I just spend more than half a day submitting 56 images to 8 websites. I uploaded them (mostly) via FTP and they already did contain all the IPTC data (keywords, title, description). I was curious to write down how long each submission took in order to face the truth.

So here are the results:

photodune (envato) - 1 min of my life
No complaints here. I feel valued.

123rf - 1 min of my life
No complaints here. I feel valued.

canstockphoto 13 mins of my life
marking each image as illustration
editing and resubmitting 5 images where they complained about keywords

veer - 15 mins of my life (btw. veer's FTP generally doesn't work so I had to use their online upload functionality here)
I had to choose meanings of lots of my keywords. Clicks usually didn't came through and I ended up with a lot of website errors.
I had to reload the site a couple of times and most of those clicks got lost. At the end I ignored half of the keywords that I would have to explain.

pond5 - 23 mins of my life
applying template, choosing image type because that template part doesn't work, checking "go to next item" explicitly
The images must be process in linear manner, one needs to wait until next image shows up.

bigstock - 41 mins of my life
Titles were not retrieved from IPTC Data, had to copy and paste manually, 3 categories per image needed to be chosen. For those 3 categories one needs to go through 6 dropdowns.

shutterstock - 42 mins of my life
choosing categories and marking images as illustration, keywords will not be displayed if one blocks javascript

fotolia - 66 mins of my life
Did read Description as Title which led to a Title that was too long. Would be far slower if I hadn't chosen my categories in advance.
Each image must be marked as illustration, keywords are recognized but still require one unecessary additional click, terms must be accepted each time, often clicks to display all categories necessary.

dreamstime - 95 mins of my life
Titles were not imported from the IPTC data, needed to copy and paste manually, 3 categories needed to be chosen
The submission process is linear and one needs to wait until the next image shows up. I had complaints about too many keywords, because dreamstime flattens keywords not only by space, but also by the minus-sign.

istock - would have taken half a day and I was not willing to do that
No FTP upload, each file needs to be uploaded separately, so it already starts there. Even the upload (which I'm not counting here) would take ages.
Overwhelming number of categories (similar to Fotolia)
Each word has to be explained. Uploaded 1 image few months ago, and nothing since then. It's just beyond acceptable how they treat contributors during the submission process. And their software "DeepMeta" which they try to smuggle onto your pc instead of fixing the root cause of the problem, doesn't  work under Linux.

alamy - would have taken entire day
No FTP, crashing flash upload, images can't be edited before approval, flash again to edit image data, no IPTC possible because they have 4 classes of keywords and IPTC only supports 1 keyword list, several attributes must be chosen each time, keyword limits by letters instead of keyword count.

depositphoto - If you ask yourself why I didn't include it: I can't offer any experience, they think my images aren't of commercial value

Additional conditions: I already have chosen categories before downloading, so I only needed to look them up from a list when submitting. Otherwise Fotolia, Bigstock
and dreamstime would have taken a lot longer.

Anyone has any tricks up his sleeve how I can do all this painful online-stuff faster?

Eliminate the sites that have long upload processes for little financial return. I've stopped uploading to Dreamstime because my files don't sell there. Not worth my time. You can use that extra time to create more images and upload to the biggest sellers.

I just spend more than half a day submitting 56 images to 8 websites. I uploaded them (mostly) via FTP and they already did contain all the IPTC data (keywords, title, description). I was curious to write down how long each submission took in order to face the truth.

So here are the results:
photodune (envato) - 1 min of my life
No complaints here. I feel valued.
123rf - 1 min of my life
No complaints here. I feel valued.
...

I'd feel more valued if the sites sold for me.
YMMV, but if it doesn't, get back to us and tell us where you feel most valued after 6 months or a year.

Quote from: disorderly on May 24, 2014, 15:16

Start by figuring out why your IPTC data isn't getting handled by all those sites.  Bigstock has no problem reading mine, and I don't bother with more categories than are essential.  One or two at most, and I assign those to a batch of related images in one operation.

What are the names of IPTC Fields you are using in order to get the title recognized? Are there any special characters you are avoiding?

I use Graphic Converter for my IPTC editing; both it and Adobe Bridge call the title field Title.  I seem to have run into some problems at some sites using ampersands in titles, but that was ages ago.

According to exiftool, the Title is stored in the IPTC data as ObjectName.  (Description is Caption-Abstract, and Keywords are Keywords.) 

And how do you "assign" your categories to a batch in one operation? Do you mean IPTC by that? This would blow my mind if they recognize categories via IPTC.

No, I don't think there's a way to set up categories in IPTC data.  But in Bigstock you can select a bunch of images and then click on the edit button to assign the same information to all of them at once.  I assign categories and model releases that way, and occasionally fix too-short descriptions.

