Shutterstock next to make a new piece of software to compete with Photoshop?  

wow amazing! right timing as well for me .... I have work for this weekend now

Awesome work Shutterstock! I got 83 of those! BDE!! 

Dreamstime would be doing well if they had left our comission percentage intact but they "had to" reduce it while they increased the prices so for me Dreamstime has just remained the same for the past 4 years, no increase no decrease while others have increased.

Quote from: fotografer on June 12, 2012, 11:08
I've noticed another complete turn around  in the last few days.   The new files have virtually stopped selling and old files are selling again.  Is anybody else experiencing this or is it just total coincidence.  Also seems to be a higher percentage of credit sales as opposed to subs

Still new files selling for me ...

Quote from: stockmarketer on June 07, 2012, 19:26
Seems like this encourages someone who has 100 shots from a photo shoot of "older couple holding hands on the beach" or "handshake from 100 angles."   Just more stuff for buyers to sift through, rather than the very best shots from a shoot.

Never thought that I'd defend DT, but it seems like the two agencies are going in completely opposite directions.  As a buyer, I think I prefer DT's approach... that is, if they were actually fair in how they defined "similars."  In my experience, they have been idiotically literal-minded about it... a similar subject but composed in different ways to convey totally different concepts (and thus have totally different keywords and appeal to totally different buyers) all get rejected for being too similar. 

I'll have no use for the FT tool, as I don't submit "similars" in the way I think they should be defined and FT seems to be welcoming... and my DT uploads have been reduced to nearly nothing since their opposite approach is equally flawed.

SS just looks better and better every day.

All Fotolia did was to implement almost an identical way to upload to Shutterstock.
Two images from the same shoot from the same model are not necessarily similars. I upload about 40 from a shoot with different concepts and this helps hugely!
And I really really doubt someone would change the approach to what to submit based on an uploading feature from 1 site ....

Shutterstock was well ahead! almost twice what I earn in Fotolia although Fotolia did gain some ground this month! so I'm happy about that.
Istock also was up and 123rf is just flying
Dreamstime is up a bit.

All in all I can say that Shutterstock rocks and I got there 2x what i earn in Fotolia, 3x what I earn at DT, 5x what I earn at Istock and 7x what I earn at 123rf

Agree, they are so desperate to become "someone" in the market that it leads to something like putting our images on Alamy without telling us!
It's like people who are deep in debt trouble starting to steal .... sad very sad!

I just wrote to support asking them too remove my images from Alamy or remove my account from Veer, this is just ridiculous ... Alamy makes me 6 to 10 times more than Veer so it is definately not worth having my images from Veer there AT ALL!

Hope there is a solution soon

Sales are ok ... in general BUT I agree that new files are simply not selling! I really dont understand why would DT do something like this.
As the quality rise in the whole industry new files are making a difference ... and buyers need to see something fresh every now and then so why why why? are DT not showing those files to the buyers and yes I also considererd not uploading anymore The only reason why I am doing it is just because they will likely change the best match algorythm to favour newer files at some point and if I have stopped uploading then Im screwed .

Thats amazing stuff, indeed like their ipad app which I love!

Quote from: Serge.Black on May 22, 2012, 22:48
Andresr, we now soiraem statistics for Istock and Dreamstime. I hope it will be interesting.

Andresr, can leave your contact, you want to interview. We have tried to do this when a colleague was in London. But you did not respond to e-mail and Facebook.

www.andresr.com ... contact me through there or facebook. Although I am not in London right now will be there during the Olympics and the first two weeks of June.

Hehe thats awesome!
It would be great to see other agencies charts that have public sales

In 4 months I sold more than huge portfolios in years!!  Im happy with that . Though Im kicking myself for not joining at the same time as Yuri and Monkey business

Quote from: traveler1116 on May 22, 2012, 17:54

Quote from: gostwyck on May 22, 2012, 17:39
It's not going to happen so pointless asking. SS's IPO will not change it's business model. They're not going to take the actions that have made other agencies less successful __ even if 'Yuri' thinks they might.

I think Yuri is right on this one.  SS has said they want to compete with IS on premium images, how else will they get those.  If the images are offered at every other site I don't think they can call them premium or price them accordingly.  Also I'm not so sure IS is less successful now, they most likely paid out 3x more than SS in 2011 while lowering royalties, my guess is they are doing pretty well.

They will get premium images and it has nothing to do with exclusivity . You will see ...

Indeed if Veer is going to submit our photos to Alamy without giving us the choice to opt out it is good bye for Veer from my side as well ....

This is just not on

Quote from: jarih on May 15, 2012, 19:26
This is what I am talking about, variable costs. If you shoot, there is costs, if you  don't shoot there's not any costs.

RPI - CPI (variable costs) = like sales margin, "bread money"

Andresr, obviously you shoot great stuff, I think that you have excellent RPI. But that's it what I am thinking, how long time it takes get money back and after that make more money. Of course important is also images.. what it is.. images "lifetime". How many month or years images can make money.

It depends on the agency. Shutterstock is the best one for first months ... then for the second month other agencies even it out so actually for me it is equal and grows slightly until month 6, from then on it depends how many images from a specific shoot made enough downloads to keep popularity and keep growing ....

It all comes down to www.stockperformer.com jeje you should sign up and it will tell you everything you need to know from your portfolio :p It is incredibly helpful!

Interesting thread .....

I do measure my CPI but I do not count the equipment I use.

