I certainly have the lowest % age I've had in a while - at least the last year. Mostly supposed (or real) duplicates and "not quite what we are looking for". Hopefully either my pictures get better or they start to make sense to me. I suspect the former is more likely.

Sometimes that "similar" thing can get really ridiculous.  I submitted a bunch of "editorial" stuff from a motorcycle race.  Many were rejected for "similar."  Hell... it's a motorcycle race.  They are all on motorcycles; of course they are similar!!!  

i have almost 300 waiting to be submitted there. they allow 2.5 submissions per week... and each time they get to reviewing my pics they reject em....its lots of fun

Do they have an automatic filter that compares your keywords or something to identify similars. I've had similars rejected loading them up to 1 year apart.

Sometimes that "similar" thing can get really ridiculous.  I submitted a bunch of "editorial" stuff from a motorcycle race.  Many were rejected for "similar."  Hell... it's a motorcycle race.  They are all on motorcycles; of course they are similar!!!  

Haha so we if we go to a motorcycle race and take photos, we can only submit one photo. Well if that is the case then they should pay us 50 dollars a download and then we won't complain about rejecting similars. When I buy photos I love seeing different variations of the same model or the same scene and I will choose the most appropriate one for me and other people will choose different ones.

I haven't this problem with DT but I have with SS...

On DT i received funny rejection reason: ...Photographs of people with half closed eyes and wrongly timed expressions are not suitable for commercial use.
It was photo with woman, resting in armchair. How MUST she rest - with full opened or closed eyes? Yes, some reviewers has strange sense of humor... I think, DT recruited new reviewers with half closed ... !

-

It gets more frustrating when you feel like they are rejecting something because someone else might have a similar - makes good sense for DT, but doesn't help the recent submitting photographer. In the long run it would probably make more sense for them to get rid of the old not so good or large pics and accept newer better ones. Except the old ones sell and are at a higher level.

It just seems pretty random and arbitrary to me, that is my main frustration.

Once Serban decides, nothing a contributor has to say has any influence; even the spat with YuriAcurs over the "similars" issue ended in a draw ... I guess.  Or, maybe Yuri was given an exception?   

Yup, and no exception for Yuri - the whole "similars" thing started to limit the content of such production companies. Yuri has 45, 557 files on Fotolia and only 32,304 on Dreamstime - and they had only 54 approved uploads this month.

This is the trend with all agencies with large image bases. They are started to look macro images and still want to pay micro prices.

Well, some days they reject everything and same days they thake everything. I'm not happy. They rejected this work



For Poor execution. Poor execution!! Tell me you aren't interested in it or something like this but not "poor execution" when I used 22 images to do this work and 7 hours.
I'm angry, I'm thinking to go away from DS and Fotolia and stay only on Shutterstock (I love Shutterstock).
 

I am very sorry to say this, but I would have rejected this Image too. Bad colors, bad light, no depth, low detail and high detail style mixed so that the final Image makes no sense...

Oh, There isn't problem. It's possible that it isn't a good work, I have only spent a lot of time for this...but when I submitted this one I submitted 4 other images all rejected for "poor execution" and it's difficult belive that all wasn't good...Anyway, everything is possible. This one was accepted by fotolia, accepted and sold by Shutterstock butr I know that there isn't an objective standard for every stock...only lucky and personal opinions. Of course I stay and I prefer where my work is appreciated  
Now I'm not so encouraged to upload on DS.

p.s. I haven't problems with rejections but with the reasons...tell me bad light, bad colors ecc. but don't tell poor execution  ;

Well, that the process of learning. Don`t get discouraged. Sometimes the same happens to me: spending hours on a piece and I think it?s great and in the end I realize that I just got lost lol. And another time its the opposite :-)
I completely understand that you feel bad with the "poor execution...." the rejection reasons on every agency can feel very insulting. Don`t take it personal. Don`t take rejection reasons too serious. Try to learn and get better. Good luck!

Well, that the process of learning. Don`t get discouraged. Sometimes the same happens to me: spending hours on a piece and I think it?s great and in the end I realize that I just got lost lol. And another time its the opposite :-)
I completely understand that you feel bad with the "poor execution...." the rejection reasons on every agency can feel very insulting. Don`t take it personal. Don`t take rejection reasons too serious. Try to learn and get better. Good luck!

