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TwitterStock Sites - Referral Details
On this table you can view all the referral schemes (or affiliate / rewards programs) available at a glance
(referrals are where you earn commission by sending prospective buyers or new photographers to a microstock site)
Click the site name on the left to view full details of the site and our rating
Read our guide about how to make the most of referral schemes
| Site | Referral Scheme | |
|---|---|---|
| 123rf | Yes, 15% of purchases for first year and a commission around 10% on each sale a referred photographer makes |
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| Bigstockphoto | 35% of referred buyers but only the first purchase, not over the first year like some of the better sites, and just $5 for a referred photographer who uploads 75 photos or more - not one of the best value affiliate systems... |
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| Canstockphoto.com | Yes - 10% of purchases, within 6 months, up to $50, $5 for every 50 photos a referred photographer sells. |
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| Crestock.com | 50% commission on all purchases by new users for 6 months, and 10% of photographers earnings for 6 months. |
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| Cutcaster.com | Yes - 10% of buyers transactions and 5% of referred photographers transactions for 2 years |
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| Depositphotos.com | Referred Photographers: $0.03 per subscription download, $0.05 per image uploaded max of 1000 images. Referred buyers: 15% pay-as-you go revenue (after commission), 4-10% of subscriptions |
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| Dreamstime | Yes - 10% of buyers purchases and 10% purchases from referred photographers' uploads for three years - excellent. |
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| Featurepics.com | Yes, they are still working on the reporting, 1.5% of referred buyer purchases, and purchases of referred photographers. |
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| Fotolia | 15% - 'photographer commission' on purchases of credits only, for 5 years |
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| Fotomind.com | Yes, referral of photographers, 25% of their sales forever |
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| ImageVortex | Yes - Separate to the photographers area run by a third party, commission of 10% on sales for 90 days. |
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| iStockphoto | YES : Moving Goal Posts, previously only paid for recruiting a new photographer who earns at least $100, now one off $10 payment for recruiting a new buyer who purchases a minimum package. Not one of the best schemes in the industry. |
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| Microstockphoto.com | yes 20% of buyer sign-ups only |
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| MostPhotos.com | Yes, 1 Euro ($1.70 approx) per sale from a referred photographer or buyer, for as long as they use the site. (no time limit on referrals) |
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| PantherMedia | Yes, 10% of sales and 10% of referred photographer earnings |
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| Pixmac.com | Yes, 25% of pixmac's net earnings from buyers and photographers sales (note net earnings - it won't be 25% of what a buyer spends if the image is via fotolia) |
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| Shutterpoint.com | 2% of sales and 10% of new photographer sign ups (who have to pay!) |
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| Shutterstock.com | Yes - 20% on sales of new subscriptions, $0.03 per image download from your referred photographers forever. Excellent scheme if you are able to refer other photographers. |
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| Vivozoom.com | Yes, buyers only, 5% for 5 years |
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| YayMicro.com | Yes, 0.1 Euro per sale on referred buyer and photographer downloads for 5 years. |
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Overall, we currently recommend the shutterstock scheme for referring photographers, and if you are referring potential image buyers then the recommend scheme is the crestock affiliate scheme. I still suggest you review each scheme for suitability in your scenario. These schemes are only worth promoting if you have a reasonable amount of traffic to send e.g. you already run a blog etc, or if you post a lot on forums and have a signature where you can include the URL.
What is this?
(excerpt from making affiliate programs work)
Affiliate marketing is a model of advertising where publishers (people with websites) include links to an advertisers website in return for some kind of financial reward if a visitor to the publishers website clicks the link and makes a purchase from the advertiser within a specified time.
Most reputable microstock agencies feature an affiliate or referral reward scheme to either attract new photographers to a growing agency or to attract new image buyers. Affiliate marketing is a powerful tool to microstock agency because of the number of photographers each agency has. The agency in effect has an army of marketers creating links and promoting them. Such marketing efforts further increase the likelihood of the microstock agency being listed high up google's ranking buy improving the page rank "PR" of some of the agencies web pages. In the case of links direct to a photo page this can be a way of highlighting your own photos.
Reference: Microstockdiaries has a comparison and graph of earnings from predominantly photographer referrals
