
• Credit prices: 7 credits: $6,99 | 22 credits: $19,99 | 56 credits: $49,99 | 120 credits: $99,99

2. Featurepics

Featurepics is a very small player in microstock world. Consider it as the nice and friendly dwarf. Their level of support is excellent, and Featurepics allows the photographers to set their own price level, so if you allow yourself the time to search thorougly, you’re bound to find the photo you’re looking for at a nice bargain price. | sign up | browse our portfolio on featurepics |

• Featurepics allows contributing artists to set their own prices. You can buy with visa, mastercard, amex and other major credit cards. Images are available from $1.

3. Fotolia

Fotolia is the site on the move (early 2009). With fotolia’s preference for photos with people in it in various situations, you’re bound to succeed your quest for images at Fotolia, if you’re looking for photos with people in it. Fotolia is a France based, acts French and shows French – thus European styled images and trends. If you want people in your high quality images, Fotolia is the place, and we provide it. | sign up | browse our portfolio at fotolia |

• Subscriptions from: 1 month, 25 a day: €299 (€0.40 per image) | to: 1 year, 250 per day: €12.368 (€0.14 per image)
• Subscriptions follow two methods: One user and corporate subscriptions with 3 users, or unlimited users.
• Credit prices: 10 credit: $10 | 105 credits: $100 | 220 credits: $200 | 575 credits: $500 | 1200 credits: $1000 | 2500 credits: $2000

4. Crestock

This Norwegian site prides itself on it’s slick design, customer service level, and extremely high quality images, for extremely low prices. The first and the latter part are true. Crestock’s collection is not the biggest, but very reasonably priced. Most images on Crestock are only available as small (Less than 2000 pixels), which is well suited for websites, blogs and inserts in prints. | sign up | browse our portfolio at crestock |

• Purchasing single images: S: $5 | M: $10 | XL: $15
• Subscriptions: 1 month: $179 | 3 months: $499 | 6 months: $759 | 1 year: $1799
• Credit prices: 100 credits: $90 | 500 credits: $425 | 1000 credits: $750 | 3000 credits: $1800

5. iStockphoto

iStockphoto is renowned for it’s high quality images, and is the undisputed market leader in microstock. If you require technically perfect images, and don’t want to have to assess image quality for yourself after downloading, iStockphoto is the right place for you. Only the best of the best images are accepted – quality wise, and with a collection of over 5.000.000, you’ll surely find what you’re looking for. Especially if you are a graphic, media or marketing professional. | sign up | browse our portfolio at iStockphoto |

• Subscriptions ($0,28 per image): from: 3 months, 30 per day: $979 | to 1 year, 480 per day$: 46.146
• Credit prices (Pay-as-you-go): 12 credits: $18 | 50 credits: $70 |300 credits: $370 | 1000 credits: $1050 | 2000 credits: $1900
• Corporate accounts: Subscriptions: $0,24 per credit | Pay-as-you-go: $0,95 per credit

6. 123rf

123rf is a relatively small player on the board, targeting itself at the small and medium sized businesses. If you occasionally need an image, and don’t have very high technical requirements, 123rf is a very good option. A unique and very useful feature is their Corporate Stockphoto Intranet offers, free with over 1000 credits. Their customer support service is excellent. You can contact them through a direct chat option, and have 24/7 telephone support. |sign up | browse our portfolio at 123rf |

• Credit prices: 15 credits: €15 | 56 credits: €50 | 350 credits: €300 | 1200 credits: €1000| 7400 credits: €5000
• Subscriptions (5 images per day): 1 months: €89 | 3 months: €199 | 1 year: €749
• Subscriptions (26 images per day): 1 months: €199 | 3 months: €499 | 1 year: €1799

7. Stockxpert

Stockxpert offers a wide variety of photos through various channels, such as Jupiter images, and Photos.com. The site is easy to browse, and finding the image that suits your needs should not be very difficult. | sign in | browse our portfolio at stockxpert |

• Credit prices: 5 credits: $4,99 | 20 credits: $19,99 | 50 creidts: $39,99 | 100 credits: $79,99 | 500 credits: $399,99
• Subscriptions: 1 months: $219,95 | 3 months: $499,95 | 1 year: $999,95

