Shutterpoint has closed as a sales marketplace - this review is for archive reference only
Shutterpoint is not a traditional microstock site as it charges photographers to upload and host their photos, in return they receive a larger than microstock commission on any sales made.
There was a peak of interest in this site back in 2006 and interest has since died off, I know it's very vain of me to suggest this, but the site looks ugly, and designers (your buying customers!) like to look at nice things. I don't see how a site dealing in visual media can have anything less that top notch design, in fact come to think of it, every website that wants to be taken seriously should!
Along with sites like fotolibra.com and several others, I just can't accept that someone can charge photographers to upload their images and place them online for sale. Unless the site has significant traffic to pipe to the photographer, It's just it's wrong. These sites try to lock a photographer into uploading to their site, even though there is little traffic, it's true that you will earn a larger cut, perhaps 80% or more, but its no good if that is 80% of NOTHING. There will always be those that suggest the people who have paid to upload their work will be more professional than people on sites which offer this for free, I think looking at the quality of the work on the major micro stock [5] sites that anyone making that statement should do a little more research. In fact it is the major micro stock sites that are keeping a tight grip on which photos they accept, each site has its own 'stock style' and you can see that just by looking at the images.
There is a significant key advantage from the paid storage style sites (probably the only one), if you have someone who is interested in purchasing a photos from you, you could pop it onto shutterpoint and get the customer to go and buy it from them (i.e. they deal with the transaction, download etc. I've been in the situation a few times several years ago where someone has seen an image on my blog and I've had to try to sell it to them by asking them to send money to paypal - customer lost!
The site offers it's members a few quite useful features including a 'search spy' which displays previous searches and the numbers of results each search returned along with the most popular keywords. Their "Marketable Photography Guide" pdf file makes a good read for beginners and intermediate microstock photographers. Unlike plenty of 'stagnant' microstock sites new features are being added to the shutterpoint on a regular basis. Bulk management of uploaded photos could be improved significantly but excellent statistics show numbers of views and ratings on each photo.
The site provides an affiliate program and some useful feeds and widgets for your blog/website, but the affiliate commissions structure and rates make the program one of the least attractive in the microstock industry. shutterpoint might work for some people, there are some good pay for upload space sites available, but i don't really think this is one of them. Have a look at cutcaster [6] instead.
Conclusion
After 6 months review of sales on a small portfolio on shutterpoint, I'm not impressed. Perhaps my sample of 50 images was too small (I'd have to pay to upload more). Noted that I have not been sending potential clients to the site to buy my photos and also noted that shutterpoint is perhaps not the best place for my microstock portfolio. Looking at the stats I can see hundreds of views from guests and registered photographers, but few views from registered buyers and just one sale; half-a-dozen comps were download by 'guests'. If you are using this type of service then I'd recommend that for the amount of work and expense involved that you are at least selling premium / difficult to obtain subjects and charging premium prices.
Shutterpoint has closed as a sales marketplace - this review is for archive reference only