My first

The first microstock site I contributed to (would have me) was Fotolia (http://www.fotolia.co.uk/). Originally we fell quickly in love. I had recently been shunned by another (Istockphoto) and, frankly, I was on the rebound. To start with all was well. I felt loved and appreciated and Fotolia accepted most of my output. Some sales (by some I mean.....one) soon followed.

And then something changed between us. It changed suddenly. It was almost as if someone had flicked a switch labelled "stop taking just any old crap that never sells."

Now my first love rarely welcomes my meagre offerings, probably because they are.......well meagre. That said some of my first offerings taken with a Fuji bridge camera with a sensor the size of a bee's testicles are still selling well. In Germany. It is still an utter mystery to me why certain microstock sites sell some shots repeatedly and then the same shots die on their arse on other sites. A puzzle!

Anyway the German's obviously have a penchant for rubber dingies as this is the shot that sells most.

So Fotolia then. Well until they turned all my stuff away (my acceptance rates have dropped from about 60% to about 20%) they were pretty good. Pretty fast review process, easy enough to up load, reasonable commissions. Very good for the rubber dingy genre.

Since those early, heady days I have branched out a fair bit (any port in a storm) and I will be telling you more about my other microstock adventures soon!

In the mean time if you fancy a laugh here is my Fotolia portfolio - http://en.fotolia.com/p/200403654