8. Bigstockphoto

Bigstockphoto is a mid sized microstock agency. Their content is growing, and their images are high quality, due to an effective selection process. The search feature on Bigstockphoto has lots of features, allowing you to search on very specific terms. The search results are ordened by relevance and preference, either by the photographer, or by Bigstock itself. This ensures you can easily find images that differ from the other agencies, creating that differentiating power for your presentations and designs. If you occasionally want to purchase a photo, Bigstock is a very good option to pursue. | sign up | browse our portfolio at bigstockphoto |

• Credit prices: 1 credits: $2,50 | 5 credits: $12,50 | 10 creidts: $20 | 30 credits: $45 | 50 credits: $75 | 100 credits: $140 | 300 credits: $300

9. Shutterstock

If you hava a need for a lot of images on a daily basis for virtually nothing, then Shutterstock is the place. For a mere € 199 per month, you can download 25 images per day! If you opt in for a longer period, you’ll get a nice discount on top of that. Shutterstock has a collection of over 6.000.000 images to chose from. Generally speaking, the image quality you can expect is fair, however, if you’re looking for “artistic” type of images, then you’re in for a challenge. | sign up | browse our portfolio at shutterstock |

• Subscriptions (25 images per day): 1 month: €199 | 3 months: €569 | 6 months: €1079 | 1 year: €2049
• On demand: 5 XL or 12 Medium images: €39 | 25 XL or 60 Medium images: €179

Further reading:

Do you need more information? Read what we have to say about our agencies from a photographers point of view.

Note: Prices are taken from the agents websites, and may change over time. To get the accurate image prices per agents, please follow the links to the agent’s pricing lists.

• Dreamstime
• Fotolia: Credits | Subscription
• Crestock
• iStockphoto: Pay-as-you-go | Subscription | Corporate
• 123RF
• Stockxpert
• Bigstockphoto
• Shutterstock

Nothing to brag about, and with only the 10 initial images approved in our portfolio, it is not so much of a surprise. Nevertheless, it is a nice sight seeing a Shutterstock Jackpot (a hattrick for British citizen) on our first day with images online anyway.

At first glance, Crestock seems to be a very high quality and aspiring stock site, with a potential to shake the foundations of the establishment and an appealing website with many features.

That is looking at Crestock at first glance only. Behind their shiny surface, its an entirely different ball-game. According to their own statement, Crestock applies the toughest image criteria, based on an extensive market research of prospect requirements. It is a pity very little of this self-proclaimed differentiating potential becomes apparent – the lowest revenues for contributing photographers go hand in hand with low sales, senseless and contradicting rejection reasons, the longest review times around, and -with a few exceptions – a most unresponsive support service.

A lot of complaints are currently aimed at the Crestock team. Way too many for their small. if not minute team to deal with properly. And a lot of people would accept that, if the Crestock team would appear more open, sincere and just a tad more believable and less arrogant.

The uploading system on Crestock works efficiently, and is, as Crestock proclaims, indeed the fastest around. A shame, the waiting times before images are actually reviewed, effectively nullifies this impressive achievement.

Core statistics

• URL: http://www.crestock.com
• Revenues: Most sales on Crestock are based on the subscription model, at the undisputed lowest revenues of $0,25 per sale.
• Perks: A nice looking site, and Judge Ross, picking the best and the worst image of the day is a nice idea. Crestock’s uploading system is very effective, the fastest of all.
• Downsides: The apparent randomness of the reviewing process, including the excessive long waiting times.
• Upload limits: unlimited.
• Image requirements: According to Crestock: the highest around. According to a lot of contributors: sheer randomness and pal-politics.
• Review times: anywhere between 1 to 3 months
• Penalties: None known.
• Forum: Recently re-installed, and nice looking, but apart from adding to the list of complaints, almost no activity, with exception of spammers.
• Service level: Barely capable of handling all complaints
• Portfolio marketing: None.

Tips and tricks:

• Do not take rejections seriously. Rejections on Crestock are certified lacking grounds.
• Don’t expect anything. Reviewing takes ages, and so does waiting for Crestock to respond.
• If you want Crestock to act, you’ll have to take the initiative and sart a forum thread on the microstockgroup forum.

