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First time on marcor$tock? This page will give you directions to get the best out of all that this blog has to offer!
You’re here because you’re interested about Microstock and Digital Photography. Great news: you’re in the perfect place!
In this blog you will find all the information you need to start selling your photos online, with insights about microstock agencies and all the news from the world of stock photography. You’ll also find information and updates about my personal activity as a microstocker, which hopefully can be a source of inspiration or comparison for you, including my tutorial for preparing images for the microstock market, as well as a large collection of sources – both online and offline – for digital photographers and microstockers.
The Five Sections of This Website
The site is organized into five main sections, all easily accessible from the menu located at the top of the page, always visible even during the scrolling of the articles:
MICROSTOCK
In this section you will find all the information and advices that you need in order to not get lost in the world of Microstock: main definitions and history of this market, just to understand what we’re talking about; an overview of the best selling images, to help you develop your own sales strategies; an in-depth discussion about the legal issues that affect what images you can sell online; how they use the images that we sell through microstock and how to get to know it; how much you can earn with microstock and how earnings are calculated by the agencies; how to promote your microstock activity and how to get additional earnings through the affiliate systems; what it means to become exclusive authors, analyzing the advantages and disadvantages.
AGENCIES
In the “agencies” section there are comprehensive reviews of the world’s leading microstock agencies, such as Shutterstock, 123RF, Depositphotos, iStock, Adobe Stock, Dreamstime, Pond5, Bigstock, Canstockphoto. For each agency, all the details that will help you to decide if it suits your needs: earnings, accepted file types, time required for revision of the files, the severity of the reviewers, the popularity of the agency and more. In this section you will also find a ranking based on my personal evaluation of all aspects that characterize the relationship between author and agency, as well as a series of comparative tables on all key aspects for contributors (earnings, referrals, payment methods and more). Finally, in the right sidebar you can find the direct links to the websites of the main agencies, always visible on each page or section of this site.
ABOUT ME
Do you want to know who is behind this blog? In this section you will find information about me and about my activities as a microstocker. You can learn more about the photographic gear that I use regularly, or take a look at my portfolio and check the state of the art of my collaborations with dozens of microstock agencies. Furthermore, you can browse the gallery with my best works and read the sales statistics released every month on this blog. Finally, you can read examples of how my images are used by customers of the microstock agencies.
TUTORIAL
In the “Tutorial” section you will find all the steps of my workflow featuring everything you need to sale your images online. I’ll explain how I import and organize files through Adobe Lightroom and how I edit my images to make them ready for sale, either using Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop. I will also illustrate the basic steps for microstockers: how to perform keywording of the images through a proper use of the metadata; how to upload the images to the agencies and what are the most useful software for this process; how to complete the submission and the selection of categories once the files have been uploaded to the server of the agencies.
SOURCES
Are you looking for sources to improve your technique or simply to expand your knowledge about Microstock and Digital Photography? In this section you will find an extensive bibliography with all the most important books about Basic Techniques and Advanced Techniques of Photography. You will also find books about softwares and techniques for editing images, with authors like Scott Kelby, Michael Freeman, Joe McNally, Bryan Peterson and Biver/Fuqua/Hunter. In the bibliography you will even find a list of collections and monographs of the greatest masters of world photography, that will surely inspire the growth of your photographic culture. Among the other sources, there is a long list of websites about digital photography and microstock and the state of the art of the web resources, softwares and apps to better manage the microstock activity.
How to Contact Me
You can get in touch with me in several ways: first, you can send a message by using the form on the CONTACT ME page (in the top menu). You can also comment on any of the site content (pages or articles) through the Disqus system. In all cases I will personally read your message or your request and I will answer as soon as possible!
And please remember: all the contents of this blog are absolutely free and always will be! The only thing I ask you, if you find this site useful for your activity, is to share the content, either clicking “like” on any of the articles or sharing it on your favorite social network (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter). You will find the social sharing buttons at the bottom of every article and also in the scroll bar on the right of every page. In this way you will contribute to grow the popularity of the website and will help me to generate quality content always up to your expectations.
I hope you will find all the information you are looking for on Marcor$tock!
Enjoy the read!
