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Why engage in microstock? posted on 21st of july, 2010

The main message of microstock sites is: “Why would you let your photos pick the dust on your harddisk? Put them out for sale and earn money.” When that would be the main reason for an amateur photographer to engage in microstock photography, disappointment will not be far away. Yes, you can earn some money with microstock. But the average wages per hour are extremely low and it takes ages to build a reasonable portfolio (and by reasonable I mean over 1000 pictures). And effort. An amateur photographer likes taking good photographs and expressing his/hers creativity in the images. Engaging in microstock means, however, extra work. Keywording the work is essential and especially in the beginning time consuming. Then you have to go through all kinds of review processes to get accepted...

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Tags: beginner earnings engage microstock quality

Comments (5)

	Honestly, shooting stock is not the same as shooting other photography. You have different interests in mind when shooting stock. Often a good stock image is also a good photograph (landscape, wildlife, portrait, macro etc.) but not always. Also keep in mind when a reviewer rejects a photo they will not give you personal feedback. They pick from a pre-set selection of "reasons", sending the one that most closely matches the actual reason. You will get something like: "Distorted pixels due to poor sensor performance, image was interpolated, poorly scanned, upsampled, oversharpened or JPG was not saved at the highest quality." Well, which one is it? It's hard to learn when you get a canned response selected from a list of possible reasons. With over 50000 images waiting to be reviewed at any given time, personal feedback is impossible so don't expect to learn too much from rejection. If you are just an amateur looking to cash in on photos lying around, you shouldn't expect a windfall but...(More) - posted by Digitalexpressionimages on July 23, 2010
	Wow!.. well said.. I agree. :) - posted by Waseefakhtar on July 22, 2010
	That is true! Why not to upload, learn & earn! :) - posted by Mani33 on July 21, 2010

Comments (5)

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