You have understood perfectly what I think and what I feel. I know that I'm too emotional but the day before these 4 (or 5, I don't remember now) rejections I had 5 o 6 approved images so I think that there's something strange. One day they accept everything and the day next nothing?
My friend had a similar problem, he resubmit all the rejected images and...they were accepted.
It is strange, isn't it?
Because in this way is really difficult understand what they are looking for and what they want. I'd like don't be discouraged but I'm...a little bit because I have understood, more or less, what the other stocks want...what is good for fotolia, for SS and for IS too...I think...but I'm not able to make a prediction about what interest to Ds.
May be...one day :DD
You're very nice velocicarpo, I like the people that say what they think )

I will repeat myself they want newbies! they want a picture of everything from every single contributor no matter it�s quality.. so Dreamstime is an agency always looking for new contributors and helping them to join

This doesn't make sense.  It's not in anyone's interest to let in a lot of garbage.  If a newbie is submitting low quality stuff, Dreamstime should and will reject it.

And I don't take comfort in saying "Oh well, Dreamstime isn't worth the time" if they reject my submissions.  They make me quite a bit of money.  So it is incredibly frustrating when they reject something of mine... I'm getting hit with the "too many similar submissions" rejection a lot lately, and in most cases I think these are crazy rejections.

It's true that there seems to be  an inconsistency among reviewers... but reviewing is so subjective... it's human nature that we can't expect everyone to work with the same mind.

To me, the problem is the literal-mindedness of rejecting images as "similar."  Dreamstime is doing contributors, customers and itself a big disservice by clinging to a foolish definition of what makes a "similar" image.

Well, some days they reject everything and same days they thake everything. I'm not happy. They rejected this work



For Poor execution. Poor execution!! Tell me you aren't interested in it or something like this but not "poor execution" when I used 22 images to do this work and 7 hours.
I'm angry, I'm thinking to go away from DS and Fotolia and stay only on Shutterstock (I love Shutterstock).
 

Elserlie, do you have this castle SS 72926116 anywhere without the background?  Is this an illustration or a real place?

This is the one I lightboxed - the stonework is lovely.  I'm not sure if I could use it though flattened with all the environment layers.  I'm taking July and August for a personal/children's project - I thought I'd model the castle off the Neuschwanstein - but I am certain I couldn't create something as nice so maybe I should just license.  Just trying to survive shooting soccer leagues and graduations right now though.

 

My experience with Dreamstime is next - they are refusing my photos so now my acceptance percent is below 15. But as im learning all others sites are accepting my work and ratio is going forward. And all because Dreamstime is giving me hard time learning doing stock photo right.

All i can say thnks for this and my first sold photo!

Hey Ellerslie, I see one of your castles in the frontpage lightbox (fairy tale theme perhaps) on SS.  Good job!  Hope it = big $ while it's there!

Anecdotal Evidence . . . .  just had 8 out of 8 Editorial Photos (Anti Atomic Energy Rally in Germany) accepted.  Its been along time since that has happened.

The reviewers are all individuals with varying levels of experience and opinions. One reviewer may like your work while another will not. I submit to 8 sites and if one or two of them reject the images, I just move on. It isn't worth the frustration - don't take it personally. I've also gotten a few "similars" rejections recently at DT but with the current decline of IS, DT is actually in second place for me on the micros. I wouldn't give up on them.

Quote from: luissantos84 on May 24, 2011, 10:25

I will repeat myself they want newbies! they want a picture of everything from every single contributor no matter it�s quality.. so Dreamstime is an agency always looking for new contributors and helping them to join

This doesn't make sense.  It's not in anyone's interest to let in a lot of garbage.  If a newbie is submitting low quality stuff, Dreamstime should and will reject it.

And I don't take comfort in saying "Oh well, Dreamstime isn't worth the time" if they reject my submissions.  They make me quite a bit of money.  So it is incredibly frustrating when they reject something of mine... I'm getting hit with the "too many similar submissions" rejection a lot lately, and in most cases I think these are crazy rejections.

It's true that there seems to be  an inconsistency among reviewers... but reviewing is so subjective... it's human nature that we can't expect everyone to work with the same mind.

To me, the problem is the literal-mindedness of rejecting images as "similar."  Dreamstime is doing contributors, customers and itself a big disservice by clinging to a foolish definition of what makes a "similar" image.

