Which site likes what better?

Which site likes what better?

That is a hard assessment for me to make, since I have been only been doing micro since January. I am an RM refugee because there ave been a few slowdowns for me, and styles for the high end stuff are changing. I gravitated to Micro for a little bit of income insurance after losing a $20K per year contract shooting and doing catalogs for a hardware company. The owner of the company decided his 21 year old daughter, a recent art school graduate with a pocket cam, could do it just as good ;-) THey are now finding out as the hardware in all of their catalogs are coming out brown istead of silver  ha ha.

All I can say is, I tried Sutterstock first time I think 2 years ago - tried the usual assortment of landscapes, buldings, etc, and was rejected time and time again. So let it go for a year. On Thurs nite on a whim, sent them all "microstocky stuff" - objects on white, some with clipping paths, some holiday stuff. All went through.  

On DT, everything I send gets accepted. I do have some weird sales there. One pic of a lock isolated on white has something like 6 views and 3 sales. Insane, yeah. You have to cater to buyer needs. They are not going to buy what is not needed. On DT I have about 70 sales I think in 3 months - not too awful for a start.

Since I don't have the timeframe to have developed a proper overview, cannot offer too much more at this time. I also do illustration which helps sales.

But really, do an analysis of what is selling, and follow that lead. DT is good for this research because you can flip to "most downloads" as a selector and you will see the best sellers. That is where I did some of my initial research.

Also see if you can access the Top 50 on SHutterstock, and I think there may be a similar list on Istock. Analyze what sells, and do it better. In general, mundane and sterile stuff you may have never thought of can fit the bill.

Since you have access to the models though and have releases, I would really utlize them in more every day situations - using computer, eating ice cream, shopping. In studio, use white seamless and overexpose the background a bit. No ugly shadows etc.

If it's "stocky enough", they will really fly anywhere, but some services may do better than others. Usually I think they will fall in with the site rankings here on the board.

eugenef, I sent you a personal message

He submited 750+ images in one batch at SS, and got 190 aproved? Dont you get a warning for such things (5 warnings - ban on 3 months). ?

Aproval rate less than 30%, it is waste of time to me. He had to click categories for each image. OMG.

It is ridiculous. No wonder we dont have sales these days, this guy overwhelmed search with new images. lol.

Eugene,

You could have picked a NUMBER of sites to mass upload to.  The issue is, you did it with the #1 subscription site.
The problem?  Had all your images gone thru, your entire portfolio would be timed out in about 3 weeks.  Shutterstock is the beast which constantly hungers.  Best way to approach SS, from what I've done and what i've read others doing, is to feed them a bit at a time, every time images get reviewed, pop another small batch in there. And diversify the batches, so you get different subjects up.  Worst thing in the world is to search for New Submissions, and see three pages of the same model *or apple* in various poses, different angles... :: yawn ::
You get much more mileage out of a shoot if you upload it over a few weeks or months.

Feeding the beast that many images was BOUND to make it barf 70% back up....

It should not matter how many pictures are in queue, it should not matter how many are in batch. Reviewer should see pictures as end-user does, randomly from different contributors and judge them one at the time. This how it should be in ideal world but I agree that in reality large batches or series are disadvantageous.

Yes, I really appreciate sites like DT and IS that (supposedly) review photos on a first come first serve basis.

I am on SS for a three months...

I have about 120 photos there, isn't to many , I think that will be more for a three months when I start....

But my batches have cca 5 images, never more and my approval rate is about 90 %...
Sales are good for start.

Greed is your enemy, even for pro photographers.