2 Mar 2016: Corbis / VCG have anounced that veer will close as of 30 March 2016
- this review remains in place for historical reference only, veer were ranked: 12th before delisting
veer.com is a successful stock photography, typography and graphic brand owned by Corbis [5].
In February 2009 Corbis announced [6] that it planned to close down their first attempt to enter the microstock [7] market, snapvillage.com [8], and with the agreement of the user involved to migrate most of the content to veer.com under the cover 'veer marketplace'. Veer have now dropped the term Marketplace from their website and integrated microstock results into the main search. I'll still refer to 'marketplace' here to differentiate the user generated collection/ upload process from veers' other image collections. This in itself is another small step towards the term microstock disappearing as more and more 'microstock' becomes 'stock' (but a long way down that road to travel just yet!)
Like everything else that veer does the microstock marketplace seems to function flawlessly (with the exception of the dogs breakfast affiliate programs). It oozes thought in everything it does from the subtle humor hidden around the interface like Easter eggs to find, to the way that the content of each page has been laid out making maximum use of type and graphic to make everything easy to follow. I have to admit I might be a little bias on this point, I always liked the veer site and the content on it long before the announcement, I never imagined veer would offer 'microstock',
As a non US contributor the scary tax form W-8BEN rears its head during sign-up, but helpful advice is provided to guide you through it swiftly, just take appropriate care with this important declaration.
In hindsight, it's now feels like an obvious decision that veer would offer micro prices, they already have a vast assortment of different macro / premium priced brands. The website is quite clear to point out that different terms are in place for the marketplace photos. Veer already offer a mix of RM and RF licenses for their different brands and I think it's probably wrong to suggest that their professional customers would be confused by a mix of prices and licenses.
Anyway, back to the important subject, can I upload and does it earn? I was invited to join veer like a lot of other microstock photographers because I had an account on snapvillage. All my images were migrated over during the sign-up process. To sign-up as a new contributor access the contributor area at contributor.veer.com [4] (make sure you use that sign up and not the application to become a veer photographer for their macrostock [9] collection).
Results
Despite the support of Corbis in the background it seems the "love has run out" at Veer. The blogs go un-fed with fresh content, the site was once 'very' (excuse the corbis brand in-house joke!) popular with designers who even if they didn't buy full priced stock went to the site to view the inspirational material... and to buy the t-shirts!
Recent years have seen slow but steady sales, nothing inspiring, and that is reflected in a lack luster ranking for veer (disappointingly)
[4]