Another week, yet another new agency? well, Yes and No.

I can see a lot of parallels with depositphotos.com and pixmac.com when it launched, there are a few rough edges. Sellers see a site long before most buyers find it, and of course sellers also want to know that buyers are there before they upload - Chicken and Egg! Rough edges in the start-up stage might be expected but they need to be fixed 'tout de suite'. I had quite rant when pixmac launched their site, it was riddled with typos and other niggles, for now I'm going to hold back with regard to this on deposit photo. Language problems will clearly frighten off some people fluent in English, but we watched pixmac make improvements and put systems in place for people to flag such errors. Ideally sites would not launch until all this is done, but I draw attention to the 'beta' on the site logo, it's there for a good reason.

Unlike when pixmac launched, and spelling/grammar aside the photographer upload system at this new agency is very slick, It's part of the reason I decided to continue uploading and write this review. There's lots of new sites being launched and to put it bluntly for most of the new sites I really can't be bothered with all the problems. Depositphotos have caught my attention for a few reasons, mostly because they seem to mean business. Too many new sites launch with a bit of 'creative emailing' and a few well placed "oh i've just found..." forum posts, but these guys seem to be taking the right steps (advertising, insensitivising new uploads, giving their feedback on forum threads etc). But that still does not gaurantee success.

Getting Traction

In order to get a 'critical mass' of images before buyers will start to take the site seriously Depositphotos have embarked on a promotion campaign, basically paying their way into the marketplace. The opt-in "promotion program" currently pays 20 cents per accepted image - check details on the site, as I guess this program will not be available for indefinitely. Getting images is only the one of the hurdles a new agency faces.

Getting Sales

I have no crystal ball, other agencies seem to have proven that choice of domain name does not reflect on success, nor does ease of use for uploaders nor design aesthetics of the site. Some really smooth operating and good looking websites have failed to grow a market share. With so many agencies selling more-or-less the same images it's hard to understand all the reasons why.

Importantly from what I can see depositphotos search seems to very work well. A nice choice of image styles is returned for simple one word searches rather than just spewing out all images that contain that keyword in order of upload. At present for my favourite test term 'apple' the results look a lot like those at the big 5, depositphotos appear to have their own 'best match' algorithm, good search is critical for the success of a microstock agency.

Photographers Area

It works quite well... at least from the point of view of uploads. You can leave a directory of files uploading via ftp, then automatically the uploaded files appear ready for you to select categories and submit. There is no button to "process uploads", no clicking a button to copy over IPTC keywords into a list of keywords, and no pointless screens with "thank you for your submission click back to submit more images". Other agencies pay attention to the number of mouse clicks here - 1) click an image, 2) click one or more dropdowns to categorise (model releases omitting) 3) click submit and you are back to a screen where you can click on another image to categorize.

Royalties are tiered based your level, which is based on the number of sales you have made. 44-52% non exclusive and 50-60% for exclusive contributors.

Preliminary Conclusion

Way, way to early to say, at time of writing the site has been open for only 3 weeks. With the financial incentive to upload then testing the water here is a lot more attractive than the other unproven agencies I have reviewed. No agency launches without the intention of 'becoming big', what's needed is continuous improvement, fixing problems, listening to buyers and sellers, only time will tell us that.

If depositphotos has the same problems it has now in 6 months time I would certainly recommend you look somewhere else, but I suspect that I won't have to say that. To be realistic I'm thinking sales in 6 months if not longer rather than sales right now.

Like I always say... you should prioritise on uploading your work to the big 5 and other more proven sites before gambling time on an unproven entity like this.

I'm uploading, and looking at the way the numbers grow on the site quite a few other photographers are also doing so. Looking at the search results these numbers seem genuine. I have a policy of not coming to a fixed 'recommended or not recommend' conclusion while a site is still in beta. I'll let you know more info as I get it.

 Visit deposit photos photographer area