Dreamstime Review
Dreamstime is a community-based stock photography agency and a major supplier of high quality digital images constituted in 2004 by Serban Enache (CEO). As of August 2010, the company had over 9 million images online, close to 100,000 contributors and more than 2,5 million users. Dreamstime is among the first 850 most popular websites, according to Alexa (as of November 2009). Dreamstime is the second launched company after Istockphoto followed by Shutterstock. To this date, Dreamstime remains the second largest user database in microstock.
In September 2006, Dreamstime became a member of the Picture Archive Council of America (PACA) and Centre of the Picture Industry (CEPIC), being the first microstock agency to achieve this. This provided an official acknowledgment of the main trade associations to Microstock’s contribution in the stock photography industry.
All stock images available are provided by Dreamstime community’s photographers and illustrators. As of Nov. 2009, Dreamstime.com is considered one of the biggest stock agencies in the world. Contributors can register for a free account and submit their contents to the company’s editors. The site features a search engine for looking up photos; a referral program allows contributors to earn additional earnings from their affiliates’ sales, and contributors may enter monthly prized assignments.
Dreamstime is well known for its care for contributors, who view it as the most friendly stock agency in the world, proved by several independent polls and surveys (see reference). In Sep 2010, an independent forum’s poll shows that most contributors will prefer Dreamstime to any other agency (1st: Dreamstime 39.7%, 2nd: Shutterstock 10.7%, 3rd:Alamy 9.1%). Immediately after Istockphoto’s controversial announcement of cutting royalty rates (announced Sep. 2010), Dreamstime publicly announced non-exclusive incentives for exclusive Istockphoto contributors, trying to persuade them to diversify their income by submitting to more agencies.
Microstock Photography 