Bigstockphoto is a mid sized microstock agency. Although the site’s look and feel is not as elaborate, unique and cutting edge as the competition’s sites  do (Rather amateurish and standard, actually), the basic foundation and performance seems stable enough to ensure a stable, yet rather low, revenues, with a steady, equally slow paced growth.

For new members, the website isn’t the most easy to navigate through, and the upload system, although updated in 2008, is rather tedious.

From a customers point of view, Bigstockphoto has a nice and extensive search engine with functional pre-defined search queries. This is also extended to the contributors side, allowing the photographer to create an image hierarchy based on personal preference.

Core statistics

• URL: http://www.bigstockphoto.com
• Revenues: Bigstockphoto’s royalties are fair and transparent. A small sale will make the photographer $0,50, Medium $1,00, Large $1,50, and $2,00 for an extra large sale.
• Perks: The elaborate search and sorting feature.
• Downsides: A grace period of 7 days before revenues can be accessed.
• Upload limits: Limited to 150 images per day, also affected by approval ratio.
• Image requirements: Not worth mentioning, but apparent biased rejections occur regularly. Specifically, Bigstockphoto rejects on grounds of “similarities”
• Review times: Usually within 5 to 10 days
• Penalties: None known.
• Forum: Rather quiet, it’s one of those forums people tend to overlook.
• Service level: Fair. You’ll get your questions answered, but it remains to be seen if those answers are useful.
• Portfolio marketing: Bigstockphoto offers portfolio marketing through their search and sorting function.

Tips and tricks:

• Be weary of images looking remotely identical – they will be rejected.
• Deleting any unsubmitted image will equally affect your approval rating as actual rejections do. Be careful when uploading
• The site states rejected images are deleted periodically, but in 18 months, this has never happened. Don’t get your hopes up!

123RF is a realatively small stock agency. Sales are pretty stable, but low. Although 123RF pursues different and rather innovative ways to expand their customer base, no real evidence of their effectiveness will be witnessed with small portfolio sizes.

123RF is a friendly, in principle rather open stock agent, with a potential which doesn’t seem to be getting off the ground. The involvement of staff and contributors online is almost non-existent. Through the iregluar communiques from 123, it seems that quite a bit of effort is put in finding various new and innovative ways to exploit 123rf’s growing image database. The ideas and means expressed meet up to those criteria: they are new and innovative compared to other stock sites, but their results are overdue.

Basically, the same applies to 123RF’s service levels for contributors. Their live chat support feature is very effective, and initial contacts to the site’s owner seems to be top notch at first. Maybe the staggering growth contributes to the diminishing service levels and faltering transparency, yet recent changes don’t seem to be able to achieve their obviously intended improvement.

On the bright side, 123RF does seem to be attracting a different target group of clients, too. Images that only sell occasionally on other sites might sell better on 123RF.

Core statistics

• URL: http://www.123rf.com
• Revenues: Of all the stocksites, the revenues of 123RF are the least transparent. Although their subscription scheme seems easy enough to understand at $0,36 per sale, all other sales not only seem to fluctuate between $0,20 and more, but as the 123RF database has a severe lag, it is very difficult to get an accurate and instantaneous update of sales.
• Perks: 123RF has a few perks, mainly in site’s features. One of them is the script, to be embedded in contributor’s websites.
• Downsides: Relatively small turn over, due to low sales. The 123RF site is not know for its loading speed.
• Upload limits: No limitations
• Image requirements: Rather low, compared to other stock sites, however, peculiar rejections seem to be surfacing every now and then.
• Review times: Usually within 24 hours, but occasionally much longer
• Penalties: None known.
• Forum: 123RF has a rather dormant forum. Not much happens there, other than the occasional unanswered question, and admin notifications.
• Service level: Varying from very poor to almost immediately. 123RF offers a live chat option, and have an accessible telephone helpdesk. Questions asked by mail may take weeks before they are answered.
• Portfolio marketing: 123RF offers a rather substantial number of ways for portfolio marketing (commenting, public lightboxes, embedded scripts for websites, etc), but they don’t seem to be heavily used.

Tips and tricks:

• Upload, and see what sells. Move ahead from there.
• Don’t expect too much from 123RF, and don’t put too much time in it either. 123RF runs steadily but surely. Be patient.

Stockxpert outperforms expectations. After the site was acquired by Jupiter Images, and some – in hindsight – rather prosperous joint ventures, image sales through Stockxpert are flourishing.

