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Stock Sites - Referral Details

 

In the table below you can view all the referral schemes (or affiliate / rewards programs) available at a glance

Referrals are where you earn commission by sending 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
Adobe Stock Yes: Buyers only via tradedoubler
Albumo (Fantero) Yes, 50% of first credit purchase (buyers) and 10% of referred photographer sales for 1 year
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...
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
Dreamstime Yes - 10% of buyers purchases and 10% purchases from referred photographers' uploads for three years - excellent.
ImageVortex Yes - Separate to the photographers area run by a third party, commission of 10% on sales for 90 days.
iStockphoto YES : Moving Goal Posts, previously only paid for recruiting a new photographer who earns at least $100, now one off $20, 20 credits or 20% of first purchase for recruiting a new buyer who purchases a minimum package in 30 days. (this offer replaces a dreadful $10 flat referral fee offered before Nov 2011)
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)
PantherMedia Yes, 10% of sales and 10% of referred photographer earnings
Photodune.net Yes: Buyers only 30% of first deposit
Shutterstock.com Yes - 20% on sales of new subscriptions. As of 2013 no payment for photographer referrals previously $0.03 per image download from referred photographers forever.
Yay Images Yes, 20% of earnings from referred buyers for life, 5% second tier (buyers your referee referred)
Zoonar 10% of buyers and photographers revenue for 1 year
affiliate linksbeginners guides Overall, I currently recommend dreamstime for referring photographers due to a combination of a reasonable rate and good conversions. If you are referring potential image buyers then I recommend trailing dreamstime, bigstock and shutterstock to see what works best for your visitors. I strongly 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 by improving the page rank "PR" of some of the agency's 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

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