I upload to Photoshelter (a paid-for service) and FTP the whole batch from there. That doesn't solve the iStock problem and sometimes DT fails to read the keywords or descriptions. I do 123 manually because the FTP there has been flaky.
One advantage of Photoshelter is that you can use the site for your own direct-sales, as long as you can set up a merchant account to take credit card or Paypal payments, it also acts as a secure archive for images. But you do have to pay.
If you want to use my referral link I think it gives you a discount if you decide to join up and I'll get a one-off $5. http://www.photoshelter.com/referral/PA5CX7F75K

Like many others, I find Alamy's system excrutiatingly painful.
Its not so bad if you are uploading a batch.Today I 'managed' a batch of five I uploaded last night (news feed) and it was fast as there was only 1 photo I had to add a slight bit to the description, one word to the keywords and change the number of people.

However, yesterday I also had to 'manage' six files which were unrelated and it was a very slow process. You have to stem your own words, e.g. plurals, verbs, synonyms, as they don't have a CV, and also if photos were taken  in a non-English speaking country, certain important keywords should be keyworded in English and the language of that country (which in my case has to be checked and double checked, plus remembering accents etc) as they don't have translation. And as you have to put in exact location, I was poring over Google maps checking streets. That took ages, even just for six files.
Also, you have to be very careful double-checking for typos (or at least I do!) as they system doesn't pick them up.

You just reminded me that I've got 100 sitting waiting at Alamy, so that's my afternoon ruined!  But how much effort is it worth making?

Interesting question with sales and prices falling.
However, that's more a question of whether it's worth uploading there. Once that decision is made, if I go to the bother of uploading them to Alamy, there's no point in not keywording them so that they'll be found.
It rains a lot here, so I have plenty of non-shooting time, though with Alamy, unlike iS, I  have to do it without the TV in the background or music playing, as it needs so much more concentration.

Oh, for a CV (which won't/can't happen now, obviously). I found I'd had a hit on a search for Will Young, whom I know isn't in my port. In the description, the verb 'will take place' and the phrase 'young people' appear, two lines apart. 

istock -  And their software "DeepMeta" which they try to smuggle onto your pc

Really? That must be very new.
IME, you have to choose to download the program.
Anyone else find them trying to 'smuggle' DM onto their computer?

Ah, my experience is different as the files I send to Alamy and iStock are different.
I don't actually like DM for uploading, and prefer to do it directly. Recently I and many others have been getting logged out during the uploading process, so I've used DM around 20 times in the past month, and I still don't like it any better (for uploading, it's useful for other things). I appear to be in a minority on that, though!
And now, you can't see your thum while captioning/describing/uploading, which is a royal PITA.

No problems with most of the sites reading IPTC data here.   For some reason SS FTP hasn't worked for months.  Their online upload is fast and easy tho. 

Dealing with releases for large batches of pics with multiple different models is my biggest gripe. 

According to exiftool, the Title is stored in the IPTC data as ObjectName.

Thanks a lot! I had that problem since a long time! I would have never guessed that they are reading IPTC.ObjectName. I always used IPTC.Title and it worked everywhere except those two. In the future I will write both into the file.

At some sites like Fotolia and Dreamstime, they offer some kind of batch-editing, Fotolia calls it "Indexing", Dreamstime "Auto-Populate"...

Dreamstime autopopulate seems just to copy everything, so it's not very useful since I'm trying to diversify my keywords as much as possible.
But I just found the indexing feature of Fotolia. This one is really nice! Now they just need to get rid of those categories:

Shutterstock 30
Depositphotos 36
Istock 163 (I think those are for images only)
Dreamstime 171
Bigstock 173
Fotolia 816 = 392 categories + 424 concepts!!!

Quote from: einstein on May 24, 2014, 15:02

istock -  And their software "DeepMeta" which they try to smuggle onto your pc

Really? That must be very new.
IME, you have to choose to download the program.
Anyone else find them trying to 'smuggle' DM onto their computer?

I meant it as BaldricksTrousers explained. They basically are forcing you to use it instead of fixing their website. You use Deepmeta or you can practically forget about submission to Istock.

The keywords are included in my uploaded files. They need rearranging in the three (well, two, usually) boxes.

Are those keywords at least in the same order when you edit them? I never analyzed that, but if they are, it would at least speed up the process of cutting them, since my keywords are ordered by importance already.

For some reason SS FTP hasn't worked for months.

SS FTP works for me just fine. Unless you mean the waiting time to show up after upload Or do you get error messages?

Hmmm.  So its just me with the SS ftp issue.  Maybe it is just such a long wait that I thought it wasn't working.   Still prefer the on site upload there.

On dreamtime autopopulate, you can select which stuff gets copied.  Like just categories, or just releases or whatnot.

Quote from: einstein on May 25, 2014, 11:16

You use Deepmeta or you can practically forget about submission to Istock.

Your call.
I've been submitting to iS directly for over six years.
But I could do without more competition, so fair enough. 

Didn't think about that one, so I'm not going to argue much. I guess you have indeed a good point there
If that's part of their strategy and they think they can get away with it, they are welcome to try.

But let me say this:
People will most likely go for the greatest choice of images and it's undoubtedly shutterstock. By limiting submissions, they will increase the gap between them and their rival.