You can forget about IS support... I had someone ripoff a couple of my images and they did nothing...

I could envision a scenario where they spin off iStock from Getty and fire bitter and the rest of them and bring in someone else to run the company... pure speculation, but not out of the realm of possiblities.

Oh boy, if someone really buy Getty, I could see that iStock could be spun off to make a quick profit... after that, it's anyone's guess what will become of them.

There is always a running debate on the AlamyPro forum about what makes you more money being all RF or RM or a mix. It seems that RF sells more volume, RM can get more per individual sale but come more slowly. If you have a large enough portfolio I would do a mix. If you want to sell the image in multiple places, RF is probably the best...

If I had a portfolio of thousands of images, I would worry about diluting my "brand", but I dare anyone to find my stuff on Alamy and any micro... what is Alamy up to 7.8 million images??? I have .000001% of the total library there...

In general with place like Alamy you'll need a couple hundred images before you see a download or see downloads in general. I've heard that you won't see consistent downloads until you hit 1000 uploads. I have to caveat with the fact that many of the people I see say these things on the Alamy forums basically upload travel photos or whatever they see around them and could stand to tighten up their portfolios quite a bit. I had 10 images on line for about a year and had a $200 sale, so know I'm uploading many more to get a payout from them.

I've heard time and again that you shouldn't upload the same RF images to Microstock and Alamy, but I say why not? Consumers in general are willing to pay higher prices for the same thing at different stores, so I have no problem pricing my images at different levels....

I find that straight flower pictures have little or no chance of getting accpeted, no matter how good they are. If I see flowers like at a farmers market, things like that get in and sell ok...

I have an XTI and I upscale to 131 percent with bicubic smoothing, then save as 12 jpeg and they accept everything I've thrown at them.

I did a couple of quick searches on obscure items that I have. They came up on the first page, but near the end of the first page and after a whole bunch of unrelated items before it. Did a little poking around at the images that did come up and this search engine seems to favor many keywords. The opposite seems to be happening at IS. They are favoring fewer keywords so the results are completely different. Which I guess is OK for digging up those images with fewer downloads.

Quote from: mjp on January 16, 2008, 07:32
Few % better than in december (which was horrible month), but nothing positive on it. Started uploading more images and the SS is getting better and better. Also noticed that last 100 images I have uploaded to Istock has no sales at all (thats bad).

br, MJP

I've noticed that too... my recent uploads over the past couple of months are seeing very little downloads while my older stuff keeps selling. I'm sure when they changed the search engine last summer it made it harder to find new uploads or something like that...

Everything is down for me... I had about 100 less images this time last year and sales were almost double a year ago. Especially at SS where sales are way down, but I think it's their search engine favoring new stuff. I've five referrals at IS in the past month! DT is about the same as last year again on a portfolio that is about 1/3 smaller.

I just got an email for a new site called Mooch Travel Photography. I searched the archives here and there were not hits. Anyone know anything?

http://www.moochimages.com/index.php

IS is jumping way ahead of SS and DT for me right now. I'm going to let it go a couple of more months, but exclusivity is looking better and better every month for me...

Click on the Referral tab on your Portfolio and then under Referral Program and Site Badges.

As an oversight on my part, I had never turn on referral earnings on my IS account until a couple of weeks ago. Now I don't advertise my account any where and I don't send out emails with my referral link as my tag line. So, in the last couple of weeks I've had three referrals netting $30! Is this typical? Can I expect a couple of random referrals every month without even trying?

Yes, only as RF though. If someone wants to pay the extra money why not try...

(I had someone pay $200 for an image they could've bought for a couple of dollars)

Photos 1 and 3 are lacking in terms of visual impact. What are you trying to say with these photos? There isn't any clear message. Not sure why number 2 was rejected. I seems like a perfectly good stock photo. It could be out of focus or blurry at 100%. Maybe they didn't like the drab colors of the sky and tree. Maybe if you took it again in more dramatic lighting. If you are having problems with these images, just search on the same keywords you used on these images and see what the top selling photos look like with those same keywords.

If CF cards aren't a problem, then go with something like the Canon Axxx series. I have an old A620 that I still use to upload shot occasionally. You will disappointed if you don't go with a better camera due to noise issues.

Is anyone making a P&S that takes CF cards anymore? Maybe the Canon G9?

Why would  you? Just another avenue to sell your stuff, that's why! Unless you are exclusive somewhere, or a very well known photographer, someone is probably never going to find your work on two different websites. Just don't post the same photos as RF and RM.

In reality, many people try to sell their RF on micros and RM on Alamy...

Same thing happened to my brother... accepted in two days a couple of weeks ago. In the mean time, I have a block of images still waiting for QC!

You guys have me convinced... I'm going to upload a few hundred images to FP and see how it goes....

You know this upcoming pay increase at IS is starting to make sense. They must feel confident enough that a price increase will be absorbed by the designers because they know that they are coming to IS for exclusive content. This might be a reason to go exlcusive at any agency. If you have built up a big enough portfolio and some loyal customers the shift to exclusive could be a way to bring a larger percentage of sales. I think I've only heard of a couple examples of IS exclusives becoming unexclusive, but most have been very happy they made the switch. The only thing I don't like about IS exclusivity is that you can't upload your rejects elsewhere. All is not lost though, since you can sell your rejects as RM on Alamy (which IS does allow you to do).

There are choices. Like some have said, you can take down your account, which won't get you any money. You wouldn't be the first that thought that IS undervalues your work. There are alternatives like Alamy where many photographers do well there. I'm going to beef up my account and see where that takes me. Other than that, there have been a few attempts to respect the photographer. (Totallyphotos.com comes to mind), but have mostly flopped. Other than that, I'm not sure what choices you have. Either you play the game, or get out...