MicrostockGroup
Microstock Photography Forum - General => General Stock Discussion => Topic started by: Semmick Photo on April 07, 2015, 07:25
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When I started out in stock it seemed to be straightforward, just submit everything to all agencies. I find lately that I need to know what agency accepts what.
Defocused images seem to be a trend (or a market) on Shutterstock, but not on CanStockPhoto.
Example Shutterstock accepted
(http://thumb1.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/952942/266271860/stock-photo-blurred-image-of-the-captiole-de-toulouse-and-place-du-capitole-at-night-266271860.jpg)
CanStockPhoto rejected
File appears to have been over-filtered or has had an unwanted filter applied to it.
And that goes for more trends, like instagram look, etc
Are reviewers behind on whats trending? Are agencies playing it safe? Are agencies like CanStockPhoto just always late in following the big 4? Whats your take on this?
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Any thoughts?
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In my experience SS has been more open to things than other sites. I don't know anything about CanStock, but certainly they're ahead of the curve compared to iS, for example. At least from a vector perspective, SS was accepting illustrations with text for years that sold really well, while iS was rejecting them until fairly recently. (Even in the last few weeks iS has rejected my all-time highest seller on SS as "not suitable for stock," while it's sold more than 2,000 times on SS). And in fact in their forums iS said "don't tell us what sells well at other places," which was certainly shortsighted, looking back. I think SS's attention to trends and accepting images that are on trend is part of what made them the market leader.
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The images were just rejected on 123 as well.
I agree with you about SS. I think the other agencies depend or expect the buyer to apply effects and filters. I think offering the final product is something they should definitely consider.
I can imagine buyers want ready made product for various reasons.
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I think other sites look at their existing customer base and say "we sell to art directors, and they like to apply their own filters/add their own text/have control over the blurriness of images, so we'll keep accepting more of that." While SS says, "Ok, we sell to art directors, but what other kinds of people will license images? What other untapped markets are out there? What's trending right now on social, in publishing, advertising, in the design world?"
SS is proactive; other sites are reactive. You see that in everything the others do...they follow the leader (ever so slowly). Plus, the other sites don't really consider the totality of what makes SS successful...the search algorithms, the IT knowledge, the marketing savvy, SEO, blogging, accepting what's on-trend, having a strong sales force, expanding into new markets, and a zillion other things I'm not thinking of. They just see the pricing, or the subs, and copy that—a couple of years too late. (But that's true in pretty much every industry...sure is true in mine.)
DT seems the most open after SS (from a vector perspective), but even they reject "similars," which, in my experience, increase sales rather than competing with each other. I think designers look for options to present to clients. I can see that on SS one buyer will buy several of my Easter designs at one time, for example. I really wonder if most microstock site management just has an idea in their head of what sells and refuses to look at hard data. I suspect so.
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SS seems to be the most on trend. They take most of my filtered images while I know if I submit them to DT I'll get a note telling me to upload the original instead. It's short-sighted because there are business people who buy photos to use who don't know how to apply filters and even designers who might like a certain look and will buy a ready-made image to save time. A handful of my heavily filtered images are among my top sellers on SS and I don't have them anywhere else except Fine Art America where they also sell - and we see them all the time on stocksy - so there's clearly a market for them.
I also uploaded a few heavily filtered illustrations to Alamy recently and they were accepted, but I was holding my breath given their QC process. No sales of those images yet but it's only been a few weeks.
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Surprisingly, I tried one blurry illustration and it sold today for the first time. (jpg)
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The problem with the rules the agencies set to weed out poor images also tend to weed out the creative images that stand out and may in fact sell well. So we get a lot of the same often, which is a big negative when looking through images on micro stock sites. I guess the reality is that creative intuition is not something you can teach inspectors. I think as long as the norm makes them some money they are too jaded to see something more