I’ve been trying to jumpstart my photography hobbies again, and as a result I’ve been looking into ways I could profit off some of the images I take. After some research and Googling, I learned about how some amateur photographers have been able to generate a pretty decent monthly income by submitting their portfolios to microstock agencies. Due to their nature, you only get a percentage of the profits for every photo downloaded or sold, but the more photos that get accepted and placed in the database, the more chances you’ll have of seeing your income steadily go up. In addition, they take all the guesswork out of building your own portfolio store, and provide a much needed marketplace to help monetize your images, something you wouldn’t be able to do on your own unless you were already lucky enough to have a high profile website. As hard as it might be to believe, I am unfortunately not one opf those people.

From what I read, iStock and Shutterstock were the two most popular microstock sites, and those photographers who joined and been accepted have done very well with them, especially Shutterstock. So I decided to join the party too. After all, my photos aren’t doing anything for me just sitting on the hard drive. Why not sell them and start padding my income a little? Maybe with the extra cash I can buy some niceties that’ll help me impress the ladies and finally get me a date for those lonely Friday nights.

After making my decision, I quickly went to work. I upgraded my Photoshop software with the Noise Ninja plugin, then spent hours sifting through my photos, picking out the best ones, then running them through Noise Ninja to get rid of any digital and noise artifacts, adjusted the color tones here and there where needed, and by the end of the day I had ten gorgeous photos I felt would easily pass inspection.

I submitted my photo samples to Shutterstock, and got back a response a few hours later:

5061175 Rejected
5061178 Rejected
5061181 Rejected
5061184 Rejected
5061187 Rejected
5061190 Rejected
5061193 Rejected
5061196 Rejected
5061199 Rejected
5061202 Rejected

Regards,
Shutterstock Support

Crikey, I hadn’t seen this much rejection since I last logged on to eHarmony. Apparently I’ve arrived very late in the microstock game here, and the competition to get accepted into agencies like Shutterstock has become so fierce now that even professional photographers are being rejected.

Well that’s just great. If only I could go back to 2005 so I could give myself a good slap across the face and tell that idiot, “Hey you schmuck! Go check out those microstock sites before they start getting popular! You can make some real coinage man!”

*Sigh* Always too little, too late.

On the upside, I can apply again in 30 days. But now that Shutterstock has basically deemed my entire portfolio to be utter crap, I’ll have to start all over again.

I guess I’m not much of a photographer after all.