Although the base subscription revenues of $0,30 (regardless of the image size) are on the low side, the number of sales experiences a steady growth. Regular sales through Stockexpert stand out, because of their relative generous revenues, ranging from $0,50 for an extra small size to $5,00 for an extra large sale.

One of the strengths of Stockxpert is their well designed, and fast loading website. The forum is moderately active, and the staff and moderators are kind and down to earth.

Core statistics

• URL: http://www.stockxpert.com
• Revenues: Revenues range from $0,30 for subscription sales on Stockxpert and it’s affiliates through to $0,50 for an extra small regular download, upto $5,00 for an extra large regular download.
• Perks: An apparent steady increase in sales through partner sites, also drawing traffic to Stockxpert itself.
• Downsides: As one of the smaller stock agencies, sales are still rather low compared to the “big three”.
• Upload limits: 50 images per day.
• Image requirements: Rejections are scarce on Stockxpert, but they uphold a firm set of rules.
• Review times: Review times quick, usually 1 day, occasionally 2 days.
• Penalties: Nothing unusual
• Forum: The forum swings from fairly active to almost dormant, and is filled with mostly site related questions.
• Service level: Stockxpert has a functional site mail feature. Contacting support through other channels (mail form, email) requires a bit of patience before an answer is received.
• Portfolio marketing: There’s a pimping option for collections of images on the front page.

Tips and tricks:

• Stockxpert is particularly strict on property. Any indoors situation, or apparent private property requires a property release, even when such a release is not needed from a legal point of view.

Fotolia is a tough cookie to crack. For top contributors, it ranks amongst the top tier. For newbies, Fotolia is a struggle. Although revenues increase  with number  of downloads and portfolio size, resulting in a higher rank on the site, the apparent dislike of critisism of the company’s moderators, as well as the specific type of images Fotolia favours – resulting in high rejection rates for “ordinary subjects” cuch as landscapes – can be rather discouraging for people who start out in microstock.

The sites performance in revenues, however, show a steady inclining line, and once you get a hang of how the site works (a challenge on its own), the pieces of the puzzle come together.

Fotolia wants lifestyle images, featuring people and the more conceptual themed imagery. Although the odd landscape will generate a few downloads if accepted, it’s the more standard, less innovative type of photos that do well. And as long as you don’t ask too many questions, you’ll do well.

Revenues on Fotolia are based on total number of downloads. After 100 downloads, their subscription system generates $0,31, regardless of image size. Regular downloads are scaled based on a credit revenue of  $0,35 for an extra small image, to $0,70 for a small, $1,05 for a medium and $1,40 for an large photo download. An extra large image sale will make the photographer $1,75.

Generally speaking, Fotolia’s management is not known for their ability to communicate changes. Rejections are generic and rather subjective, mostly based on a presumed preference for style and type of  images.

One of the strenghts of Fotolia is, that it targets clients locally, including localised sites. Also, there is a rather elusive and hard to find blog style site, where contributing photographers can start their own personalised shop, featuring their images, using Fotolia’s sales system.

Core statistics

• URL: http://www.fotolia.com
• Revenues: Revenues are transparent, and based on a royalty percentage of 35% on the credit price of $1. An XS is 1 credit, X costs 2 credits, M 3, L 4 and XL costs 5 credits. Subscription royalties are $0,31 for any size. The percentage increases as the number of total downloads increases.
• Perks: An apparent steady increase in sales.
• Downsides: The management is said to be despotic, and Fotolia is peculiar about the type of images they approve.
• Upload limits: No limitations
• Image requirements: Fairly non descriptive and subjective. They only want a specific type of image
• Review times: Review times are approximately 3 to 5 days.
• Penalties: From sources around the internet, it seems Fotolia bans anyone who’s a pain in the butt.
• Forum: Fotolia’s forum is heavily moderated. Apparently, posts are deleted frequently, thus the level of information on Fotolia’s forums is rather superficial.
• Service level: When asking a question via their online service form, you’ll receive a reply within 48 hours. Such a reply is quite often rather  non-committing, and in does in some cases not provide an answer.
• Portfolio marketing:Fotolia is in the process of enrolling various perks, allowing contributors to promote their work through Fotolia’s affiliates.

