I started my adventure with microstock photography with submitting pictures to iStockphoto in November 2007 and, later, to other agencies. Today, I just reached the golden canister level at iStock. The picture below crossed that milestone of 10,000 downloads.

Nowadays, iStock dominates my microstock sales providing more than 40% of earnings with a portfolio of ~1300 pictures.

I am getting more upload slots, 25 instead of 20 per week, which is nice. I don’t think that I am really ready to upload more pictures to iStock, but the process will be more convenient. I am not sure if there are any other benefits of reaching the gold level in my case, i.e., not an exclusive photographer.

Some milestones in my iStock performance during last 2 and half years:

Related post:
Microstock Earnings – First 30 Months

Yesterday, I reached 1000 pictures in my Dreamstime portfolio with this image of green peas from my garden. It feels like just a few days ago I was shooting quite different picture of the same peas. A stormy spring in Colorado with a lot of hail was not very kind for my garden.

Today, I requested my 7th payout from Dreamstime, so it looks like this microstock agency is working pretty well for me. It is on the third position in earnings after iStock and Shutterstock.

However, the growth of my Dreamstime portfolio slowed down during last few months. My effective acceptance rate dropped down below 50%, i.e., I am submitting selected pictures only, and they take only 64% from them. “Too many shots of the same item or from the same series” is the rejection theme. It seems that for some inspectors the main picture subject is not important. The same prop (e.g., my wooden scoop) may be a reason for a rejection.

Here is how my Dreamstime portfolio compares to some other microstock sites. ShutterStock accepts almost everything what I submit. The size of my iStock portfolio is kept down by their uploading limits, but my acceptance rate stays the same at 75-80%. My Fotolia portfolio is also quite small due to rather low acceptance ratio. It used to be really low last year, but improved during recent months.

After 18 months I have my portfolios in 8 agencies with some regular earnings. These portfolios differ in size and, also, in content. The differences will grow in time. I expect to to have two times more pictures with SS than IS soon.

A little milestone in my microstock photography: the 1000th download from my iStockphoto portfolio. I have 652 pictures online there after 16 months of submitting. My total earnings from iStock are $1,055.52 which makes just about $1 per sale.