Hi all.... I just wanted to take a second to address recent posts here wondering if anything is wrong at BigStockPhoto.   Good news - BigStockPhoto is doing great. We are in absolutely no danger, we're financially strong, and to boot, we've seen new all-time record sales figures this year already.

One thing we've always been good at is controlling costs, and we continue to run a very healthy lean, mean organization.

Regarding uploading: we are about to unveil a total overhaul to the image submission user interface and process. It's been long due and we listened to you, and got busy. Uploading and submitting, especially if your images are already meta tagged, will be a breeze.

Regarding the 7 word description requirement we have, you have to understand that without a that description, your image is just a set of keywords - just like thousands of other images. Since you can't stuff your keywords, you need a way to let a person searching know that your image is MOSTLY a photo of a business man in a blue shirt with a coffee cup, for example. Without that short blurb, those critical keywords "business, man, blue, shirt, coffee, cup" don't get any extra weight. But with that phrase, we are able to weight those words a little extra to know that your image is a good result when those keywords are searched. So we feel it's important to enter good keywords, good title, and a good short description that really tells us what the image is.

This helps us deliver your image to the searcher at the right time because not every keyword should have equal weight. Hope that all makes sense.

That said, we are considering making this optional, as we know some people get frustrated with it. But my advice is to include the short description as it helps your image get found when the buyers need it...

As far as some of you seeing lower sales lately: it's incredibly hard to know for sure why you might see a dip, while some other site shows a rise for you. Perhaps we had a lot of really premium images uploaded by some of the most popular contributors this month, and these new images are causing more competition for your portfolio.

The answer for a sales dip would probably be slightly different for each contributor if we could figure it out one contributor at a time... there are so many factors that play into your monthly sales.   Don't let your skills stagnate either. Notice how guys like Yuri Arcurs continue to tweak their work, find new verticals to shoot for, etc. The most successful shooters don't sit still and they grow with the market.

All I can say for sure is that traffic is up over the last few months, sales generally strong, and many new features and innovations being unleashed over the coming months. Things look great.

Thanks to all of you for your thoughts, and your contribution to BigStockPhoto.

Best regards,
Tim Donahue
Founder
BigStockPhoto.com