Tips and tricks:

• Take the time to learn how fotolia works.
• Don’t be discouraged by the rejections. They don’t tell you anything about the quality of your photos, except that Fotolia doesn’t want them, and that’s OK, other agencies will approve them, and they’ll sell. If not immediately, then eventually.
• Don’t be too critical about Fotolia, apparently, they don’t like that.

iStockphoto, owned by Getty images, is the undisputed market leader in Royalty Free photography. The brand promotes itself through heavy and effective marketing, and is without doubt the most professional Royalty free photo stock site.

Despite their position as market leader, the site’s performance for non-exclusive contributors with a relatively small portfolio stays behind in growth compared to its direct competitors. This is mainly because recent changes to their search engine, iStocks uncanning favoritism of exclusive members, and their increasingly tightening policy on image inspection.

This favoritism is also the main difficulty for new members. Due to various restrictions for non-exclusive contributors, it is quite a  challenge building up a decently sized portfolio.

iStocks inspectors rate amongst the best, and seem to be able to spot the tiniest flaw, most often overlooked by the photographer.  Yet recent changes in policy, seemingly increasing favoritism of exclusive contributors, are on the  verge of being ridiculously strict. Executing their perogative to uphold extremely high image quality standards, iStock decided to ban out keyword spamming by rejecting images for keywords and take it to extremes in the process. The main downside of their high image quality requirements is that it tends to kill the creativity in search of new and unexplored fields of photography.

iStockphoto manages to maintain its position as market leader, and revenues remain in the top tier. Customers also seem to be loyal to iStockphoto, eventhough the price increase of early 2008, as iStock continues to deliver high quality photos.

Core statistics

• URL: http://www.istockphoto.com
• Revenues: For non-exclusive contributors, a 35% royalty pay-out applies. For exclusive members, this percentage rises to a maximum of 65% as the total number of downloads rises.
• Perks: The features of iStock’s website are extremely advanced, and the community exhales a feeling of professionalism. For fun and pleasure, the Steel Cage is the ultimate playroom for photoshop addicts.
• Downsides: For non-exclusive members, the favoritism of their exclusive peers is getting to a point where it’s almost obnoxious.
• Upload limits: For non-exclusive members, upload limits are set to 15 images per week
• Image requirements: Extremely high, but generally speaking, istock inspectors get it right.
• Review times: Review times are approximately 7 days, but can also exceed 10 days.
• Penalties: Administrators and reviewers can suspend accounts when Terms and Conditions are violated. In case of misconduct, a temporary ban on the forums can – apparently – be set.
• Forum: The forum is active, and is frequented by professionals; it is a meeting point for both clients and contributors
• Service level: Service is rather appalling when support is requested by email. iStock, however, does also offer support by phone  via a toll free number in most countries.
• Portfolio marketing: There are various ways to promote your portfolio. A contributors portfolio page features a blog, and full html formatting, including hot linking of images is allowed to draw traffic through lightboxes.

Tips and tricks:

• Do not get discouraged by rejections. iStock’s standards are excruciatingly high, but if the rejection is based on grounds of image quality, they usually get it right. Don’t waste your time fixing the image, but move on.
• Keywording should be accurate.
• Don’t get lured into iStocks exclusive program (or any exclusivity deal) No matter how tempting the perks of becoming exclusive seem, for the average contributor, the total sum of revenues of all agencies will exceed the added exclusivity bonus in royalty percentage iStock offers.

Dreamstime is one of the bigger Royalty Free stock sites around. The US-Romanian company is  extremely active in generating new leads and joining forces with other online initiatives, which shows in a steady growth in both number of sales as well as total monthly income for contributors. The Admin and moderators make themselves known, and seem to be omni-present, resulting in an excellent level of customer  service.

With a scaled price, based on image size and number of downloads per image, the revenues of Dreamstime rank high, compared to their competitors. Royalties are based on a percentage of roughly 60%, depending on whether the sale happened directly through Dreamstime or through one of their affiliates. This results in revenues of $0,35 for an Extra Small – blog sized – image with few downloads, to $8,- for an XXL sized photo with more than 100 downloads in total.

