Stocksite Analysis: Dreamstime 2008

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.