Depositphotos Review

Depositphotos is one of the few micro stock start-ups that was successful early on (Veer would be another example). Initially, both sites offered paid photo submissions. Essentially the contributor was paid $0.10 for each photo submitted on Depositphotos for up to a total of 1000 photos. I was able to make a quick $100 using Depositphotos and $1,000 in Veer, just by uploading my work during this initial timeframe.

Depositphotos Pros

Depositphotos’ contributor dashboard is nicely structured and there are some definite benefits to the site such as a low payout ($50), an ultra fast FTP (you can feel the speed even when uploading heavy footage) and the contributor commission is 34%-42%. For beginners, Depositphotos may even provide a more stable stream of revenue than Shutterstock.com (Review) which is great (this is probably because of the challenges that beginners face trying to get photos accepted on Shutterstock). From my experience, I would say that the revenue potential is at about the same level as for Dreamstime.com (Review), Veer.com (Review) and 123RF.com (Review)

Footage also is accepted on Depositphotos, however, I did not upload my videos until 2015 because photo sales were not going that well, so I didn’t think videos would do well either. When I did upload video, it took about 2 months to get my first sale, so we’ll have to see how it goes.

Depositphotos Cons

What I don’t like about this stock is that the owners decided to release a nano stock called Clashot.com. Nano stocks are generally geared towards lower quality stock offered at lower prices. Unfortunately, this tends to lure some of the micro stock clients away and leads to fewer revenue stream opportunities for contributors of Depositphotos, and even if you were to provide your photos to clients on the nano stock site, you would not be able to recoup the revenues lost due to the cheaper prices offered to clients.

Busines Model

Depositphotos has a similar subscription model as Shutterstock. but it is much more flexible. Lets compare shall we?

On Depositphotos a subscriber can download 30 images per day at a rate of $219 per month (equivalent to paying $0.24 per image). With Shutterstock, you pay $249 per month and are able to download 25 images per day (so $0.33 per image). A yearly subscription with Depositphotos costs $1899 ($0.18 per image) while Shutterstock costs $2559 (image price is $0.28). As we can see Depositphotos offers much cheaper prices to it’s clients, however, at the end of the day they do not have the same popularity or traffic that Shutterstock.com has and therefore trying to compare these two micro stocks is like comparing apples to oranges. Overall, as a hobbiest, I would say that Depositphotos is not my last choice for micro stock sales.