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Stock photography and videography has become a decent profession in recent years and many talented photographers earn online by selling their work. Clicking photos and videos is fun and interesting, but to sell them is not an easy job. You must have a portfolio and a solid social media presence so that people know that you exist. They can see your work and eventually, interested visitors will turn into future prospects or clients.
Why Photographers Need Stock Photography sites and Online Agencies?
The first and simplest reason is exposure. It’s far better to use Flickr rather than a blogspot blog to showcase your work. If you portray your work at the right place, you will reap more returns and value because your work will be viewed by more visitors.
The second and most important reason is security. There are hundreds of thousands of copycats out there who will steal your work if you lay it open on Flickr or any other social media website like Facebook, Twitter etc. Consider a situation when a photographer uploads his work on Flickr and someone just downloads and sells it to any other company or at ebay. The photographer would not be able to know when his work is sold illegally. And if he happens to track that person who stoled his work, will he have any proof that the photograph originally belongs to him?
This is where stock photography sites come into play. You submit your photographs in various stock photography sites and display your work to a large number of people. Their is no issue of content theft as your photographs are watermarked with your brand and registered under your name. If someone is intrested, he may choose to buy your work or contact you directly.
About iSyndica
iSyndica is a cloud based media distribution company which helps users to promote, syndicate and track their content on multiple established channels. This includes 25 most popular stock photography sites, 7 video agencies and 10 stock illustration agencies.
Here is what the company has to say about themselves:
“iSyndica eliminates the need for you to upload your files to several sites. You upload with us, we store it, we distribute it and we provide you with statistics. All in one place!”
The service is built on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the virtual distribution server (VDS) is awaiting patent approval.
How it Works?
iSyndica helps you simplify the process of submitting the photographs to multiple stock photography sites, all from one place. You can create your portfolio and then distribute it on multiple photo sharing sites, without losing credits of your work. As soon as your image is uploaded, your image is sent to all the stock agencies in a couple of minutes. Next, go to these sites one by one, pick the desired categories and hit submit.
This is useful because you don’t have to open all the sites and submit your work one by one, which becomes unmanageable after some time. In addition to distributing the content, iSyndica provides you with important statistics.
Uploading Photos: The site supports only the JPEG format for uploading photos. The maximum file size is 25 MB per image and the minimum image size is 4 Megapixel.
Managing Your Catalog of Photos: The Catalog is where you get to manage your images, change the metadata information and also syndicate them to custom channels. Basically, there are two types of channels -sales and promotional.
The sales channel offers an interface to sell your items. The “Syndicate”
function allows you to mark your items accepted or rejected by the stock agencies.
Promotional channels are used mostly on social sharing platforms, where you can put your items to show them to a different public. You can use the “Promote” link from the menu bar and watermark the images before sharing them on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and the like.
Using Channels to Track performance: You can use custom channels within your iSyndica dashboard to track the performance of your work in different sites. A “channel” is simply one of the places you distribute your content to, for the purpose of sharing and/or selling it. To add or configure a channel, click “Configure Channel” icon on the Channel list. Next, supply the login details of the site where you want to submit your work. iSyndicate will validate and store the login credentials for future use and once you upload a photo, the site will use this information to submit your photos to the specified site.
Analysis: The Tracking and analysis section, looks very impressive and you can can see the performance of your work in different stock photography sites. This includes charts and bar graphs which shows your projected earnings, number of downloads, revenue etc.
In the premium plans, new data is updated up to 12 times a day. The free plan offers twice daily updates up to the end of your subscription trail date. All he sales are shown in USD which is based on daily currency rates. The charts considers some important factors like day of the week and compares it with overall trends so you get precise data.
Integrate additional services on top of the stored contents using iSyndica AP:
Using the iSyndica API, you can create great applications on top of iSyndica’s Virtual Distribution Server. The API is free to use and works on Oauth so you can use the application to promote your work and your brand on social media and sites that support Oauth authentication. The API allows you to perform a wide range of functions- from uploading photos, applying distribution rules, collecting reports, modifying product metadata etc. More information can be found here.
Affiliate Program: After registration, you are automatically enrolled in the iSyndicate affiliate program. Your affiliate link is http://vds.isyndica.com/affiliate/<username>
Supported Sites and Agencies
Currently iSyndica supports photos, videos and illustrations. Following is a list of all stock photography sites which the service supports:
Stock photo agencies:
- 123RF®
- ArcticStockImages®
- Bigstock®
- CanStockPhoto®
- Facebook®
- FeaturePics®
- Flickr®
- Fotolia®
- Shutterstock (using iSyndica’s generic connector)
- Picasa®
- Polylooks™
- TwitPic®
- Catooh®
- ClipDealer®
- Crestock®
- Cutcaster®
- Demotix®
- Dreamstime®
- Graphicleftovers®
- iStockphoto®
- MostPhotos®
- MyStock®
- Photobox®
- Pixmac®
- Rodeo®
- ScanStockPhoto®
- Shutterfly®
- SmugMug®
- Stockfuel®
- Veer®
- Vivozoom®
- YayMicro®
- YFrog®
- Zenfolio®
Supported video agencies:
- CanStockPhoto®
- Facebook®
- Flickr®
- Fotolia®
- AlwaysHD®
- BlipTV®
- Catooh®
- ClipDealer®
- Pond5®
- RevoStock®
- Stockfuel®
- Twitvid®
- Viddler®
- YFrog®
- YouTube®
- Shutterstock (using iSyndica’s generic connector)
- istockphoto (using iSyndica’s generic connector)
Supported stock illustration agencies:
- 123RF®
- Bigstock®
- CanStockPhoto®
- Facebook®
- FeaturePics®
- Flickr®
- Fotolia®
- Picasa®
- Polylooks™
- TwitPic®
- ClipDealer®
- Crestock®
- Cutcaster®
- Dreamstime®
- Graphicleftovers®
- Photobox®
- Pixmac®
- Stockfuel®
- Veer®
- Vivozoom®
- YayMicro®
- YFrog®
Supported stock audio agencies:
- AudioSparx
- AudioMicro
- Catooh
- ClipDealer
- Pond5
- RevoStock
- Stockfuel
In addition to the above sites, iSyndica supports upto 20 customized generic FTP channels. You can transfer your items to any FTP server of your choice.
Pricing and Plans
Subscription Levels and Credits:
There are different subscription levels which depends on how many uploads you do in a specified period of time. You can try the service using the free subscription option, which lets you upload 200 credits per month. 1 credit equals to 1 website where your content is submitted. So if you upload only one image and submit it to 10 different stock photography sites, it will cost you 10 credits in total.
Here are all the available plans to choose from:
The premium plan is affordable and costs only 79$ a year. You get 20 GB of storage space and customizable promotion on social media websites like Twitter, Facebook etc. If the premium plan looks too costly, try the standard plan for only 19$ a year. This includes all the features of the premium plan except the customized social media promotion and secure FTP uploads.
If you don’t want to start with a paid plan right now, you can always try the free trial for 15 days. Here are all the features which you get in the free trial period:
- 2 GB secure data storage
- secure backups and export functions
- daily sales and revenue reporting
- custom FTP settings
- 200 free credits
- social network promotion
Overall, the site looks very good and provides service of high value. If you want a simple interface to submit your work to multiple stock photography sites, iSyndica is a great option.
Try it yourself today: iSyndica Signup
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