iStockPhotoReviews 196

They make you buy credits at full price to purchase your image, then tell you that they expire a year from the date of purchase... They do not refund your credits, they just are gone. Even though you paid good money for them. When i complained about it they basically said tough luck. They are stealing your money by making these credits have an expiration date. There is no need for them to expire if i paid for them. Very annoying!

Do not send photos to iStockphoto. It is no longer the most powerful in terms of sales, indeed Fotolia and Dreamstime can do better. I have been contributor in iStock since November 2007. At the beginning all was at its best, I uploaded lots of photos and my sales increased. Then I became exclusive and my sales kept growing from 80 files per month to 120 in January 2009. But on February 17th, my sales dropped from an average of 5/day to less than 1 per day. Since then I could not sell more than 2 files peer day and last week was dreadful with only 8 files sold. I worked hard to upload 500 files - in fact 1000 because 50% files are rejected - and when I began to earn some money, they threw me by the window. Impossible to know why my sales dropped in one night. The support says that its because the quality of other contributors has increased, but if you look at the database, you don't see a significant quality increase and anyway the quality on the files could not increase 10 fold in one single night, on February 17th. What they did with me. They used my files to draw traffic via Google paying me only 25% of the price and when I could earn some money they pushed my sales down. In iStock there are some happy few who sell 300 files a day or more and earn several thousand Dollars per month. These contributors are protected and most customers are directed to these contributors. The new ones see their best files rejected when the risk to compete with those of the happy few, I was here only to make volume and to attract people from the net. Other contributors took the money and iStock make fantastic profits without any risk.

Pro/Amateur photographers turn your images into cash overnight - I have always been a little bit skeptical about giving away "rights" to some of my more precious images, but this is probably one of the best sites to start selling some of your images for cash. It is great for both pro photographers as well as advanced amateur photographers. I have taken photos of some of my rings and sold a few hundred of those photos. Take a look at this:

http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup.php?id=*******

It is merely a photo of a girl in front of a laptop... it got sold 7000 times and that photographer made some pretty nice cash. Best of all, you don't really need to be a pro stock photographer. Here are my few tips for this site:

1. You don't really need a pro level DSLR... it helps if you have one, but even if you don't you can still join. I joined when this site first launched and some of my photos which sold a few hundred times were taken on a small pentax optio 4MP camera. You might need to say you have a pro DSLR for them to "approve you". But just edit the EXIF data to hide the camera and upscale your photo if you need a little higher resolution. It is not the camera that makes the photo.

2. If you apply to be a photographer, make sure the sample images that you send them to become approved as a photographer are really really good. Take a look at the shots that sell the most and imitate those types of looks.

3. Sometimes it is best to figure out what photos are "rare" and take those shots. I had a friend who is a doctor and he let me just take photos of his stethoscope and reflex hammer and those have been some of my best sellers. Don't just do what everyone is doing... too much competition.