Where to start?

Artists that want to start selling their work online, often wonder which site "is the best", where to start. In my opinion the most important factor should be site popularity. We can only guess how many people actually buy assets, but one information is freely available - site traffic. You can check sites like Alexa or Quantcast for traffic data of individual websites and compare it with other sites in the business.

In the 3D assets market the most popular site, in terms of traffic, is Turbosquid. You can see on the graph that other sites are way behind and that's something typical for Internet in general. People tend to favor one site, one company and so you get eBay, Google or Youtube with a huge share of the market usually well exceeding 50%. My guestimate is that in the 3D market Turbosquid has at least 50% share and that's why I think it's a good idea to start selling assets there. Once you upload a couple of models and see what's selling well you can start uploading to other sites. The other 3D market places with significant traffic are The3Dstudio.com and Exchange3D. Others, like Falling Pixel or Flatpyramid are still way behind in terms of page views, but some vendors are quite happy in terms of the income they get. One misleading factor for Turbosquid statistics might be the fact that they host the forums for gmax software and that might generate some traffic. Nevertheless Turbosquid has been very good for me and I made quite a lot of cash there. Another factor would be the percentage you get from the base price. Turbosquid gives you 50% of the base price, some sites are more generous and will give you 55-60%. I believe that a small site called Altair Models has a 85% royalty, but with nearly no traffic it might not be worth the effort.

In the photography and illustrations market there is also one site clearly in the lead - iStockphoto. The other ones aren't too far behind as you can see on the graph and certainly iStockphoto does not have a 50% share of the market. The graph shows only two runner-ups, but actually there are three sites that are going neck to neck in terms of Internet traffic - Dreamstime, Shutterstock and Fotolia. I find all three very interesting - Dreamstime has a very clever management area and upload tools, Fotolia gets me most profit and Shutterstock has an interesting business solution. They charge buyers for a subscription instead of 'per image' price and that creates more downloads for the artists. The neat thing about photo stock sites is that they often show specific data with number of views and downloads. That's a pretty useful thing if you want to see what sells and what topics are popular. Some images are selling in hundreds or even thousands so even with the low royalty of a couple of dollars (at best) per picture one can get serious money.

The footage market is a bit more complicated to analyze as both iStockphoto and Shutterstock sell footage as well as photography and vector art. Looking at the numbers at Alexa we see that only 1% of the traffic at Shutterstock are visits to footage.shutterstock.com. It's hard to say exactly how much of the traffic is generated by the motion content for iStockphoto, but one could assume that it's more or less 1% as well. Still that would give both companies the lead over the more specialized sites. Those markets dedicated to motion and/or music content are Pond5 in the lead and Revostock a bit behind the leader. Numbers for US are shown below.

Clearly site popularity is a major factor, but in the end people tend to favor some sites over the others for various reasons. Some might like the way the tools for publishers function, but at the same time, be put of by the actions of the support stuff. It's a good idea to read the forums, as almost all sites run a community site for artist to discuss certain issues. Registering is free on all of the websites, so you might just as well start selling on all of them at once, but from my experience I would advise to start with 2-3 of the biggest sites and after you get the idea of what is worth publishing move your collection to other sites. Who knows ... you might find after a while that giving exclusivity rights for your work (that usually means a higher percentage royalty) gives you best financial results and end up with only one market place.
Happy selling!

What, where and how?!

Are you a photographer, an animator, 3D modeler or a vector artist? Would you like to increase your income significantly and gain more creative freedom? I'm sure you do :) and I will try to show you how to do it.
It's not very easy, but with enough motivation and hard work every professional artist is capable of getting a maximum revenue for his creative effort. I'm talking about selling your creative work through specialized websites. The thing I most like about this way of earning your money is the fact that the system evaluates very well your skills and talent. The better you are, the harder you work the more money you will earn. Also this is a global market, so it’s a great opportunity for many talented people from developing countries, to work and live the way a creative and talented person deserves.

There are three areas I will like to cover on this site. The first one is the area I’m most proficient with - 3D models. I’m a 3D artist with several years of professional experience and that was the obvious choice for me to start selling creative content. Lately I started to sell rendered illustrations and animations on a dozen of stock image and footage sites. This seems like another great way to increase my earnings, but those sites should be most interesting for professional photographers and filmmakers.
The 3D market is still very ‘young’ and immature in terms of the way the sites work, the amount of traffic and sales. You will not find some useful features that are available on most of the stock image/footage sites. But already there are serious money to be made in the 3D market. Despite hundreds of thousands of models there are still a lot of niches and opportunities for creative artists.

The second area is the stock photography market. This is BIG business - millions of photos, thousands of photographers, huge traffic and a lot of customers. On some of the sites the level is very high and even talented photographers find it difficult to get their images approved. Still there are many niches and one should look for some interesting topics or visual styles that might be of interest for potential clients. Most stock photography sites sell vector art and illustrations as well and those areas are probably better for newcomers to the market. Except artistic skill you need professional equipment as low quality photos won’t be accepted by any of the major sites.

The third area is stock footage, VJ loops and any other “motion” content. This market is also pretty new, but growing quite fast. Currently there are just a handful of sites that are devoted purely to motion content. This market is also very promising with many niches and various opportunities.
All markets have a lot of room for expansion and I expect to see a boost of interest in the years to come. Computer games, interactive television, third generation mobiles even the e-paper, they will all increase demand for graphical content.
For now before I go into detail about the pros and cons of each site, feel free to use the links I provide in the side bar to start selling (or buying) content.