Quote from: ScottNodine on September 19, 2010, 00:07
That's just been my experience mostly with Istock. So it's all I know. (The other Micro sites have been recent additions to the list I submit to.) 
I've submitted photos in the past (to test the waters) in which I had the right exposure, removed the color noise in the RAW converter, did minimal (if any) processing, saved the JPG at level 12 in Photoshop and they'd still send it back for artifacts and noise. I'd take it and run it through some noise reduction and it would get accepted. To me, it looked like I was removing detail. So irritating.

What about Alamy? Anyone?

For now I have just a few photos at Alamy but no rejections.. try small batches

WOW!! i have sold another today, yeah! this is great with just two sales in less than a month i have made 151,75$ comission. This puts alamy in 5th place of my list, lets hope this trend of sellilng continues 

congratulations! i am still waiting for my first sale..

may i know what kind of images you have sold? landscape? editorial or RF or RM?

Quote from: arquiplay77 on September 30, 2010, 09:50
WOW!! i have sold another today, yeah! this is great with just two sales in less than a month i have made 151,75$ comission. This puts alamy in 5th place of my list, lets hope this trend of sellilng continues 

Quote from: arquiplay77 on September 30, 2010, 09:50
WOW!! i have sold another today, yeah! this is great with just two sales in less than a month i have made 151,75$ comission. This puts alamy in 5th place of my list, lets hope this trend of sellilng continues  

Just sold 2 in a week !!! ($148 !!)  my first 2 !! and RF too !?

Hope this is a sign for the future !    Beats micro to death !!  

That's interesting.  I have never had a resubmitted image accepted at iStock.  They usually rejected my images for "Overfiltered".  So I resubmitted with no processing except to convert to JPG.  Then it was rejected for artifacts.  I corected them and resubmitted - then rejected again for "Overfiltered".

Now my images are rejected for "lighting" and "Color not correct".  Before I shoot, I use the ExpoDisc.  Since I use good glass (Nikkor Lenses f/2. and a Nikon D-300, I just don't understand why I can't seem to get anything accepted.  After 2 years with iStock getting 95% rejections, I finally gave up uploading to them.  It would be very difficult for me to catch up to taht Yuri fellowat that rate! 

Now I'm concetrating on two micro sites and Alamy.  With Alamy I have a 90% acceptance rate.  So I guess that makes me an inferior photographer.

Quote from: Roadrunner on September 30, 2010, 16:49
...With Alamy I have a 90% acceptance rate.  So I guess that makes me an inferior photographer.

That's nothing to get excited about, I haven't been able to get a rejection with alamy yet, other than when I got the size wrong once.  They are much easier than any of the micros I have tried.

Quote from: sharpshot on September 30, 2010, 17:06

Quote from: Roadrunner on September 30, 2010, 16:49
...With Alamy I have a 90% acceptance rate.  So I guess that makes me an inferior photographer.

That's nothing to get excited about, I haven't been able to get a rejection with alamy yet, other than when I got the size wrong once.  They are much easier than any of the micros I have tried.

They don't judge content !!  just technical quality   So anything goes !! 

So are people getting more regular sales now?  I keep getting to the brink of applying, and then remember how others said they had one sale in two years (or similar).

Sounds as though things have moved on since then(?)

Quote from: rubyroo on September 30, 2010, 17:26
So are people getting more regular sales now?  I keep getting to the brink of applying, and then remember how others said they had one sale in two years (or similar).

Sounds as though things have moved on since then(?)

Who knows ??  nothing for first year, then bang !!  2 sales !  u figure it ! 

Ah OK... well I'm encouraged by your news.... and I'm keen for 60% of sales.... so I'll dip my toe in the water and hope for friendly fish...

Quote from: sharpshot on September 30, 2010, 17:06

Quote from: Roadrunner on September 30, 2010, 16:49
...With Alamy I have a 90% acceptance rate.  So I guess that makes me an inferior photographer.

That's nothing to get excited about, I haven't been able to get a rejection with alamy yet, other than when I got the size wrong once.  They are much easier than any of the micros I have tried.

They have a pretty good search, no sales for me yet (although I finally started to upload some more) but I really wish they would clean up some of the pretty bad images that are on there.

My sales have improved at Alamy in the past year. I used to get a sale every 3months or so (with approx. 200images on line). I now usually get sales monthly and often multiple sales in a month. I haven't uploaded much in the past year (anywhere). Alamy would probably be in the number 3 or 4 position this year as compared to micros.

Thanks kingjon.  That's very helpful info.

Quote from: mtkang on July 17, 2010, 19:24
hi all, just started in alamy..and just realise keywords in alamy is a time-consuming job..

so my first questions is, is it possible to edit your keywords and other informations once submitted?

seconds question is.. as RM licensed images, is shouldn't be sold as RF before right?

Imho alamy has one of the best, if not the best batch editing tools, it's fast, and youn can also edit any images at any phase - ready, not ready, on sale, with the same great tool. This is lightyears ahead of most micro sites where you often forced to edit images at any phase one-by-one with a lot worse interface

Been picking up for me as well. 3 RF sales in the last week. Not huge commissions, but still good ones. Its encouraging, most of my sales there are RF.

