MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => iStockPhoto.com => Topic started by: bobkeenan on October 08, 2009, 13:09
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I have only been doing this microstock stuff for about 7 months. I am on all the big 6. I have anywhere from 90 to 400 images on each. Of course the 90 is iStockphoto.
My images are just ok but I hope I am getting better. I have sold about $300 worth of images in total but have met only one minimum payout on Shutterstock... just got $75 Wooooo Hooooo!!!
I get much better acceptance and sales by a factor of 4 more at shutterstock. But I am looking at istockphoto as a challenge and the chance to earn more money per image as I get better.
But figuring out what is acceptable is tough. On one recent batch of uploads I had nearly every image accepted here. While on shutterstock and others I had mostly rejects.
The most recent batch was totally rejected (rejection blues) by istock. But most of those photos were accepted at shutterstock and already selling pretty well by my standards.
It used to really bug me but as long as my photos are accepted somewhere and sell then I get over it.
But it would be nice to figure out so I could increase my acceptance rate.
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Have you ever tried the IS critique forum?
As long as you don't come in with a rant (the inspectors are all blind; everywhere else these sell like hotcakes so what's wrong with IS...) you'll get a lot of specific and useful advice in spotting issues and how to fix problems.
If you do a lot of raster illustrations, that's an area with which IS has a love/hate relationship and other people have struggled with that too. There was a recent series of posts about some very insteresting fractal techniques that only got approved via Scout.
Each site has its policies, but once you've figured out what flies/doesn't, it shouldn't be too hard to get your work routinely accepted at IS.
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Doesn't do much good, posting without a sample. Show us the rejects at 100% with the reason.
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I guess each agency has different standards. If you figure out magic median, let me know ;-)
I have been doing this for over a year and it seems to be more difficult almost every month. There are too many contributors and images available. Sometimes I feel I was to late to get on this boat :-)