BigStock Review
Review Updated: 2017
Owned by Shutterstock, the BigStock microstock agency seems to be just finding its feet recently. Some recent changes and continual website improvements mean that BigStock is finally starting to take shape as a reliable earner. A few years ago I was dubious of their potential, but now it’s worth signing up with BigStock along with all the other respected stock agencies. If you’ve got a decent portfolio you can probably expect to see reasonable sales fairly soon.
One scary move they made was to introduce video footage subscriptions at insanely cheap rates. The only good news in it, is that they didn’t open it up to contributors. Rather the footage is sourced privately. I’m not sure why anyone would be crazy enough to sell footage for such low prices, but lets hope this doesn’t affect the industry as a whole.
BigStock Review – Why Sign Up?
- An established agency, owned by one of the biggest players in the industry
- Reviewers are reasonable and review times are pretty quick
- Continual improvements to all aspects of the website are keeping it fresh and relevant
- Sales have increased dramatically
- They are reputable, and owned by Shutterstock
BigStock Review – Downsides?
- Upload process can be lengthy with image attribution
- Royalties sit around 30%, with no room for improvement with time
- Website can be a little underwhelming
BigStock Review Fast Facts
Media Types
BigStock sells the following media:
Stock photos
Vector illustrations
Sale Types
BigStock sells using the following methods:
Subscriptions
Credit packs
BigStock Review – Conclusion
BigStock used to be a single image site – that is, you bought one image at a time. Since they have introduced subscriptions, sales volumes have picked up massively. Of course, you don’t quite get as much per sale, but for me my overall income has increased almost each month since subscriptions came along. In the end, isn’t that what we all want?
BigStock have been marketing quite aggressively of late and it seems to be bringing in the customers. They even had a very direct marketing campaign targeting disgruntled iStock clients (“Are you iStuck?” being the tagline). With the might of Shutterstock behind them, it seems that BigStock is finally taking off.
One reason to join BigStock earlier rather than later is that their royalty system is based on how many downloads you’ve had in the past 12 months. So why not get images online and sales coming in as quick as possible to try and boost that royalty rate for subscriptions above the base rate?