pancakes

MicrostockGroup Sponsors


Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Topics - philfreez

Pages: [1]
1
Shutterstock.com / huge sales drop for new images
« on: May 24, 2018, 03:37 »
Hello guys,
since one month and an half I've noticed two unusual (for me) facts:

- sales from my new images are dropping down in a way that I never experienced from 3 years of activity or so;
- on the other hand, some old photos* that maybe did not sell almost anything have suddenly started selling modestly like never did before..

I've changed nothing in my production 'style', neither in keywording, quality and quantity. The only different thing I've done since dec 2017 is to start with footage uploads..
I know that in recent times SS has made some changes to their algorithm and the first thing I've noticed is the disappearance of the "relevance" tab in the search engine.
Maybe I've posted only bad subjects for more then a month but it still looks strange for me, the other agencies (9) are keeping their usual sales levels with the same portfolio and the same new pictures...

Maybe the problem is just me but I'd like to know if something similar happened to you too


*oh, and my old best sellers still sells really good

2
iStockPhoto.com / entering 'local' keywords at iStock
« on: July 05, 2017, 02:11 »
Hello, this is an old problem and not only of the new deepmeta.

example: I have a picture of a little lake near my city in Italy.
My city is "Bologna", the lake is called "Suviana".
Well, I have this picture of the lake:
http://www.istockphoto.com/it/foto/suviana-lake-autumn-bologna-emilia-romagna-italy-gm623301170-109276975

While this image sells good on SS, FT etc, I never sold one at IS.
When I search for "suviana" on I stock I find other pictures (and not indicative of the only suviana's landmark that is the lake) with no trace of my (imho) indicative picture.
Here the search for Suviana:
http://www.istockphoto.com/it/immagine/suviana?excludenudity=false&page=1&phrase=suviana&sort=best

I find my picture searching for "bologna lake", two keywords that already exist in the IS dictionary and the pic is laying in the middle of many Bologna city images (obviously).
Now the point is: really few ppl will search for Suviana lake by searching "Bologna lake". There are no lakes at all in Bologna so it doesn't make any sense :|

I have many 'niche' places of Italy in my port and In past I wrote many times to IS asking for add keywords. I wrote down to them for every new local word and they always added for me what I asked.
This was a little time consuming but at least I had my pictures correctly indexed.
Some month before the 'revolution' on IS they stopped to answer me (and I am a little upset with the new royalty structure to still investing too much time on IS).

So what I am asking to you is:

-there is a way to add local tags to the images? (without writing to them and waiting everytime their answer before uploading)


PS: inb4 "why people still upload on IS"...I still upload on Istock cause after SS and FT it still (for me) the agency with most sales at all (even with the crappy keywording and the new royalty system)

3
Alamy.com / lots of images deleted from my account [solved]
« on: June 19, 2017, 11:51 »
Hi, on friday night I had an attempt to password reset from someone that was not me (I was sleeping).
I wrote down this thing to alamy and they 'closed' my account (no login permission) for the entire weekend to investigate the thing.
As they said in the message today I'm able to login again

and...
I found plenty of my pics deleted without any (given)reason, even many old ones.
All of these pictures has been deleted on June 17 (saturday)...
I am  worried (and a little upset as you can imagine) and I just wrote to alamy again to ask what is happening...
Maybe it is temporary?
I read that if the photo is already online it takes 180 days to delete  it, and 24 hours if not online and just passed QC

do you have similar experiences?
sorry for my eng

4
iStockPhoto.com / keywording in DeepMeta v3
« on: February 05, 2017, 06:30 »
I downloaded DMv3 and I logged in with my old credentials ( mail not yet received ???)
I dont understand something:

1- location box is not optional...even for a picture who don't need to be localized?
2- why I'm forced to create a batch even when I need to upload just a picture?
3- I can no longer sort keywords by relevance? I used to to so in the past versions
4- I can't see any Editorial box...you just need to put proper editorial caption end the reviewer will understand?

and more confusing for me:

4- you still need to refine keywords one by one ( :( ) but the dictionary seems pretty messed up imo

for example:
picture of some kid's silverware

word "cutlery" -> only option is "Louis de Caullery", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_de_Caullery
word "couple" -> only option is "Couples Retreat" , a movie
word "towel" -> only option is "Niente Velo per Jazira" , the italian title for the movie "towelhead"  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towelhead_(film)

once you checked the 'proper' definition it become the keyword ( so the final word for the keyword towel is forced to be "Niente Velo per Jazira"?! what..)

it also seems that the new deepmeta is localized automatically (no more need to change language when you put a new keyword).  I am italian and the dictionary seems to understand this ...but It makes me further caos cause I always tag with metadata and in english language and the software seems to use strange and fanciful interpretation of terms...

Maybe I should stop uploading for a while and see when things will return to a sort of "normality"  :-X



5
Hi guys,
After months of passive readings of this forum I decided to register.
I wrote down "newbie" with quotes cause in fact I have an account on Dreamstime, Shutterstock and Istock since  2013 but at that time I had not yet taken microstock seriously.
I started working  on it only in July of 2015. Without any pretense, and with all the humility of which I am capable I started to fill tax forms, send ids, learning how to post process a picture for microstock standards and even learned how to indexing as good as possibile. Learned to find some niche and a lot of other useful things.
For the first month (and an half) it was just a matter of  hard (and annoying) work, but then I started to earn something (less than 10usd\month) and now I am slowly growing.
I closed february with 66usd and my actual average income is 40+ usd\month (sometimes less, sometimes more).
I am not complain about that, I started this thing knowing that the market is saturated and the royalities and the sales are not the same as 10 years ago.
I contribute with 10 agencies (for now). My average for my portfolios are 400 pictures (photos only, no vectors). Considering che number of the images my low expectations I can say that microstock for me is, actually a good paid hobby and a little (but growing) monthly income.
So, thank you guys and experts posting on this forum cause it gave me some great advices when I started this little activity 6 months ago and still give me useful informations even now.
Last but not least: Microstock is an awersome photography school for me. It force me to be  REALLY critic about my pictures. In past I got tons of followers on social platforms like 500px or Flickr but "likes" and "favs" are not good to learn as a frustrating evil shutterstock curator ;P .

Oh , and my personal chart is the following:

-Shutterstock (still the best of the best, 40%+ of my incomes with tiny portfolio than others agencies).
-Fotolia (growing really fast, love it. This is the only SS contender )
-Istock (most of sales are from partner sites and subs but is not bad, I like theyre indexing client)
-123rf (chaotic indexing system in my opinion and royalities are lower the than average)
-Dreamstime (I love DT cause this was my first approach to microstock in 2013 but sadlysales are really really fewI hope they will resume soon)
-BigStock ( the SS bad company gives me modest but constants monthly sales)
-DepositPhotos (same as Bigstock, few sales but constant)

Worst of all

-CanStockPhotos (no sales in 3 months )
-Pond 5 (just one sale from augustI read that theyre awersome for footages but hey, in my experience they are severe on accepting, just 280 allowed here, and sales on pictures really suck!)
-Photodune ( I started from 2 months but I HATE theyre indexing system so much that I still have only 11 pics on portfolio)

\

you have other agencies that you would recommend to go on in this adventure?
Im about to drop Photodune and maybe also CanStock (the only reason I still upload is cause they have probably the more fast indexing system ever2 clicks away to send to curator) and I am searching some decent low earner like bigstock of deposit...



Pages: [1]

Sponsors

Mega Bundle of 5,900+ Professional Lightroom Presets

Microstock Poll Results

Sponsors