Dreamstime aims at creating a tight community by offering various additional services, such as a monthly assignment, with nice prizes. The agency also rewards both customer and photographer for every “milestone” image, which is set at 100.000. Dreamstime also offers its members to contribute to their blog, in return for one download credit, and has a keymentor feature, which is basically a peer to peer keywording service for photographers. Having an image keyworded by your peers costs the  photographer $0,40 per image, keywording an image adds $0,02 to your account balance. The forum itself is fairly active, but rather strictly moderated by the Dreamstime Staff. The quality of the contents of the forum differs, but is mostly filled by questions of new members.

Core statistics

• URL: http://www.dreamstime.com
• Revenues: Roughly 60% of the sales price of an image. The price  of an image is based on downloaded size, and the number of times the image in question has been downloaded earlier.
• Perks:Montly assignments, peer to peer keywording service, a large quantity of affiliated sites, selling the Dreamstime content, active marketing and very good  service.
• Downsides: Relatively long review times and the rather rigurous forum moderation.
• Upload limits: Upload limits are based on acceptance rate. With an acceptance rate higher than 80%, 150 images can be uploaded per day.
• Image requirements: Reasonable. Any decent photo is accepted
• Review times: Review times are approximately 7 days, but can also exceed 10 days. Hardly any images are reviewed during the weekends
• Penalties: Administrators and reviewers can suspend accounts when Dreamstime’s Terms and Conditions are violated
• Forum: The forum is relatively active, but mostly populated by new members
• Service level: Service levels are excellent, as is staff involvement.
• Portfolio marketing: There are various ways to promote your portfolio on Dreamstime. The portfolio profile page allows basic html links to collections, and exposure through the forum and by participating in the assignments is said to increase sales.

Tips and tricks:

• Acceptance rates are very important in Dreamstime’s search engine. The higher your acceptance rate is, the higher up your images will appear in the search engine.
• Image acceptance rates also affect the number of images you can upload on a daily basis.
• Portfolios with more than 750 images get roughly 5% exposure compared to the top contributors. Larger portfolios will generate more traffic, which will result in more sales.

Shutterstock is the largest subscription site for royalty free images around. Shutterstock is typically a high volume site – sales wise – with only a few pennies for the photographer. Due to the high volume sales, the total revenue from Shutterstock rates amongst the highest in royalty free sites.

Shutterstock remains one of the sites without maximum upload limits for photographers. Together with the short review time of approximately 1 to 2 days,  this results in extremely large quantities of new images per week (occasionally exceeding 70.000). As consequence, new images tend to be downloaded a couple of times when the image is fresh, to then fall into oblivion amidst the millions of other photos. Only a handfull of images retain ther momentum, and are downloaded more frequently.

Recently,  Shutterstock successfully introduced ther “On Demand” system, with considerably highter revenues for the photographer, offering the ability to customers to buy a handfull of images when needed, in stead of having to sign up for their subscription schemes, allowing 25 or more downloads for a period of at least one month.

Core statistics

• URL: http://www.shutterstock.com
• Revenues: $0,25 per download for the first $500, then $0,30 until the account balance reaches $1500, $0,33 until $3000, after which revenues per download increase to $0,36 per download
• Perks: An extended licence has a fixed revenue of $28, On demand downloads generate $1,48 or $2,56. Furthermore, $0,05 is added to your account for a backup on CD, as well as for both buyers and contributor referrals
• Downsides: The high number of weekly uploads reduces exposure and initial sales peaks of newly uploaded images.
• Upload limits: none
• Image requirements: Reasonable. Any decent photo is accepted, but images with extreme lighting and / or harsh shadows are frowned upon.
• Review times: once approved as contributor, it takes 1-2 days before images are reviewed.
• Penalties: Administrators and reviewers can issue warnings when large batches of images are rejected for being sub-par. After 3 warnings, you need to complete your application again to regain submitter rights.
• Forum: Shutterstock has a very active forum, but the content of the forums is mediocre, mostly friendly chit-chat. There’s barely any admin involvement in the forum.
• Service level: Service levels are high when the issue at hand is important (serious questions are treated and answered as such).
• Portfolio marketing: Shutterstock does not have any means of marketing your portfolio, other than on your own site through referral codes for buyers and submitters

Tips and tricks:

• Upload regularly, to maintain momentum in sales
• Quantity and portfolio size are essential to maintaining momentum in sales