MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => Adobe Stock => Topic started by: boatman on September 22, 2008, 09:25
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I have just had 14 aircraft images rejected at Fotolia for overabundant category. It only took them 5 minutes from my uploading them to reject them, so no complaints about review times there!
My acceptance rate has plunged over the last 3 months and There have been a number of posts complaining about this problem. What I would like to know however, those of you more successful contributors, are you also seeing an increase in rejections. It can be very easy to complain about sites when you are not doing well , but I'm trying to see if the problems there are across the board.
I guess the reality is, if they are rejecting for overabundance then I just have to shoot something else.
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Golden rule no.1: When complaining abour rejections, ALWAYS show rejected images, so we can give you proper comment. This way, I imagine your images were blurry, underexposed, noisy, not very interesting, snapshots, bad composition, dull, boring, etc, etc.... you are wrong, they were right... unless you show us rejected material, then we can make a proper discusion.
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Even Bobby Deal (Photoshow) started a post on FT about rejections a couple months back, and he is one of the best.
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Peter if you will read my post again you will see they were rejected for overabundant catagory, not photo quality. You are successful on Fotolia so what I would like to know is are you geting more rejections these days or not.
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The reason they give you, doesnt always corespond to the real rejection reason. You should knew that by now. So if the photo is not interesting enough, or should I say, not with good comercial value due to dull colors, uninteresting angle, bad composition, distracting background objects, etc..., they would often reject it as "Type of photo", "overboundand categorie", "Quality of image", etc...
You should post thumnbnail of image that you are complaining about. Only than I can say, reviewers were wrong.
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for the past few months uploading to FT became miss and hit I too get more rejections there with the very same reason. and I beleive in most cases it has nothing to do with technical aspects I think they are being too picky because they already got 4million images on line so they must think that pretty much everything is well covered:)
(PS:the rejected files I am talking about got approved everywhere else I upload to ,including IS)
once again I do believe they have to clear up older files that are not up to today's standards so there 'd be more room for fresh more quality images if overloading was a concern for them.
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Peter, I'm not saying they are right or wrong about my images. there has been a big change in the last few months for a lot of people who upload to Fotolia. Have you seen any increase in rejections for your uploads, or has there been no change for you
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Yes I did. Yesterday I got 27 rejections out of 40. (reason: simmilar, and they were all aproved at SS, DT, not to mention lower agencies like StockXpert...). But it is a good thing. If they didnt tighten up standards, we would have now 6 milions images, and we would sell 50% less, and would complaining about sales....
If you ask me, I would delete 2 milon not good enough images from FT database (including about 1000 mine). That would increase sales at least 50%.
But thats just my opinion, nobody cares about it....
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OK, thanks Peter.
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If you ask me, I would delete 2 milon not good enough images from FT database (including about 1000 mine). That would increase sales at least 50%.
Can you explain how that would work? Why would sales increase? If the deleted images aren't selling, why would there be any change? And if they are, why delete them?
I believe there is no problem at Fotolia with too much content. They can easily go to 10 million files with no problem. They probably should work on their search algorithm, but that already is crappy.
I believe they just don't have consistent reviewers. One accepts all, one rejects all. No real reasoning behind it. It's just pure luck.
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Poor images do sell. Mostly buyers are too lazy to search deeper than 5th page, and sometimes will by almost anything.
27 sales of this image:
(http://i34.tinypic.com/207kzsw.jpg)
Got my point?
Amateurs with point-and-shoot 4MP cameras are bad for search engine and advanced photographers who do real stock images.
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So your point is not "delete images that don't sell" but "delete other people's images". ;D
Well, yes, if they do that (delete my competition, but not mine), that would give my sales a boost...
But serious: How should they go about deleting old images? If they do it according to sales, your example picture would stay (i sells). And if they would do according to technical criteria, that would mean re-inspecting all the "old" files (which ones? the first million? the first two millions?). They'll never pay for that... Anyway, they'd better invest the money in the search engine.
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re-inspecting all images (on todays criteria) older than 18 months would be best solution.
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they'll never do it. too expensive.
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I agree with Peter, if they just start checking files from the oldest I am sure it wouldn't be such a difficult task for them to spot poor files.I imagine in most cases just checking thumbnails would be enough. in the early days they'd approve almost anything that included some of files that I would not even think uploading now. I do my cleaning up from time to time but if they did it it would work well for everyone IMO. Keeping the quality high would please customers more .
may be they should create a dollar bin like IS has it'd be another good way to get rid off the files that wouldn't meet today's quality standards
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they'll never do it. too expensive.
if they keep rejecting fresh high quality images in order to keep old poor files I think the cost in the long term would be much higher by damaging the reputation of the site.
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I don't believe they reject new files BECAUSE they want to keep old files instead.
I think they keep the old ones because they do not see them as a problem.
