Pixart same fot me last week was better than usual with a sale everyday, thing I used to have in July, we will see next week

Curious, I've had an awful start of month in FT: just ONE sale.  FT is my 9th in earnings this month!!!

Regards,
Adelaide

We are lucky that we have phildate as a contributor to this group; his latest observation is that sales are 'almost back to where they were before V2'.  He is of course one of the biggest selling photographers at FT along with Andresr, Yuri and Iryana Kurhan.

My own sales have been improving every week.

It is very difficult to compare the situation now with July and August, simply because V2 coincided with the summer lull; it's impossible to tell whether the improvement is because of increased business activity or 'fixes' to the system.

To be fair to Fotolia, ever since I have been a member there, there has always been a warning notice on the upload confirmation page that 'the most important keywords should appear first' and of course there is the sliding box thing to allow for reordering.  Any contributor who ignored that notice should kick themselves rather than Fotolia.  Of course it isn't made clear that only the first seven words will count.

I suspect that editing keywords after upload doesn't actually work.  To be absolutely sure that an image is in the library with the best keywords in the top seven, the best bet is to delete from the database and upload again.

Quote from: hatman12 on October 06, 2007, 20:00

To be fair to Fotolia, ever since I have been a member there, there has always been a warning notice on the upload confirmation page that 'the most important keywords should appear first' and of course there is the sliding box thing to allow for reordering.  Any contributor who ignored that notice should kick themselves rather than Fotolia.  Of course it isn't made clear that only the first seven words will count.

Hi,

My guess is you are not reading what people are saying... sorry, no offence.
What i read is that most of the 'complainers' are putting the keywords in right order.... as I do in photoshop already when keywording.
when i upload to FT they appear in the right order on the FT page, but neather can i find most of my pictures via the search function.  And trully, i made it my task to put them in right order and checking on submitting in the first place.

So obvious there is something wrong with the search function on FT.  I have great days... i have days without any sale... that with a port of more than 2000 pictures is.................... fill in the blanks.

I'm sure that phildate... andres.... forgiss... etc will have great sale... but we are speaking of big port... portfolios that get priority if something needs te be fixed.

Patrick.

Being on FT, it is like playing on the lottery , you never know when you gonna win 

You've got a great portfolio there Patrick and I'm really surprised to hear you get days with zero downloads.

Clearly there is a problem.  What the solution is I don't know I'm afraid.

Yes, I see lots of comments from people who say the search function isn't working.  Quite possibly they are correct.  When and how it will be resolved is not something I would like to try to estimate (or even if it will ever be solved).

Fotolia works okay for me.  Perhaps I am just one of the lucky ones.  I sincerely hope it remains that way and that the problems being experienced by others get resolved.

Yes, the search engine is not perfect, but sales are great. First week of october, was better than july and august together for me! On workdays I have 7-15 sales, on weekends 2-3, and I am happy with that. My goal is to earn 300$ in october, and I am keeping my fingers crossed to acomplish that, so we shall see...

Those are excellent numbers Chode, even more impressive when one considers that you have achieved all of that without ever owning a DSLR!

I hope you enjoy your new camera and become an even bigger success.

Quote from: Chode on October 07, 2007, 09:49
Yes, the search engine is not perfect, but sales are great. First week of october, was better than july and august together for me! On workdays I have 7-15 sales, on weekends 2-3, and I am happy with that. My goal is to earn 300$ in october, and I am keeping my fingers crossed to acomplish that, so we shall see...

Congrats on the sales!  Sounds like you are doing great there.  And don't get me wrong, my sales are great there as well.  The first week of Oct. was probably my best there yet.  But think how much better those sales might have been had their search engine worked properly.  For them to just ignore the problem is simply unacceptable.

Thank you all, but all that did not fell from the sky, it is all hard work... And for the old camera, well, it is a little bit more than just ordinary compact. Canon S3 IS is a good camera, but dSLR is a whole new world...

Anyway, I think that sales might be even better if search engine worked 100% correctly, but I do not complain anyway... just shooting images, and hopefully it will work some day fully.

Yep, their search function is still flawed regardless if your first seven keywords are the most relevant.

here's their last answer. With caps on following my answer.

>We apologize for the inconvenience. No changes can be done after the image has been uploaded.

THEN REMOVE THE KEYWORDS REORDER ARROWS FROM EDITING PAGE!!!

I can verify the keyword reorder works. I reordered some of my keywords and downaloads literally came to a dead stop. After a couple of weeks I'm now starting to get downloads again. Seems like it takes a while for their search engine to reindex any changes.

Also seems that it doesn't search keywords that are entered as phrases ("hands typing" as opposed to "hands,typing"). And even if you have individial keywords but are missing one word in a search phrase such as "on" (hands typing on laptop), it doesn't work.

Well my payout from them that had been "pending" since mid September has finally been paid and I've started getting sales there again.  But I still can't find my own images by keyword.  Oh well, at least other people do.
rosta

This is what I reported to FT, when they contacted me the other day.  I tried the same searches in different languages.

-=-=-=-=-

http://us.fotolia.com/id/4120421 first keywords are "heart" and "German" :
- "German heart" in FT-US or FT-UK, it appears (total two images, one is mine)
- "corazón alemán" in FT-ES, save as above
- "coração alemão" in FT-BR or FT-PT, nothing returns
- "coeur allemand" in FT-FR, also nothing returns
- "deutsche herz" in FT-DE, returns 14 images, none is mine
- "cuore tedesco" in FT-IT, same as FT-DE

Another image, older, prior to V2: http://br.fotolia.com/id/884665, where "cereal", "granola" and "strawberry" are among the seven first keywords:
- "granola" in FT-US, none of my images among the 59 that the search tool finds
- "granola" in FT-BR returns 8370 images (none of mine among the first 160, and many don't seem right)
- "cereal strawberry" in FT-US returns 85 images (my 4 in the first page)
- "cereal morango" in FT-BR returns exactly the same images as in FT-US

I wonder if some of you have observed also an increase in sales at FT this month.
For me for the first time since 2 months FT is ahead of SS and after 10 days in the month I made already the same number for the whole month of Sept.
Maybe they fixed something after all

Yes, good views and increasingly buoyant sales.

yes i find them getting increasingly better the last 2 months.

Sales at FT are going well for me, too. I'm already at $100+ this month - it usually takes about three weeks to reach this point.

Yes me too, although I was one of the lucky ones that did better after V2 than before so never did see a decrease in downloads.  Maybe because I always put my 7 most relevant keywords first.

Quote from: sharply_done on October 12, 2007, 08:58
Sales at FT are going well for me, too. I'm already at $100+ this month - it usually takes about three weeks to reach this point.

Site is getting faster all the time and sales are picking up to levels before V2. I have always had a soft spot for FT and now upload quite a bit of exclusive stuff for them. I like having the option of setting my own prices for the exclusive stuff.

Unfortunately this month FT is very slow for me, only my 5th earner and way behind the 4th.  It may well be my worst month there this year.  I had good results when V2 entered.

Regards,
Adelaide