MicrostockGroup
Microstock Photography Forum - General => General Stock Discussion => Topic started by: takestock on January 21, 2008, 05:27
-
Have been with them since last summer with just a handful of sales.
Beginning to think!!!
Is it worth it?
-
Probably not. I have sinking sales there.
-
As a free keyword suggestor it is worth it, not for anything else ..
-
They were my first sale almost 2 years ago, and I have been hanging on despite people telling me to leave. Lately, I felt like the keyword helper gave them enough value to keep submitting. Unfortunately, sales have dropped from even the previous meager amounts and currently are below 1% of my sales for the month. I will probably stop uploading there at the end of the month. Short term, I won't delete my port, but not sure the value of even leaving them there.
It's a well run and designed site. It's a shame there can't be any marketing.
-
I've been there from the start and I hate to bail on the site. I'm just not sure why it hasn't grown like some others. I'll keep uploading there for the near future.
-
Went to the site to look around and see if there was something I could do to improve my sales. Started looking in the forums and found this from Duncan on a recent thread. Understand I have taken it out of context, but it doesn't exactly motivate me.
"But be warned that I am on high troll alert – so if you have nothing constructive or useful to say, you may find your message and/or account suddenly vanish. "
-
I don't think I'd recommend uploading at CanStock to anyone. I do like the site (I've been there since October 2004), but their lack of aggressive marketing has resulted in low sales and a slow-growing collection and they're just not competitive.
I think that Duncan pursued web site improvements instead of bringing in buyers and "fair" treatment for photographers (their commissions were initially very high, especially in comparison to iStock) versus maximizing photographer income.
I already deactivated my best sellers at other sites as subscription sales (at 25 cents per) were making up half my sales total. I'm now $1.45 away from my next payout and once that's reached, I'm calling it quits.
-
I set a new record there today, 34 days without a sale. My previous record, 33 days, was in December, so you can figure how poor performer it has been...
Regards,
Adelaide
-
This will be my worst month there since July 06, 4 months after I started.
-
"But be warned that I am on high troll alert – so if you have nothing constructive or useful to say, you may find your message and/or account suddenly vanish. "
I read that statement from Duncan too, and it's still there. Quite blunt. Zu Ihnen... spricht der Fuhrer ;-)
Well, if that's what he thinks about his contributors, that says enough. Especially about canceling the account, and the money in it!
They have a peculiar keyword policy now, deviant from all other sites. You can't use some words any more like color, beautiful, red. I asked twice on the forum what the forbidden list was, so I could adapt my tagging script, but didn't get any decent reply.
I'm hesitant about insisting since they are on high troll alert, and I'd hate to see my account vanish two dollars away from payout ;D
I had no sale from December 6 till January 15. Half a year on Canstock feels like a day on Shutterstock.
-
A lot of people talk about the forums on LO and IS, but those people definitely drank the koolaid. Someone posted about low sales and someone else replied that it get slow sometimes but then it turns around and he'll get 2-3 in the same day!?!
-
I have 138 images on CanStockPhoto and I am reasonably confident I will get a payout sometime in 2015. But as Michealo said it is a great keyword tool.
-
I have managed to collect slightly more than US$50 there. I was hoping I would reach US$100 and get a pay-out at MB, but I'm thinking of putting my hands on it now through PP, otherwise I may never see that money in my lifetime...
It's pretty said, they were one of my first sites, but unfortunately they seem to lack the resources or the time to invest in the site. Other sites like BigStock and FP also seem to be run by a very small group, but they've been more effective, at least to me.
Regards,
Adelaide
-
I have managed to collect slightly more than US$50 there. I was hoping I would reach US$100 and get a pay-out at MB, but I'm thinking of putting my hands on it now through PP, otherwise I may never see that money in my lifetime...
My thoughts as well. I did that a couple of months ago. It's difficult to get the money out in cash for me from PP, but I spend them on hosting services etc.
-
Apparently, no one is uploading there. My last 4 accepted have been on the front page all day as latest uploaded.
-
It's not that nobody is uploading, because if you look on the main page, it says they have like 9,000 images in the queue. It takes about 12 days to get images accepted. I have 500 images on CanStockPhoto and I only upload there because it is so simple. I use the windows uploader and click the "auto category" and all I have to do is attach a model release. If it was any harder than that, I wouldn't bother. $28.50 for a little over a year of work? Not good by any standard. Even 123rf.com is outselling them and they haven't been around as long. If Duncan thinks that people are just going to start knocking down their perverbial door for images because they cut the price (and the contributor's commission) then he needs to take a class in Marketing 101.
-
After 37 dry days, I had a sale today. A subs one, of course. *sigh*
Regards,
Adelaide
-
It's not that nobody is uploading, because if you look on the main page, it says they have like 9,000 images in the queue. It takes about 12 days to get images accepted. I have 500 images on CanStockPhoto and I only upload there because it is so simple. I use the windows uploader and click the "auto category" and all I have to do is attach a model release. If it was any harder than that, I wouldn't bother. $28.50 for a little over a year of work? Not good by any standard. Even 123rf.com is outselling them and they haven't been around as long. If Duncan thinks that people are just going to start knocking down their perverbial door for images because they cut the price (and the contributor's commission) then he needs to take a class in Marketing 101.
You're right, as I looked again, I realize that it was nothing was getting reviewed. I had never seen the home page frozen like that before.
In the past when people said to bail on them, I replied the same way you did, it's too easy, plus I get keywords.
Overall, they produced 2% of my income, but so far this month, it's .3%. That't not even worth the 6-7 clicks a day it takes me to upload.
123 is giving a lot of the low-mid level markets a run. Overall, better than Fotolia, Lucky Oliver, Featurepics and StockXpert, and this month, they are keeping pace with DT and BigStock.