MicrostockGroup
Microstock Photography Forum - General => General Stock Discussion => Topic started by: DonLand on April 08, 2014, 11:04
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Just wondering what everyone does about submission rejects. Do you keep track of what every agency has online and what they rejected or do you just lump them together as say submitted and not worry what they actually have online or not.
The reason I ask is I've been keeping track but realize what a large amount of time it consumes on the back end.
I've been trying to figure out the pros and cons of each way. It's nice to know in my lightroom database who has what online, but in reality I'm not sure it really helps or is necessary.
Not worrying certainly would speed things up, just upload and move onto the next batch.
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Generally I do keep track once. If I resubmit and they are rejected again I move on, usually. However, some images that I fought for have become some of my best sellers, especially on Istock. So I guess I am saying that you should have some parameters but the rules can be broken if you believe in the image.
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I track the status of every image at any agency. And I do fight for rejects when I think they are good enough. Sometimes even 4 or 5 times, I know thats crazy, but I did get 70$ sales on rejects and I have seen other rejects take off as well. But I mostly do this at SS and 123 where I see the benefits. I dont resubmit rejects at FT as its completely useless to talk to their editors.
I mainly track all my images because I like creating trackers in Excel. And I sometimes go back to old rejects and rework them as I get better in post processing with time.
Most people probably dont do it this way I do it, but each to his own. If I didnt see the rewards I wouldnt keep doing it.
I have to be honest, sometimes I am too attached to an image, for personal reasons, when in fact it has no commercial value at all. This is when I shouldnt waste energy and time, but have a hard time looking at an image with an objective eye.
Here is an example, this image got rejected twice I believe, but got me over 300 dollar and 450 downloads on SS.
(http://image.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/952942/104709278/stock-photo-semi-truck-on-the-road-transporting-cargo-104709278.jpg)
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On smaller agencies I don't think it's worth my time if they reject an image.
At Shutterstock, Fotolia and iStock I consider if there is a way to fix the reason for rejection and try resubmitting again after a short time frame.
However, the number of rejections is very low for me, and the rejection reasons are either easy to overcome or probably impossible. So I resubmit only very few images and don't need any special precautions in my workflows.
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Since I license both RM and RF I keep track, and also track total dollars made on many of my images as well as by trip ( I sell a lot of travel photos). Tracking certain images or groups of images by agency also gives me a good sense of what sells where and has helped me decide whether or not to put certain types of images as RF on the micros rather than keeping them as RM.
It takes a lot of time and I sometimes wonder if I'd be better served just uploading more randomly and not worrying so much about what goes where, other than obviously making sure RF and RM images are different.
Since I finance trips solely to shoot stock, I keep close track of the types of travel images/places that sell best for me as well as determining how quickly I make back the cost of a trip and how much profit I then make. Ironically, the places that people visit most sell best despite the fact that there is much more competition out there with images of the same landmarks and locations. I shoot thousands of images and just tend to put up my few best and that seems to be working for me. I used to put my lesser images on the micros but now I tend to pick one or two good shots from a trip for the micros and have found the returns worthwhile, though I keep my very best photos as RM which has also worked out since I've licensed many directly and via Alamy and other sites for decent $$. Of course, I don't know how these same images would have done over time on the micros. I have some RF images on Alamy and the micros that have done better on the micros despite having sold on Alamy for >$100 a pop.
I also shoot some concept images and design some background textures just for the micros, since tracking has shown me they are a better avenue for those sales.
I used to re-submit images especially to DT and iS when I'd see them selling well on SS and have made a lot on rejects that were accepted after re-uploading them, so it was worth it.
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Thanks guys for the replies. Some very good reasons to continue along my current path of keeping track of kept on rejected images.