A few months back I wrote a blog post detailing my experience selling stock photography through both Getty Images’ Flickr Collection program as well as a new program allowing you to sell your photography through ClusterShot. The title of my post “Is 20% of something better than 88% of nothing” compared my own experience with the companies and my sales through the companies as of last May. Getty pays out about 20% for royalty free images while ClusterShot pays out 88%. Today I just received my sixth monthly statement from Getty Images and I thought it an appropriate time to revist my experience selling stock photography through both companies. At present I’ve got 68 images offered for sale through Getty. You can see my Getty images for sale here. For my first six months in the program I’ve earned $883.35 from the sale of 22 images. At present I’ve got 30,848 images offered for sale through ClusterShot. You can see my Clustershot images for sale here. So far I’ve earned $338.80 from the sale of 3 images. - Thomas Hawk

This is excellent information. Thanks for posting. I've been trying to figure out which services to invest time/effort in for this. Peace TH. - Rich Harris

I just can't get behind the Getty thing. They want all the rights to the images they choose, and require that you drop the CC license from images they choose. You cannot sell them yourself. That kills the deal for me. - Jeremy Brooks

The fact that Getty refuses to recognize the Creative Commons license as valid is disappointing indeed Jeremy. - Thomas Hawk

Also, from this clause in their agreement: "Getty Images has the exclusive right to sell your images and images substantially similar to those in a commercial context once you've accepted their invitation (and signed the Getty Images Contributor Agreement)." it would appear to be a violation to sell the same image on ClusterShot, or from any other site where it might still have a CC license. - Jeremy Brooks

that's correct Jeremy. That's why I've removed images that I've got licensed through Getty from ClusterShot. Getty's exclusivity thing is a strike against them compared to Clustershot who requires no exclusivity. - Thomas Hawk

Thomas, thanks for sharing your experience. Only 3 sales through ClusterShot from a 30K+ pool seems like a dismal fail. Hardly worth the time and effort it took to set up the account. I agree that Getty's return is significantly better,but it would take an awful lot of photos on Getty and a lot of time and effort to make anything resembling a living from selling stock through them. - Jeff P. Henderson

that was nice of Getty and Clustershot to both tweet. - Thomas Hawk

Just so it's clear what we meant when we said "embarrassed": http://twitter.com/cluster... - Dan James

So what about the copies of the photos that you have on other sites (Zooomr, your blog, whatever) that are essentially the same as the Getty shots? How do you handle that? You cannot retroactively change the CC license; so are the photos on Zooomr still available under the CC? - Jeremy Brooks

well Getty is only 68 shots. But these same shots moved from CC to "all rights reserved" as part of the Flickr deal. Which is dumb, because you are right Jeremy, once CC, always CC. The same shots still exist on Zooomr as CC. - Thomas Hawk

Cool. Thanks for the clarification. - Jeremy Brooks