24 Feb 16 - Photoaki have anounced they will close as of March 31 2016
This review remains for historical reference:
Photaki is microstock [5] agency based in Spain that started business in 2009 (with previous non-microstock / crowd-sourced experience dating back prior to that).
Photaki claim to offer "the best commissions in the market for selling your pictures" (royalties), ranging from a base of 50% up to 80%, like Dreamstime [6] royalties are based on number of downloads of each image, however buyer prices do not vary by individual image downloads.
- 0-4 downloads - 50%
- 5.9 downloads - 60%
- 10-14 downloads - 70%
- 15 or more downloads - 80%
These are high royalty rates compared to other sites [7] (I presume that by 80% commission on 15 downloads or more they do not mean that images earn you less with the agency taking more per sale). The rates are in fact somewhat suspiciously high, although the structure of paying off costs involved in the review process with early lower royalties I think is a rather good idea if enough money is left behind to generate sales and run the site properly.
Guide prices converted from € to USD at time of writing.
Photaki are currently offering easier upload in bulk for photographers with more than 1000 images to submit.
I've uploaded my microstock portfolio to Photaki and I'm watching the results... As I so often write, I have very modest expectations from an agency like this, rates are attractive but I'll be very surprised if there is a high volume of sales in the immediate future. There are a lot of nice things about Photaki, you receive weekly personalized stats on portfolio exposure via email; they also offer several useful features for photographers like rights managed [8] licensing, free portfolios, variable pricing and personal collections (for volume photographers).
Conclusion
Photaki is all but dead, i've had images waiting in the approval queue for more than a year. I'm no longer monitoring earnings here and i've stopped uploading.
[4]