Several times a month we get a request to add a new agency to our listings. While we welcome new comers to the business and to a growing playing field, we have seen over hundred of these sites come and go (well, most of them haven’t gone anywhere and that is really the problem, no cashflow).

As a photographer looking to make money selling your images, you have a myriad of competing options driven by a group of competing forces in front of you. In this article we take a look at what I think are the driving forces of buyers to a particular agency (which in turn means success to the agency and maybe to you). Then we will look at the reasons that you may or may not want to list your images. Finally we will take a look at some methods to measure your success, and adjust your strategy.

One of the most overlooked methods of making mone with microstock agencies like Fotolia and 123RF is to take part in their referral programs. While it may sound easy at first, you need to understand a few things about why agencies offer refferal programs and which programs will really work out best in the end.

… You have been shooting and uploaded stock photography for 8 months. While the sales are consistent across several microstock sites and the checks are coming in every month now, you still have yet to see where the hundreds of images you sell each month go. You think… someday I’ll be famous and then it happens… You are driving down the road, look up to that same old billboard for Leslie’s Lollypop Shop and … wait a minute…. That’s your son up there, licking a lollypop you bought from Wal-mart… Your first sighting and it is 11 feet by 40 feet wide. After wrecking your car into the nearest stationary object and pulling out your camera, which you never leave home without, and start shooting for memories sake…