Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Microstock: A Caste System

The Caste system in India is well known around the world, and the system is now being 'introduced' into the modern Microstock industry.

In the past, contributors can join almost as many sites as they wish, without any obvious disadvantage, only advantage as you can sell your images to much more people, with a much bigger client base.  That has changed in the past one or two years.  If you are not exclusive with them, your images may not even have a chance for the buyers to see.

In the past, once I had some new uploads, the new images will get their fair share of views from the buyers, although they might not buy eventually, but at least I had a chance.  Now, if you are not exclusive, your new images immediately go to a second class 'category'.  They will not show up on top of the search results.  I was scratching my head why my new images don't even have a single view, and that's the answer.

This is in particular with one of the most influential microstock agencies.  Luckily, there are still other agencies for you, but then they are also introducing new measures, such as putting you on different levels based on your past performance.

Microstock is getting tougher and tougher.  Anyway, it is my way of sharing my photos at least then they don't just sit in my harddisk drive doing nothing.   

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