iSyndica is closing

Very sad news came in… The greatest service up to date for microstock industry is living up its last days. iSyndica will close on October 10. Thousands of photographers who were using this service feel really disappointed now. For many of them, iSyndica was the only microstock tool worth its cost. A comprehensive and functional, it worked with most agencies and strongly optimized the workflow.

There are no reasons shown for this decision; I just hope that those will be disclosed soon. Moreover, I hope it was not a marketing trick from the authors of iSyndica to gain major attention and open the service again. Right now, there is a vacuum on the market for a project like iSyndica. Whoever will do something similar, correcting some iSyndica drawbacks, is going get thousands of users fast.

I see no other substitute for iSyndica. Do you?

Read the original announcement at iSyndica. 

What is micro stock photography?

Alright, I will start this blog with a brief description on what is microstock and why someone would buy or sell the royalty-free images online. Micro stock photography means an industry of low-cost stock images. From a photographer’s point of view, it means some websites where you can sell your photos, and someone can buy them for a micro payment, like a few dollars. Usually, designers and editors are the ones who buy such images.

Traditionally, stock images have been quite expensive, and it was tough to use high-quality photos in a web design project or a small business brochure. When micro stock business model appeared, a much wider audience got an access to high quality inexpensive photographs available just in a few clicks. Nowadays you can notice these images everywhere around you – in the ad posters, on billboards, in the corporate media, on product packaging and even in the private blogs.

Micro stock photography attracted lots of new photographers to the image sales business. Now you don’t have to be a real professional with over 25 years of studio experience to sell the images of green apples online. Yes, quality does matter, but now you can at least try earning some extra money on your hobby. Many amateur photographers can pay off their equipment (camera, lenses and accessories) selling images at photobanks. So the hobby eventually starts to pay off itself! And some who have enough patience start earning decent money. Or if you are an experienced photographer, you can boost your income with online sales. You will need patience to understand the principles of microstocking, but it may be worth it.

There are devoted people making $100K per year on microstocking while the industry leaders earn over a million annually. What I personally like is that the demand for royalty-free photos is growing every year. I will not close my eyes on the constantly growing number of photo contributors, but successful ones make more and more every year. So, if you are ready to explore the new opportunities, there is a list of most popular microstock agencies here. Good luck!