Microstock: Changes

It seems like there are some changes happening to the microstock industry.

The first, of course, is the claim that they have raised the entry barrier to a much higher standard. From time to time, you will hear people making bitter complaints of how difficult it is to get accepted into the microstock sites, especially the industrial leaders such as Shutterstock & iStock.

Then over iStock, it seems there is a massive project in progress to make amendments to the keywords/tags of all the existing images. I personally had received more than 10 messages in total informing me of changes to the tags of my images. At the high of it, I received 6 messages in a single day!

As the microstock libraries getting bigger and bigger, from a mere of a few thousand images to now you can hit any stocksite with more than a million images, I can say in the future, the standard will get higher and higher and the entry barrier will be further raised. Being a contributor, we can't just sit back and relax and get contented with whatever standard we are now. With the proliferation of digital cameras, there will be more contributors and more images will be available. The customers will be spoilt for choice.

The photographers will have to improve their skills along with the growth of this microstock market. Ah....Continuous improvement.....