And they reject newer ones for no other reason than random.
Their current acception/rejection practice has never be explained anywhere. Just because we want to believe there is a good reason for it, that does not mean there is one.
My belief is different: the reason why it is that way (i.e. inconsistent) is that they do not care enough.
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I think everyone would be better served by deleting images with 0 or few sales over a given length of time. That could be done via software. A poor image is a poor image when judged by dollars spent. Don't need an army of inspectors either. Wise retailers would never have a poor selling item taking up shelf space. So why do our sites keep adding to the clutter?
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I'm emerald on Fotolia and I have seen a HUGE increase in rejections there over the past few months.
My acceptance rates at the other sites remain in the 90% range while they have dropped to around 60% on Fotolia. I have no idea why Fotolia all of a sudden hates my work but take some comfort in the fact that I am not the only one.
Still making good money there, but the randomness of the rejections is pretty annoying. Thank goodness there are other sites and I am not dependent on the whims of Fotolia's reviewers.
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My acceptance rate at Fotolia is well over 90% they hardly ever reject anythig but at IS it's harder and harder to get image accepted.
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My acceptance rate there is much lower than it was. I was around 45% but now more like 25%.
For landscapes of any sort it is basically zero.
IS on the other hand seem to take most of what Fotolia rejects!
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Yes I did. Yesterday I got 27 rejections out of 40. (reason: simmilar, and they were all aproved at SS, DT, not to mention lower agencies like StockXpert...). But it is a good thing. If they didnt tighten up standards, we would have now 6 milions images, and we would sell 50% less, and would complaining about sales....
If you ask me, I would delete 2 milon not good enough images from FT database (including about 1000 mine). That would increase sales at least 50%.
But thats just my opinion, nobody cares about it....
Peter, you seem like a pretty experienced guy in this business. I think I remember you saying you have over 4000 images total. Do you think it's normal to get 27 rejected out of a batch of 40? That just isn't right. I guarantee you that that same batch on Shutterstock at least 80-85% were accepted. You obviously know what's technically acceptable by now, if you've been doing this as long as you have been. I'm pretty sure you have less than 20% of your batches rejected on other sites, and that many of the ones Fotolia rejects sell often. I'm sorry, but it's just not cost effective to work on and upload that many images, only to have 68% of them rejected.
I feel that reviewers need to accept anything that is technically sound, and let the buyers decide what is best. Who cares about overloading the sites...as a designer I know that I won't just settle for the first good photo I see. When I'm looking for something specific, I like to hunt long and hard if I have to for the right image.
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Yeah, I get pissed off when I get 50% rejected for similarty. But I must be honest, they were simmilar to each other. SS and DT accepted them all, but they are still simmilar. It is my own fault.
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Peter, so why are getting pissed off then , and why do you still submit very similar pictures ???Something I don t get ??? ???
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Not speaking about just Fotolia, but it's not a bad idea to keep a folder of similars and when the originals start to lose momentum, push through a fresh batch. I remember Sy posting that once during a slow period she went through old folders and came up with many new submissions and was rewarded with sales.
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Peter, so why are getting pissed off then , and why do you still submit very similar pictures ???Something I don t get ??? ???
maybe because they get accepted everywhere else. they are not VERY simmilar, they are just from the same series. not very similar, but similar enough. hhh.
I get pissed for 5 minutes, and move on...
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I feel your pain, Peter. I do series all the time, but what I do is pick a couple at most from each - then submit them in the day's batch. It's a little more work, but I don't mind. Batch keywording is easy...then somedays you can submit batches without even having to do any new keywording. Take a couple from this series, a couple from that series, and you're good to go. You also lengthen the exposure you get for any one given subject. Mainly, you get to avoid the rejections. Reviewers in general will just pick the best 2 or 3 in the series, then reject the rest.
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I'm emerald on Fotolia and I have seen a HUGE increase in rejections there over the past few months.
My acceptance rates at the other sites remain in the 90% range while they have dropped to around 60% on Fotolia. I have no idea why Fotolia all of a sudden hates my work but take some comfort in the fact that I am not the only one.
Still making good money there, but the randomness of the rejections is pretty annoying. Thank goodness there are other sites and I am not dependent on the whims of Fotolia's reviewers.
I've had the same experience. Fotolia seems to hate my work lately, too, but I'm making good money on the images I have there. Go figure...
Thank God I'm not exclusive, either.
I have found, however, that if I submit a batch of similar items, say, different piles of gemstones, I stand a higher chance of being rejected for "similar content" then I do when I submit batches culled from different shoots. I can always submit the others later, if I choose.