I think we could be missing the boat here to some degree.  The agencies would much prefer to have the majority of sales made to untold thousands of ports which do not make payout often.  They also know that some images sell year in or out and that is not going to change for a time.  Those images are there until they are buried by an avalanche of new files and until then, they will continue to take up a percentage of sales.  Now if you are going to spread the love they would try to skew it in their own favor.

If they know that buyers are not so picky as we have been lead to believe they are, they would not be at all upset to accept more average images that will sell occasionally from many thousands of newbies who may hit on one or two good selling images for each port and therefore do not reach payout for months.

It could be why we are seeing increases in rejection rates for those submitters who's ports are consistently filled with HCV images and therefore easily hit payouts each month.  Maybe we should not be so quick to discount luissantos84's idea, it may very well pay off to some degree for micros to spread the love to newbies with less than stellar images.

Someone there is going through the "change of life"  better wait with uploading for a few months.

...I don�t understand why it is going up and down, really weird stuff, it does look that is it pressure from top contributors.. or maybe they are getting less submissions..

I was under the impression that during peak times with lots of submissions they lower the limit.
Then naturally they would increase the limit if submission numbers are down.

Well summer's around the corner so maybe a few high rollers are already on vacation... 

Hi, I can tell you for sure that, yes, there's a market. SS was the first to understand it but now Dreamstime too. I have doubled my acceptance ratio there. The only one that isn't interesting in this kind of works-artworks (if I can...) is Is...they are so old and obsolete with illustrations (they look for eps8 vectors for example, dinosaurs between vectors) and really they aren't interested in fantasy-surreal illustrations. But I can survive  Even if SS was the only one to understand that this kind of illustration have a market I can survive because I sell a lot there 
Well, I love ss  , but really I think that there's a good reason if they're the most important microstock of the world, they are really open mind and they are able to understand what can sell.

Thank a lot for your opinion about my work 

I'm not an illustrator so forgive me if this is a stupid question

If you take this many hours for one illustration wouldn't it be hard to make fulltime earnings from microstock.

Do illustrations sell more than photos, is there less competition for very detailed works which makes it worth wild ?

I suppose if your able to reuse elements in different images over and over it might be more profitable.

Hi,
many times people ask me if it's convenient spend so many hours to do only one work...I don't know but for me the most important think is to do something that I like, and I like this world 
Sometimes I reuse elements in different images so I spend only one or two hour to make a work...but really, I don't think about earning but I try to be proud when I do a work. Maybe it's not a good argument for microstock... ...but I think that it's. I don't want make a difference between art and microstock, for me it's the same thing.
Now I'm doing a work since 5 hours...I only hope that it's good 

p.s. Sorry for my english, I hope you  are able to understand my strange language 

I got the whole series rejected for: - Your image info contains one or more of the following issues: irrelevant or incomplete title, description/keywords/categories issues, similar/identical title and description, title/description written with capital letters(CAPS LOCK ON). Use only keywords that are the most relevant and specific to the image subject. All the info required for an image is important and has great influence on your sales. That's why you must take your time for each image and provide individual, accurate, relevant and comprehensive information. Don't just copy&paste words, don't rush. The more precise the info will be, the more efficient the search will be as well and hence your sales. Read more: http://blog.dreamstime.com/search-tag-keywords.

I really didn't know what else to put in there than: Isolated on white background. Canon 1Ds mkIII . I think the title for each photo was descriptive enough and every photo had an individual title. Their 5 words in the description makes you do stupid crap like that, I couldn't think of the 5th word so I put in the camera model, like lots of people do in IS (I never do, it seems stupid to me). And all of them were studio shots isolated on white what else am I supposed to put in there? Description field is completely redundant IMO anyway (the only agency which still have it and I UL to is IS, but they at least don't make you put at least 5 words in it)

Dreamstime is interesting to say the least - their search engine 1st indexes on the 'title' then 2nd on the 'description' and 3rd on the 'keywords.'

So, if your title is "blond girls isolated over white" - this image will come up highest in the rankings if the customer searched on the exact same phrase - lower in the rankings is it was in the description and not the title, and lower yet if only in the keywords

WOW, now I know why the sales are so bad over there. Although they shouldn't be, since I mostly just copied everything from my SS port, where I have very descriptive titles since they affect the search results. I usually just break the SS title in 2 parts, the first goes in the title, the second in description.

^^yeah... think I'll just go take some pictures of me taking pictures and shaking hands with a naked woman wearing headsets and eating a hot dog.