I recently started back to focusing on them after i found I had a sale moths ago that I put as RM. So used to seeing the Micro commission.. then I see 1 license for 110 which got me 66. That is motivation there..lol. I do dribble in some of my Micro stuff there since I dont have to blow them up as much. but I also do RF specifically for them that dont hit my Micro sites.

I do love the editing tool and my que times are around 24 hours for inspection then the next day after keywording it is on sale. 100% Approval rate so far on my images.. but as said.. they do not check for content.. just quality.

May not be a big seller but the sales can be big on a single image. Deff. worth it to give them a shot.

Finally close to my first payout ($8 more!!) with less than 200 photos online. Started uploading about 2 years ago but stopped after a few months because of rejections caused by the size restrictions. Now that they have lowered the minimum size, I've been uploading regularly again and get more zooms and sales. I hope they start doing well so I don't have to worry so much about losing IS sales. I upload RF and RM photos.

Quote from: epantha on October 15, 2010, 00:33
Finally close to my first payout ($8 more!!) with less than 200 photos online. Started uploading about 2 years ago but stopped after a few months because of rejections caused by the size restrictions. Now that they have lowered the minimum size, I've been uploading regularly again and get more zooms and sales. I hope they start doing well so I don't have to worry so much about losing IS sales. I upload RF and RM photos.

Yeah, cats out of the bag now. I tried to explain last year how I found success on Alamy, more sales and better pay, but the naysayers jumped all over that. Then I figured, less competition was a good thing. Still averaging over $80 a download. The complainers? Well they say Alamy is selling Novel Use for microstock prices, why would I argue with them, based on old payments due, an old discontinued program and a very small number of sales for those rates. (squeaky wheel complaining because of one crummy 50c sale)

Sure Alamy hardly reads IPTC data at all, but now someone has also outed the batch editing and simple click on a thumbnail, edit the data and save, which is fast and easy.

So much for trying to keep a good thing a secret and keep the competition down.

For anyone who thinking of joining, please join their forums and read about the search changes, how it's making stacks of similar images from photographers, which is kind of dumb. Instead of mine saying (700) similar images under a match, which I thought was a good point for someone looking for that subject, knowing I was specializing, now it shows one batch with 54, the next with 33 and another with 66, which splits up my big numbers and mystically stacks images, under images, which means they can't be seen! It's like a machine deciding what's similar based on keywords. And oh yes, the computer decides which picture will be first, not us, so it can be a total crap photo showing with 60-70 hidden behind it!

Everyone gets a better diversity placement and more people will have their images on the front page of sorts. I hate it!

Oh yes, and the horrible payment situation, (that's what the complainers said) where they pay us with Paypal or no charge direct transfer. I tell you, it's bad, bad, bad, please don't join Alamy!

re noise, alamy is good, just dont try and send in underexposed, fixed with levels iso1600 shots

the new 'stack' search results is quite confusing, so should we upload similar images at one upload? i sometimes break into many uploads for same collections..

Congratulations, epantha!

RacePhoto   - final paragraphs of your post are classic

....................

Doing test searches using term(s) likely to include your images in results should be a good way to see how new search system affects you and whether you should change how you submit images for now.

To help avoid having somewhat similar images all represented by one top image of stack, it might pay to submit them separately. So, for example, you could submit editorials of Manhattan Stock Exchange separate from ones of Trump Globe near Central Park.

Stacks might not include images, even if closely related, from more than one submission, so it sounds like a good idea to submit all closely related images at once if goal is to have buyer find them all in one stack.

BTW, I did read that the more specific a search is, using several search terms, the better this new search system works.

(double post)

At least you figured it out fast. Some people have made the mistake of taking me seriously.

Quote from: ann on October 15, 2010, 18:52
Congratulations, epantha!

RacePhoto   - final paragraphs of your post are classic

....................

Doing test searches using term(s) likely to include your images in results should be a good way to see how new search system affects you and whether you should change how you submit images for now.

To help avoid having somewhat similar images all represented by one top image of stack, it might pay to submit them separately. So, for example, you could submit editorials of Manhattan Stock Exchange separate from ones of Trump Globe near Central Park.

Stacks might not include images, even if closely related, from more than one submission, so it sounds like a good idea to submit all closely related images at once if goal is to have buyer find them all in one stack.

BTW, I did read that the more specific a search is, using several search terms, the better this new search system works.

hi all, i know in alamy the QC is one failed and the rest of batches in queue will be rejected too.

But the failed one can be in any batches or just the first batch?

will it has the situation that the first batch image is perfect, and some of the images in subsequent batches are not okay but all passed because off the first batch is observed as okay?

thank you.

Quote from: mtkang on October 18, 2010, 14:27
hi all, i know in alamy the QC is one failed and the rest of batches in queue will be rejected too.

But the failed one can be in any batches or just the first batch?

will it has the situation that the first batch image is perfect, and some of the images in subsequent batches are not okay but all passed because off the first batch is observed as okay?

thank you.

You got it right!

Alamy will check randomly to see if an image looks good. If it passes (or the images they chose to look at) all other images will pass also.

It's possible that they look at a "good" image and will automatically accept "bad" images in the batch - if you are lucky. But I don't think you're doing yourself a favor.
Only upload your best work so the buyers will be happy.