Q&A with GG-Raw Photographers

 A little Quest and Answer with the guys of GG-Raw

1. How did you come to stock photography?
2. Why did you choose the two agencies "Shutterstock" & "Fotolia"?
3. Why did you sell your photographs through microstock agencies?
4. Who do you see as the target audience for microstock agencies?
5. Microstock agencies


1. Q: How did you come to stock photography?

A: There have always been an interest for photography in both of us, however, several years ago we only had compact cameras. Over time we recognized that our creativity and artistic freedom is limited by these compact cameras as they don‘t have enough settings. Therefore, better equipment was needed. Though, as you are a student, you don‘t have the money required for professional equipment. So we decided to finance our equipment by selling our photographs. This was our first step towards stock photography. At first we had a looked around at what opportunities were there to sell pictures. Through reading an interesting article in a photography magazine we found out about stock photography, which directly lead our way into the microstock field. We immediately noticed that the microstock agencies will be our future as there are no set topics and you don‘t have to limit your creativity. Let alone the fact that the most important thing in microstock photography is the quantity of pictures, you can make a lot of experiments, learn from them and even profit from them by sending them to agencies.


2.Q: Why did you choose the two agencies „Shutterstock“ & „Fotolia“?

A: It was important for us to find suitable agencies for our project, so the first thing we did was that we registered ourselves at every possible agency known to us from the photography magazines in order to find out more about each agency. After a short time we found out that Shutterstock and Fotolia are the most fitting agencies for our plans as we had the most sales in the shortest period of time. Furthermore, Shutterstock is the most popular agency in the world when it comes to registrations of buyer, which means, that there are always plenty of sales. While Shutterstock is so popular in the whole world, especially in the U.S., Fotolia is the most popular agency in Europe, our home continent.


3. Q: Why did you sell your photographs through microstock agencies?

A: As mentioned earlier, microstock agencies guarantee a very large freedom when it comes to creative experiments and concept works. This freedom was very important to us as we didn‘t want to make assembly line work. We still want to see photography as our hobby. Furthermore microstock agencies are „by far the most profitable way to sell images online”*. This therefore relates back to the fact that there is a great amount of buyers compared to the amount of time you allocate for the pictures. You can see the same principle in the online election campaign of U.S. president Barack Obama. He provided the customer of his website with the opportunity to spend ct.50 to him and with more and more people doing so, he earned up to $40.000.000**


4.Q: Who do you see as the main target audience for microstock agencies?

A: We think the main target group can not be defined as microstock agencies can be interesting for beginners as well as professionals. Microstock agencies can be a simple and easy start to selling photography and can even reach out to be ones ordinary income.


5.Microstock agencies:


Shutterstock is the most popular agency in the world based on the count of registrations of buyers which predetermines a high number of sales.


At Fotolia you have to spend more time on submitting images but therefore your photographs will be sold through Europe‘s most popular agency. Compared to Shutterstock, the sales are a little bit less however the earnings are a higher.


* Yuri Arcurs, World‘s leading stock photographer.
** Lars Lehne, Google Germany.