Thanks Mantis!

Yes, really nice work Magdalena.

Yes. It wasn't actually a real suggestion. Im just joking. But its interesting to see how complex these things are. My mum always gets a free Xmas card, we are close like that.

I dont see why it should bother them. A sale is a sale isnt it? What if my Mum wants to buy my pics to put on her wall?...

Don't knock that apple, It's for early Ipads that dont have a screen rotate. 

I completely agree. I think the most important thing, for many reasons, including creative satisfaction, is to keep shooting images that you are really proud of. It may seem like a pointless exercise when your little image gets set adrift on a huge flood of multiple mediocre uploads, but I do think (hope) that the really good stuff does somehow find its way to the buyer. And if it doesn't work, there is nothing to stop you taking that collection of high quality images and putting them somewhere else on some other day in the future. Its really difficult to be really good at photography. The best way is to try to shoot really good images. Once you loose sight of that, and start shooting for quantity, you are lost (in my humble opinion)

I'm slightly worried about this due to the lack of editorial control of my images on the PP sites (unless I'm missing something). I like tweaking the order of my keywords to push pictures into different searches, aligning them with more popular images etc. I don't think I can do that on the PP sites and they dont even show my name when you click on the image details. I hope its not a subtle way of us losing all control over our images...

Hi,

Ive only been with IS for a few months. And Im just noticing with the PP sales that one of my images that has had no sales at all in IS has had 27 sales with Thinkstock (am I allowed to write that or should it be TS?) in the partner program. This is happening with all of my images. My best sellers in IS are the worst sellers in TS. Its really difficult to work out what I should be shooting when there seems to be such a variation in what is selling.

Could it be something as simple as the way the keywords order themselves from one site to another? Or is it just a different kind of market?

Any enlightenment would be enlightening.

Thanks

Thanks again for everyone's comments.

Sean, please don't be offended by a minority of people who seem to get quite frustrated by you knowing stuff. I'm sure the vast majority of people on this site and many others are very grateful to any sharing of your knowledge that you very generously offer. There is often nothing more annoying than someone who is really successful at something. So I would take the obtuse comments as a compliment and please continue comment. Its up to us to take it or leave it. I happen to think than any thing anyone has to say to me is helpful at this stage, even if later on I form a different opinion.

Snufkin, Thanks very much for the detailed suggestions. I will follow your advice. I didn't write them a letter. Just one sentence saying please look at my website. I will rebuild my folio removing the stuff that wont work for stock. I have many more images that are not on that site that I think will be much more what they are looking for. (As I said before, I didnt think they were actually looking for images to licence, just proof that I can take an ok pic. I will shoot new stuff for them if I get in, so I actually dont have anything yet that they can use, if you see what I mean)

My comment about being a Getty photographer wasn't meant at all to imply that I think they should have accepted me. I was just making the point that things seem to be very different in the microstock world and I dont want to work for another agency like Getty, Ive done very well with Getty, but I wouldn't put any of those pictures on my wall. I want to work for an agency that gets people excited about photography again. I dont want to shoot pictures of businessmen shaking hands for the rest of my life.

Just to add to what I just wrote-

Its a bit confusing as I kind of thought that they wouldn't be interested in imagery that looks like stock photography, so the stuff I have on IS and on Getty does look very much like stock photography, (Theres a lot of the silhouette guy running too... )I thought they were looking for things that didnt look like stock...

Hi,

Following my application for Stocksy to look at my folio. they sent me this email:

"Dear Pete,

First, let us express our apologies for the wait, we really appreciate your interest in becoming a Stocksy Artist. Unfortunately we did not feel your portfolio was right for the collection at this time. We invite you to reapply in October and hope that you'll stay in touch!"

Ive been a contributor to Getty for years and recently started submitting images to the various microstock sites. I have always felt that my work I produce for Getty is not the kind of photography I love doing, and I think this will be the same with the other microstock sites, so I was really excited when I saw what's going on at Stocksy. So I would love to start producing work for them.

This is my folio:
http://www.petesherrardphotography.com/

I would love some general feedback, with regards to what people think that stocksy is looking for. Its all very well asking me to reapply in October, but I dont know what to put into the folio to make them interested. Should it be more stock orientated? Or less? Or is it just not good enough?

Any feedback will be very helpful.

Thanks vey much.