Zoonar – coming back to life as a viable stock agency?
In my various articles and even in my eBook, I rarely talk about Zoonar. This German site originally had a deal with another German agency called Polylooks, where each image uploaded to Zoonar and then accepted by Polylooks earned a small payment. In the end, with some sales with Polylook as well, I earned $136 from the site last year. Then Polylooks closed its door and since then – zero…
Zoonar has continued to add partners, including some higher paying sites, and you can also choose Alamy as one of the partners as well. Currently there are eight partners where one upload to Zoonar can be accepted by these various partners. I currently upload to 7 of the 8, as I am already a member on Alamy, and I’m not 100% sure how Zoonar manages to create the main keywords that Alamy requires in addition to the ones in the file itself. Upload to Zoonar is easy – you add them as a stock destination on Lightburner, and all uploaded files automatically are distributed to Zoonar. The site reviews them (taking a few days normally) and then you get an email letting you know their decision on each file. They are reasonable reviewers – I normally get 70 – 80% acceptance on my images.
The next step is important. You need to visit the site, find the “Manage Pictures” link, and then identify, for each file, if you have a model or property release, or if one is not required. You can do that in bulk by selecting the relevant files, moving to the foot of the table to edit the files, and then I usually select “add to RF, Model release not required, Property release not required” and save. If you have a model release for a picture with a recognizable person, you don’t need to upload – just state that you have a release. I normally leave the pricing as standard, as one of the agencies only takes “standard” pricing. This step of marking up the files is very easy, but very important – if the files show “unknown” against model release say, then none of the partner sites picks up the image.
So – it is easy to do, but is it worth it? For many months this year, I have only continued uploading because it is so easy. Zero sales makes it hard to recommend to others. But finally, I saw that one of the partners has now reported the sale of the image below, for 45 Euros (about $60 or so). I understand from the owners that it has taken a lot of time to get the partners through the reporting process and we should start to see more sales in the coming months. Well, time will tell, but if you are looking for a relatively easy site to work with, perhaps Zoonar is worth investigating!
Sale via Zoonar for 45 Euros
I have been with Zoonar for nearly 3 years with 4 of their 8 partners, during this time i have sold images for the total of less than €400.
Zoonar is a very easy site to work with without any problems receiving payments when applied for, the downside is their price structure which offers very low licensing fees especially for people who would use the material in advertising, hence the photographer loses out on what should be a rewarding fee for such use.
Paul.
Hi Paul – that is good to know. Do you upload to any of the microstock sites? Zoonar seems to price their images above the level of iStock, Shutterstock etc., but then sells far fewer images, and so the income is relatively low.
Steve
Hi Steve,
No i do not supply micro sites, from what i have experienced in recent times sales are not as good when compared to earlier times, and prices across the board have dropped, personally i would like Zoonar to change their pricing to a higher level or at least license the work for what it is being used for. If i were a buyer Zoonar would be a place to buy from, especially if i were in the advertising business, their images do not seem to have many restrictions on how they can be used. Zoonar images are bargains to be had for certain buyers. having said that, i do not understand why the sales are so few and far between.
Cheers,
Paul.
Paul.
I certainly agree that micro sites have low prices, and I am sure many of the buyers are moving towards sourcing their images from those sites. Us poor contributors are in a bind – we would prefer that buyers pay what we think the images are worth, but many other contributors are putting great images on the microstock sites and so the buyers gravitate to them. As you probably see from the rest of my site, I’ve given up fighting against the crowd and joined them, and I upload my images to all the sites from Alamy, Panther, Zoonar down to start-up sites like “All you can stock” In the end, I get a lot of sales, not much per sale, but overall the money is growing as I get more images online.
Steve