Snapixel have announced they will close as of 31 Aug 2012
Snapixel is a website that allows you to upload and sell your images without an inspection process. We have seen this concept before in Mostphotos [5] and Clustershot [6], and like those sites the lack of review can cause problems with respect to selling images, but it also has a few advantages. The potential for an incredibly long tail of 'randomness' that would not normally be considered stock being one of them. Read the reviews above for my comments on issues posed by this style of site.
A word of caution: You can upload whatever you like to snapixel (with the usual exceptions on adult material etc), regardless of weather or not you have a model release. Read the terms fully and you will see that despite it not being a 'workflow requirement' you do warrant (common sense really) that you have suitable model and property releases for your images, and you are liable to and damages arising if you do not, or upload something that does require a release - regardless of weather or not you knew you needed a release before hand. Be careful what you upload... in fact looking at the terms and how liability all ends back on your lap, be very cautious indeed!
Flickr meets iStockphoto
While Clustershot went for a "smugmug for free" (photographers try to sell photos) feel, snapixel has more of a "flickr community with photo sales" sentiment; in fact in their press release they tag themselves at "flickr meets iStockphoto [7]".
Like Clustershot I can't quite draw direct comparisons between this style of site and other microstock agencies, neither are out to advertise direct to buyers and sell images, both seem to be more angled towards drawing traffic in other sustainable ways. That said I have uploaded images to see what's going on. Snapixel is in the "developing and collecting images phase", they'll need lots of traffic and things like an API and or affiliate program if they want to generate serious sales on their own terms. For now if I had to pick a single site where I would independently try to market all of my photos direct to buyers it would be clustershot [8], but to be fair clustershot is more mature, and Snapixel is still developing.
Extended license prices can be varied by user, the guide prices below uses the standard license prices $8.89 for a 'large' image
Like flickr you can use the site to just display images, or give them away as creative commons [9] in addition to being able to sell them under a handful of custom license prices.
Accounts are free for up to 5GB of storage. You can upgrade to a pro account with unlimited storage, currently priced at 9.95 euros yearly. The pro option also comes with the bonus of being to use the service to backup original files.
Summary
Snapixel is a quick and easy place to upload a portfolio of pre-keyworded images, and yes indeed Yuri has almost 20k images [10] on there, but for many microstockers, especially the casual photographers time might be better spent concentrating on new images at your chosen agencies. This site is yet another slightly new take on selling photos, flickr have so-far resisted getting into selling digital downloads, with all the similarities between Snapixel an Flickr it leaves me again wondering why? The answer to that question might shed light on to the future success or failure of Snapixel.
Update: Nov 2010
Snapixel have been adding new features since my review, the portfolio feature is a useful addition, and their magazine (jpgmag style publication) is in it's 7th edition... I've had a couple of image sales which is nice to see considering I have done zero promotion of my portfolio there - and as I wrote in the clustershot review I feel it's somewhat unfair to compare a site like this to a microstock who take a larger cut of your sales in return for marketing in your behalf. So far so good. I'm quite happy with this type of site if it simply stays up and running proving that it is viable in the long term.
[4]