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re-inspecting all images (on todays criteria) older than 18 months would be best solution.
only if you assume reviews are consistent -- if an old image is rejected on second review it could just be the reviewer
ideally no image should be rejected by a single reviewer - it should have at least 1 additional review. in any other situation this would be a no brainer, but when an agency is dealing with thousands of images a day they just cant afford it.
this is a type ii errorhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_I_and_type_II_errors (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_I_and_type_II_errors)
it's better overall to accept that there will be false negative [rejecting good images] rather than accepting type i errors [which is what sites like most, cut, yay et al do by accepting just about anything]
it's possible to keep both types of error low, but it's much more expensive and only used where it's critical. we see examples of this every day, but often the choice between the 2 types isnt acknowledged -- eg, death penalty laws, rules of engagement re civilian casualties. for a much less important case like selecting pretty pictures, it's no surprise how the agencies react
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It seems like people images are all getting accepted easily...everything else, forget it. Graphics, illustrations, reject reject reject
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Not speaking about just Fotolia, but it's not a bad idea to keep a folder of similars and when the originals start to lose momentum, push through a fresh batch. I remember Sy posting that once during a slow period she went through old folders and came up with many new submissions and was rewarded with sales.
I usually do exactly that. And it works well for me - especially on SS.
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I'm starting to believe that they just randomly click and don't even look at the images anymore, especially when it comes down to the keywording. FT is so far my least favourite for allowing keyword abuse. Perfect example is this picture with an invisible buffalo dog playing a trumpet. http://en.fotolia.com/id/9925180
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I'm starting to believe that they just randomly click and don't even look at the images anymore, especially when it comes down to the keywording. FT is so far my least favourite for allowing keyword abuse. Perfect example is this picture with an invisible buffalo dog playing a trumpet. [url]http://en.fotolia.com/id/9925180[/url]
Wow! How many keywords to they ALLOW at Fotolia?! That looks like the entire dictionary attached to that one.
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Between 7 and 50 keywords, most the big sellers are spamming the keywords but I guess if you're raking in the pennies for them it doesn't matter. :(
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I'm starting to believe that they just randomly click and don't even look at the images anymore, especially when it comes down to the keywording. FT is so far my least favourite for allowing keyword abuse. Perfect example is this picture with an invisible buffalo dog playing a trumpet. [url]http://en.fotolia.com/id/9925180[/url]
wow, pretty girl.
but even bigger wow for the keywords. reads like the dead sea scroll. it would take me days to think up so many keywords ;D
that is if i don't fall asleep by my computer... ;D
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A prime example of 'cut & paste, one size fits all, keywording'; debatable that any buyer looking for a Buffalo image would buy that one though :D
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I'm starting to believe that they just randomly click and don't even look at the images anymore, especially when it comes down to the keywording. FT is so far my least favourite for allowing keyword abuse. Perfect example is this picture with an invisible buffalo dog playing a trumpet. [url]http://en.fotolia.com/id/9925180[/url]
I couldn't believe this one! Out of curiosity, to see what the response would be, I tried raising this through Fotolia Support. After a little over 2 days they responded to say
"Thank you for your e-mail. We'll look into it." and they set the status on my issue to Closed. The image is still up and still has Buffalo and Trumpet etc?
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I'm starting to believe that they just randomly click and don't even look at the images anymore, especially when it comes down to the keywording. FT is so far my least favourite for allowing keyword abuse. Perfect example is this picture with an invisible buffalo dog playing a trumpet. [url]http://en.fotolia.com/id/9925180[/url]
I couldn't believe this one! Out of curiosity, to see what the response would be, I tried raising this through Fotolia Support. After a little over 2 days they responded to say
"Thank you for your e-mail. We'll look into it." and they set the status on my issue to Closed. The image is still up and still has Buffalo and Trumpet etc?
He He, someone used a keyword generator on the horn = talking on the phone = trumpet? If you click on the word buffalo you'll see some buffalo but also a girl holding a Christmas package. Click on that and you see another mess of keywords, but a different user? http://en.fotolia.com/id/9992886 which include (the picture is a girl in a red dress with a small Christmas box in her hand) "buffalo, cabinet, Father, feather, gill, locker, meat, pussycat, toilet and vehicle. :o
Both users are from Japan so I wonder if something in the translation is getting lost? Still it's pretty funny. I wonder what the word buffalo is coming from?
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:o
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Both users are from Japan so I wonder if something in the translation is getting lost? Still it's pretty funny. I wonder what the word buffalo is coming from?
It's very likely their silly translation system getting haywire. Even the translation from german to english is often completely crazy; I can't imagine what it might do for languages so extremely different as japanese and english.
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I think everyone would be better served by deleting images with 0 or few sales over a given length of time. That could be done via software. A poor image is a poor image when judged by dollars spent. Don't need an army of inspectors either. Wise retailers would never have a poor selling item taking up shelf space. So why do our sites keep adding to the clutter?
This would be a good option ONLY when the search engine at Fotolia functions on par with the other sites. Too many images aren't easily found there now!