MicrostockGroup
Microstock Photography Forum - General => General Stock Discussion => Topic started by: seawhisper on March 22, 2011, 14:16
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Just to have something to discuss during upload. :D
Which stock is in your opinion most contributor / user friendly? Mind I don't mean the one where you earn most! ;)
Just the ones where you have easy upload (or have features that makes even 'many steps' upload fast and not painful), logical information architecture (easy to navigate and find what you want), or shiny cool features - statistic, graphical info.
I think that Yay is extremely friendly, but well we know all how Yay is about sales... Shutterstock is nice, VERY simple but have the most information I need in simple form. Depositphotos is for me the example of usability and very well thought information architecture, and well it's just simply aesthetic. It also has easy upload, again well thought feature.
What do you think?
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GraphicLeftovers.
No categories.
Good % of the sale.
Fastest payouts in the biz.
They make doing business easy, worthwhile and you get paid quickly. What could beat that except 10 more sales a day there? lol
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10 more a day?? jeez! I am stuck at 40$ for a few months with no sales and honestly more (a lot more) rejections than IS :P
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Among the big 4, Shutterstock is the best. Yes, it has categories, nevertheless the submission process is very streamlined.
123RF, CanStock, Veer, DepositPhotos, Scanstockphoto are fine.
Panthermedia is better than it used to be, but there's still room for improvement.
Fotolia and Dreamstime should improve their submission process, they are acceptable just because there are sales, but if they were a minor site I wouldn't bother submitting pictures with their current process.
Istock is barely acceptable thanks to DeepMeta, but their native upload is the worst ever.
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Alamy is way ahead of the others for me. I don't really care about anything but being able to get my images on the site and getting sales. I get zero rejections with alamy and they sell, not as often as the micros but sometimes for much more. They also pay the best commission and use most of their profits for medical research. How can any other site be more contributor friendly than that? All they need now is video and that's on its way.
Graphic leftovers are great for the most simple upload, quick reviews and good commissions. Pond5 aren't as easy to upload and take longer to review but they sell videos and are now starting with stills. They also have a great commission and lots of buyers. I'm really getting in to video now, having been 100% stills for most of my life. There are times when a video is much more suitable than stills and I'm sure the internet will be as much about video as stills in the future.
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If money earned doesn't enter into it, then I would say Graphic Leftovers for all the reasons already posted. Love that site! Hope the sales pick up enough to make them top tier one day :)
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Shutterstock for me. No hassles, no rejections (well almost!), no commission cuts and ... best of all ... their sales have been steadily rising for months.
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I find FP very userfriendly, except for RM. And Elena is always quick at replying any question. This weekend I suggested that sales report showed which sales were US-based. She implemented this the next day. Meanwhile, DT never made that, even if requested at the forum.
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*Easy batch submission of vectors
*No categorizing required
*Fast reviews
*Friendly, fair, and efficient administration
Graphic Leftovers and CanStockPhoto both meet these criteria. If revenues aren't factored in, it would be a tough choice between these two for me. :-\
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123, CanStockPhoto, veer, stockfresh, featurepics
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Stockxpert ;)
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Dreamstime for me.
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Stockxpert ;)
Agree! They keep selling the same old pictures indefinitely - with no action involved from us - and sales are (incredibly) not declining, and well above all minor active sites. I am content with $.25 for that old stuff that no one else wants anymore, wish some other sites could freeze like that. Seems like their owners are better off at doing nothing.
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Love submitting to 123RF, Canstock, Graphic Leftovers and Shutterstock, but ClipartOf takes the cake as all you have to do is FTP your images and wait; no keywords, no descriptions, no categories.
Worst sites in regard to uploading imo:
iStock
Veer
Stockfresh (unfortunately)
Dreamstime (upload JPEG, wait half an hour, describe and finally attach an EPS that will get accepted half a month after the JPEG)
Statistics-wise, I love the new Shutterstock tools. And Dreamstime is high on my list as well, BigStock is not too bad either.
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Worst sites in regard to uploading imo:
iStock
Veer
Stockfresh (unfortunately)
Dreamstime (upload JPEG, wait half an hour, describe and finally attach an EPS that will get accepted half a month after the JPEG)
What's wrong with Stockfresh?
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Worst sites in regard to uploading imo:
iStock
Veer
Stockfresh (unfortunately)
Dreamstime (upload JPEG, wait half an hour, describe and finally attach an EPS that will get accepted half a month after the JPEG)
What's wrong with Stockfresh?
Really?
StockFresh is about as easy as it gets.
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Worst sites in regard to uploading imo:
iStock
Veer
Stockfresh (unfortunately)
Dreamstime (upload JPEG, wait half an hour, describe and finally attach an EPS that will get accepted half a month after the JPEG)
What's wrong with Stockfresh?
Please don't take offence, it's just the tiring process of zipping EPS files individually and the preview can't be included in the ZIP.
Fotolia and a few other sites require a zip including both EPS and JPEG, so I already have a folder for those. But AFAIK Stockfresh (and Stockxpert) are/were the only agencies to have a requirement of individually zipped EPS files and a preview alongside.
It won't stop me from uploading though
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I like the StockFresh upload method.
Besides what ThomasAmby wrote - which I never noticed since I do not do vectors - there's only one minor annoyance:
you could import daily allowed quota from FTP automatically, instead of having to login each day to submit files; or you could set a weekly limit instead of daily. Every other day I forget to login, losing half of my quota.
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Yeah, I forget stockfresh and the quota pretty often so I will *never* get caught up there. lol