For a studio shoot with one person for a 3 hourst, including studio time, model, post processing, keywording and uploading etc ... it costs me $6 per image to produce. From that, I get an average of 100 selects to upload. From those selects I get between 0.70 and 4 RPI (per month) so it takes me between 2 and 8 months to get the money back but average is 3 months.

For a location shoot it just varies a lot, I normally do group shoots in a location but it costs me anything from 1000 to 3000 USD.
I upload between 100 and 200 selects. Average RPI per month in a shoot is between 2.5 and 10 dollars per image so it takes me a couple of months to get it back unless the shooting goes really really bad but I think the worse has been 13 months and the best has been 1 month.

I think it is costing me a lot of money and I am uploading too many selects. I think if I was more careful with the selection process I would get more money. There are a lot of images in a shoot that never sell so there is still a big learning curve there

First of .... Congratulations to Yuri. The site looks and works amazingly well. Like the usual stuff he does.

Do you guys honestly think he is going to pull his port on other sites??? honestly?? why would he do something as dumb as that, not a chance. No the agencies will not through him out, no he won't pull his port, no this will not turn the industry upside down. It's just an amazing own portal to sell HIS OWN images (and images from other photographers that work for him), full stop.

This is simply an extra outlet for him, and he will try and grab as many customers direct as he can. Maybe if in a few years he is really outselling some agencies and after a lot of negotiation to bump his commissions up with lack of success, then he has an ace under his sleeve and won't care to leave the agency if they don't. That would be my strategy although I doubt it he can compete with millions of different looking images already at the agencies.

In fact my own website is also on the works, although I will have a slightly different approach to it. I won't invest 700k USD on it of course but enough to make it look good, professional with all the toys that are necessary to have a positive impact on buyers.

I think all sites uploading procedure is complicated and they have silly unncessary items for us to specify that are not needed.

Categories? Make them up from a "behind the scenes" keyword group.

Releases? we pre upload releases in the release manager for each site then we upload a batch, say which releases are in the specific batch, site automatically matches those releases to the photos uploaded in the batch. DONE. Only Photodune has done this and it works perfect. All you have to do is make sure you upload batch by batch. Upload releases together with the photos in the ftp on a different folder and the system should be able to match everything automatically.

Keywords, title and description ICTP.

Nothing to be done online, I don't understand why this hasn't happened. It would make a lot of sense not to do hardly anything online. To match releases for every single photo its just too much work that could be spent for us in improving our photos.

All you need is for the models to upload a photo with their face on it on facebook on a public profile, twitter, flickr or something with their account name and then they can easily be found. I am also worried about this. A couple of the female models I've taken have been targeted for silly online jokes and comments and guys with nothing else to do online write and brag about how they found out their names and place of birth etc etc ....

Yuri, are you sure you have in your portfolio the most downloaded female? I think my sister can easily compete or overtake Cecile and the other two popular females you have.  I wouldn't know in your portfolio if it is Cecile, the young blond lady or the brunette that always shows up with Jesper.

Quote from: lisafx on April 17, 2012, 19:13
Thanks for weighing in Andres.  If both you and Fotographer are seeing numbers go up, maybe I can expect to see some improvement coming my way soon.  

Out of curiosity, have you all been uploading much to Fotolia the last several months?  I haven't uploaded much anywhere in the last few months, due to some major home and office remodeling.  If Fotolia are skewed toward newer images now, maybe this is my hiatus coming back to bite me.  

Other sites remain steady though, even with the break in uploading.  

I have, about 4500 images in the past 6 months. So who knows where the balance is at the moment >:s

Quote from: fotografer on April 17, 2012, 18:18

Quote from: lisafx on April 17, 2012, 18:08

Quote from: fotografer on April 17, 2012, 17:02
Don't know what is happening but I hope it stays this way.  I have had the best couple of days for ages.   Are any other of the  Emeralds that took a huge drop in sales seeing better sales over the last couple of days?

Congrats.  Wish I could say the same.  If anything, my sales are even worse.

Shame I was hoping that you were seeing the same as me which could have meant that the search had been skewed a bit more in our favour.  Probably just a run of good luck for me then.

I've also seen good numbers Not as good as before but at least is something Just in time because Dreamstime was about to overtake them.

Quote from: lisafx on March 05, 2012, 23:24
Nope, no sales increase here.  But then, I am an Emerald, and they decided some time last year to rig their search engine against high ranking (expensive) members.  Bet they're saving a bundle in royalties.

+1

Awesome! I will be buying the medium one as soon as

About retouching with a tablet, put it this way, I cant retouch with a mouse anymore, and there are things you cant do with a mouse when you are retouching that you can with a tablet.

Quote from: leaf on March 02, 2012, 10:43

Quote from: andresr on March 02, 2012, 06:07
All this wait for that? Really considering switching to Nikon. Will see .....

Ever considered switching to Hasselblad?  The H4D-31 isn't so expensive ($14,000 with lens).  I'm certainly toying with the idea, perhaps it's more work than it's worth, but the 5D Mark III is a bit underwhelming

Yes I was thinking that too but I don't like the fact that the camera is so slow and heavy ...... and its not only the price of the body, but also all the lenses. However it is a choice worth considering. Good thing is that  you just simply know you have the best camera in your hands. The 5D could be good for video and outdoor fast shoots ......

All this wait for that? Really considering switching to Nikon. Will see .....