Author Topic: Big changes (Read 35810 times)

Artmyth · « **Reply #75 on:** March 13, 2008, 02:39 »

Hi Hatman

Just to add a bit of reality to this before it veers off on a course of complete exaggeration and inflated speculation...

whole batches were not rejected from these photographers.. In the case of LisaFX, 8 images have been rejected since the Feb 25th announcement - a number of them for overexposure. 128 images were approved. This is a 4.6 percent rejection ratio.

In the case of Lev, 6 images were rejected in error. We have since contacted him after being made aware of the issue. That was our fault.

Quote from: hatman12 on March 13, 2008, 01:55

Hmmm.... that looks and sounds like a 15 word limit to me.

Ley me see if I've got this straight - this agency is rejecting whole batches of stuff from Lisafx and Lev Dolgachov who are two of the most successful stock photographers in the world.

They appear to have few customers and yet preach the 'holier than thou' stuff as if they are something of a leader in the industry.

Sounds to me as though someone has escaped from the cuckoo's nest.

sharpshot · « **Reply #76 on:** March 13, 2008, 04:01 »

I only have so much time each week to upload to all these sites and it doesn't seem worth spending time editing keywords with canstock at the moment. I do it with fotolia but there are good sales there. Perhaps if sales pick up with cansotck I will resume uploading.

michealo · « **Reply #77 on:** March 13, 2008, 04:28 »

I noticed the latest Member is Duncan_CSP ...

null · « **Reply #78 on:** March 13, 2008, 05:29 »

(deleted)

null · « **Reply #79 on:** March 13, 2008, 05:47 »

Quote from: Artmyth on March 13, 2008, 02:39

Just to add a bit of reality to this before it veers off on a course of complete exaggeration and inflated speculation...

It's always good to hear both sides of the story. If not, that's how urban legends spring to life ;-)

To Hatman: no, you don't have to keyword for CanStockPhoto separately. You priority-tag your keywords already for Fotolia (7), I guess, so just make it the first 15 for CanStockPhoto or 20 for Zymmetrical. More sites will include keyword-relevance sooner or later in their search engine since searches will break down (resulting in tens of pages per search) on sites with 2,000,000+ images.

Quote

Another pre-emptive tactic for the photographer might be to enter the image's keywords in the IPTC metadata in order of relevance. At first sight, this tactic is rather overkill since agencies rank the tags alphabetically for now. The issue remains however that some tags are more essential than others. With a glass with pouring Champaign can the metaphor waterfall be associated, but with an image of a real waterfall, the meta tag waterfall is more relevant. Glass is more relevant for the first image.

(I hate to quote myself

)

Lev · « **Reply #80 on:** March 13, 2008, 06:10 »

Quote from: FlemishDreams on March 12, 2008, 22:26

Yes I keyword for Fotolia. My vital kwds are in the first 7 and the essentials in the first 15. Anything beyond are synonyms and circumstantial. By ranking kwds in order of importance, I'm always safe, on Fotolia with 7 and on SS with 50.

i keyword for fotolia too, they are my nr. 2 seller and getting closer and closer to nr. 1. they sell me for 5 times more in EVERY DAY than Canstock does in a month now. so it's worth bothering. but i will not bother to select 15 words specially for stock that doesn't sell. reminds me Galastock policy. anybody remember Galastock? i wonder if ANY top performer changes keywords specially for canstock?

peep · « **Reply #81 on:** March 13, 2008, 10:03 »

And your Nr.1 seller is....?

lisafx · « **Reply #82 on:** March 13, 2008, 11:05 »

Quote from: Artmyth on March 13, 2008, 02:39

whole batches were not rejected from these photographers.. In the case of LisaFX, 8 images have been rejected since the Feb 25th announcement - a number of them for overexposure.

I can't speak for anyone else's experience, but in my case the 8 images that were rejected were NOT overexposed, according to my monitor, nor according to any other stock site. In fact they were exposed exactly the same as the half of that same batch that were accepted.

It is definitely cause for concern when a site with CanStockPhoto's low sales announces they are "raising their standards" and suddenly artists who have never had rejection problems anywhere begin getting high numbers of rejections.

Many of the top sellers have stopped uploading there over the past year or so. Arbitrary rejections are not the way to show appreciation for those who have hung in there out of loyalty.

