Got my first sale at SV.

I've priced all my images at $10, so 30% commission on this sale is $3.

SV are a very late entrant to the market and I don't think it makes sense for artists to undercut the existing agencies who have worked hard to develop a customer base.  As my D200 generates 'large' at IS and XL at FT, StockXpert etc, a $10 price tag is above the prices at these existing agencies.  So I'm happy to upload to SV on the basis that my sales elsewhere will not be impacted in any way.

BTW, the 'snappyness' thing doesn't work; it is meant to be a 'sophisticated algorithm' based on views, comments and sales.  I wrote to them to explain that it doesn't appear to work and they replied to say that at the moment the snappyness thing is based on umm.....'editors choice'........

Everyone expected Corbis to enter the market with a bang, but the evidence so far is more like a whimper; there is certainly nothing yet to suggest they are prepared to invest decent money to get this thing established.

Still, a $10 sale is good news.  More please......

I can't belive it is taking them so much time to implement FTP and fix the stability issues they have.
It's like it is a one man show over there....
Hopefully they are rebilding everthing and are soon ready to present something that will blow our minds away 

Congrats hatman.  Still waiting for my first sale there.  I was disappointed with snapviallge at first but I had raised my hopes too high.  Perhaps one day they will remove the beta and give istock a bit of competition.

Congrats Hatman! Nice to hear things are moving there.

They are down a lot, but they are, after all, in Beta.  I have priced mine at the same price as I have a D200 also and did not want to undermine pricing either. Good to know that others are on the same wave length. I think I may send them a disk, until they get their FTP thing happening. 

I do like the feel of the site. It is clean and crisp like StockXpert.

Congrats! I had my first about a week ago so it seems that things are slowly picking up.

congrats on the sale!

I send them my DVD's today so hopefully it doesn't take too long to get the images online.  Not sure i am interested in another non-performing site but they DO have the bucks for advertising and staffing so it could be allright in the future.

Well I'm afraid I don't have particularly high hopes for SV; it's too amateurish to offer much potential at this stage.

Their keyword and category choices give me the impression they have employed people who have no experience of the stock industry at all - some of my images are left alone, others have most of the keywords removed; their choice of words bears no relation to the subject matter, and they choose categories that would be my last choice.

My recent submission of my 'businessman slipping on a banana' resulted in them stripping out all references to business and businessman, even though the images are clearly of a businessman in a suit and city shoes.  They keywords left in were: banana, slip, slippery.

Doh!

I'm sure they will get their act together eventually. Except for the glitches, their website is rather functional, and although they haven't poured enough resources into this yet, they don't really have much choice. Corbis can't afford to be the only major macro agency without a micro, and they can absolutely not afford to have one that functions badly.

I'm there with 560 approved images so far, and around 100 in the queue. Most of my images are priced at $10 as well (no subscription), some "13-a-dozen-pics" at $5 with subscription allowed, and the best ones at $25. No sales yet though, but I only started uploading two weeks ago.

I got 2 downloads, one last week and one this week. $5 and a $10 sale. Looking forward how it will be in half a year.

Congrats Hatman,

And thanks for taking the time to critique my portfolio on DT 

Lina (fafoutis)

No problem.  Hope my comments help.

Had my first download today.  I priced it at $5, so made $1.50 but all new uploads are priced at $10.

Yeah, $10 seems right sharpshot - $5 to some extent undercuts the existing agencies who have spent much time and effort and who are already generating sales (and money) for us.  Personal choice I suppose, but it seems right not to give this newcomer the same terms given that they are late to the game.

Besides....... all the existing agencies should charge higher prices........

We've had 15 sales, one at $50 and all the rest at $25.

My main reason for pricing them higher is that I presume Snap Village will attract customers from Corbis.  They are used to paying higher prices.

I am not convinced that microstock prices will continue to increase at the rates they have the past few years.  Can SS keep having a 20% raise each year?  If prices go too high, downloads might fall and we could end up losing money.  Wont new sites be able to gain customers by undercutting the old sites, if they move their prices too high?

Macro sites are lowering their prices and we now have a few midstock sites emerging.  Some micro sites are allowing higher prices, similar to the cheapest macro prices.  I hope istock does this soon.

Just checked and I have another download there.  I like a 100% increase in sales   This one sold for $10.

EDIT:- I just checked and it was a subscription sale, still 30 cents is better than nothing.

You are one ahead of me then sharpshot...... I've still only got one sale...

As for pricing - Getty are now advertising 'web size' RF images for $49, three month use only.

The same size will cost $1 at iStock, no time constraints.

The question is: over the next couple of years will Getty have to reduce prices yet again, or will iStock's price continue to rise?

There is scope for microstock prices to increase by a very large amount.

And I don't think all these new 'small' agencies will have any effect at all on sales at the larger agencies like IS and SS.  But that's only my view.

Can you see image buyers leaving IS in droves because prices at Albumo are slightly cheaper?

Nah.......

My first week at SV and got my first sale.
Their keyword and category system doesn't works great, as many of you have noticed already.
I have also checked the subscription sale, as 30 cents is better than 25 cents in SS!!!
Looking forward for next weeks.

How many images do you all have on S V? I HAVE UNDER A 100 at the moment.

only 105 

I had 16 sales in September and 27 sales in October so far... I do think they'll pull their act together eventually, but oh boy did I have my share of dealing with their glitches!!! However before we complain too much let's remember they are still in "beta". Hopefully version 1.0 will be free of all those annoying bugs.

This is starting to become interesting.  What were the cons about SV?  Watermakring?

Regards,
Adelaide

Quote from: madelaide on October 23, 2007, 18:33
This is starting to become interesting.  What were the cons about SV?  Watermakring?

madelaide:

I'm shocked!    You're not on SnapVillage yet??? 

Quote from: GeoPappas on October 23, 2007, 18:36
I'm shocked!    You're not on SnapVillage yet??? 

I may have opened an account there, but I haven't uploaded anything.

Regards,
Adelaide

Elena, are any of those subscription sales?

Personally I have disallowed subscription sales at SV (for the moment).  I'll be interested to hear how people fare with subscription versus normal sales.