iStockphoto is a very popular stock photography website – with both photographers and buyers. If you’re new to selling your photos at online stock photo websites though, it’s usually helpful to find overviews and reviews of various sites available.

Since iStock is quite popular, I’ve decided to outline my own experiences with them. When I first started selling my photography at stock photo agencies online a couple of years ago, I didn’t sign up with iStock. I was concerned about some misuses I’d seen of photos from that site, and I also didn’t like their upload restrictions.

After about two years of steady stock photography income growth at other sites though, I finally decided to give in and try iStock. It’s reputed to be a top earning site for many photographers, and the number two earning site for most of the rest. And in my mind, if I was serious about trying to earn a full time living with my stock photography, then I needed to make sure I was submitting my photos to the top online agencies.

Signing up at iStock can be done easily and doesn’t cost a thing. To start submitting your photos though, you’ll need to jump through a few hoops. The first thing you’ll need to do is submit an application to become a photographer. This involves taking a brief test, and then submitting your initial photos.

iStock only requires you to submit three photos for your “test”. But all three of those pictures must be approved before you are officially allowed to start submitting more.

Some photographers feel it’s really hard to get those first pictures approved, but I personally didn’t have much of a problem. In fact, the only problem I ran into was the fact that I’m primarily a stock food photographer. I submitted two pictures with food and one people photo for my initial test of three, and I quickly found out that iStock prefers to see a variety of topics in your test pictures. So even though my photos were not similar in any way, since two of them were on the topic of food one was rejected.

Once I realized they wanted three different topics on the first submission, it was quick work to submit something different and become accepted.

Once you’ve passed your initial submission quality review, you can begin submitting more of your portfolio to iStock. And this is the part that I personally detest. Uploading to iStock takes more time than most places, because you can’t FTP multiple photos to them at once. You are forced to submit just one picture at a time, and this can be quite painful.

Another restriction that I’m not particularly happy about is their upload limits. As a new contributer to iStock, you’re only allowed to upload 15 photos in a one week time frame. The time limits are rolling though, and that tends to help, but the restrictions make it impossible to get a decent sized stock photo portfolio built there quickly.

Rolling time frames with the upload restrictions are confusing to many new users too. It’s easy to understand once explained though: The restriction clock starts new with each photo you upload. So if you upload two pictures today and then 13 tomorrow, you’ll have reached your initial 15 upload limit. About 7 days afterwards you’ll see there are now two, not fifteen, upload spots open. That’s because you only uploaded two pictures your first day. A day or so after those new slots open, you’ll have another 13 open up though, since you put 13 pictures into the queue the second day.

Speaking of the queue, I’ve found the iStock takes roughly 5-7 days to review pending photos for new contributors. They apparently review photos from exclusive photographers much faster, but you’re not allowed to become an exclusive photographer with them until you’ve reached a specific dollar amount of sales.

Like the rest of the online stock photography agencies, iStockphoto has things it likes and doesn’t like. So when you first start submitting photos to them you may notice a high rejection rate. After a short while though, you’ll start learning their particular preferences, and you’ll be able to start getting photos approved fairly consistently.

Due to the painful and slow uploading and submission process there though, I have found myself dragging my heels with getting my stock image portfolio onto their site. It took me several months just to get 42 photos online with them, and I only earned a little over twenty dollars in the same timeframe. So I still have quite a ways to go before I can call this site a good earner for me.

Despite those problems though, if you’re a freelance photographer who wants to sell more of their stock photos online, signing up with iStock is generally a good step. While their system may not be overly friendly to photographers, they do have a very large buyer base that no photographer should ignore.