And FWIW I just had two large batches of approvals which has bumped my approval rating there. When I originally posted in this thread about the rejecting of half of a submitted batch that was an accurate characterization.

michealo · « **Reply #83 on:** March 13, 2008, 11:36 »

In response to the ArtMyth just scroll over to the right of the page. Each of the 6 top sites had increased earnings for contributors last month, as had two of the 3 up and coming sites. And you got overtaken by Snapvillage, which is in beta and only went international for sales this month. . .

UncleGene · « **Reply #84 on:** March 14, 2008, 01:29 »

Guys, I think you are reading all these changes wrong. They are not just business decisions, but - my diagnosis - business decisions dictated by IT side (sure, nobody will ever admit this)

Translation from a professional point of view (not stock photo, where I am brand new)

"Sorry, guys. We just had hit our scalability limit. We thought we were linear, but it appeared that we are exponential (sorry for a lingo). We _cannot_ afford any more photos, especially taking in account our new contracts. Our site will just fail.
The main bottleneck is our search, so the only way to S-O-A-s (other than to stop the growth) is to limit the multiplication factor - keywords. But, to be safe, we'd better do both.
We've developed an excellent software, and the fact that it does not scale is an act of God. All other sites are probably using some infernal knowledge. Hiring new specialists will not help, as we are the best of the crop, and, BTW, costs $$$$".

This is not a pure speculation, key points were verified by looking at the site behavior from the same professional point of view.

Do not take me wrong, I really like CanStockPhoto, it is a big pleasure to upload there (though not a pleasure to get close to $0 back), but...

Uncle Gene,
digging his own CanStockPhoto future grave

P.S. to Duncan:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0672326140 - very useful, especially if read open-minded

madelaide · « **Reply #85 on:** March 16, 2008, 20:32 »

In case someone hasn't seen this yet, there is a poll going on about the way the search tool should consider keywords. Voting closes on March 19th.

http://www.canstockphoto.com/search_vote.php

Regards,
Adelaide

epixx · « **Reply #86 on:** March 17, 2008, 00:30 »

Strange thing: my sales at Canstock are increasing while subs are going down. I've had almost as much sales there so far this year as on LO since I started November 2006. That doesn't account for much, but money is money, and if this continues, I'm looking at another payout soon. maybe I should start uploading again

sharpshot · « **Reply #87 on:** March 17, 2008, 03:07 »

I voted for the first option, as the others require working on my keywords and I wont do that for a low paying site. Can't think why people vote for the options that mean spending more time ordering keywords, that makes no sense to me. If they were likely to make me lots of money it would be different.

38.5% 1) Select and Order Images by All Listed Keywords
18.3% 2) Select and Order by First 15 Keywords
43.1% 3) Select from All Keywords - First 15 to Assist Ranking

leaf · « **Reply #88 on:** March 17, 2008, 03:51 »

many people allready have their keywords sorted in order of importance (to comply with fotolia) so if canstock used the first 15 words as the most imporant, then the rest just as additional words it would probably suite quite a few people - and wouldn't be any extra work.

diego_cervo · « **Reply #89 on:** March 17, 2008, 08:28 »

Quote from: epixx on March 17, 2008, 00:30

Strange thing: my sales at Canstock are increasing while subs are going down. I've had almost as much sales there so far this year as on LO since I started November 2006. That doesn't account for much, but money is money, and if this continues, I'm looking at another payout soon. maybe I should start uploading again

I'm experiencing the same thing recently.
diego

madelaide · « **Reply #90 on:** March 17, 2008, 18:15 »

Quote from: leaf on March 17, 2008, 03:51

many people allready have their keywords sorted in order of importance (to comply with fotolia) so if canstock used the first 15 words as the most imporant, then the rest just as additional words it would probably suite quite a few people - and wouldn't be any extra work.

Exactly. I've been using relevance even before joining microstock, as in SP the order is also important.

Regards,
Adelaide

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Author Topic: Big changes (Read 35810 times)

Artmyth

sharpshot

michealo

null

null

Lev

peep

lisafx

michealo

UncleGene

madelaide

epixx

sharpshot

leaf

diego_cervo

madelaide

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