That may mean growth in micro, but unless it translates to growth in my income I'm not interested.

Nevertheless, Yuri and Ellen, both independently, hinted at it earlier this year. Free can be great to drive traffic, and traffic can be monetized. That's why most MS sites are insisting on free images: they get more traffic. Free can be fine but in that case I want the traffic myself.

Care to elaborate on the "Big changes?"

Ellen Boughn hinted at it, and also Yuri Arcurs. The next big change will be free.
Think of all the exposure you will get!  

I was thinking the exact same thing yesterday. Funny how the terms changed AFTER some of us signed up.

Also, you should know that my rejection ratio went up from 4 to 30% as I'm approaching the magical 400. I will know soon enough if I can reach it or not, and if not, I'm gone for good. Let's see. The shots are stuck still September. Their FTP never worked with their bizarre settings, and the past week, even their Flash upload made my FireFox block. Those guys don't realize that it was now or never. I'd rather send a CD to Peter (StockFresh).
But, let's see. End of June is soon enough.

Ktools Photostore should be considered seeing what has been suggested here.

I'm well aware of Photostore, and I have been considering it too. With this solution, I just wanted to notify some photogs that don't fancy a full sales-ready gallery, but just a net presence. I just get 40-100 unique hits per day, and I'm in front of Google. No volume buyers are interested in sites of modest photogs.

For those still interested in an image gallery to drive both Google Images and Sales, I came up with a fast and workable solution that fulfills both goals.
Having abandoned Clustershot and the many Open Source PHP/MySql frameworks, I reverted to my old HTML(JS) solution, the Arles generator, that always worked fine.

* Clustershot was very difficult to integrate and asks 50$ per year, while I have my own server (for mulitple sites) for 100$ per year.
* The numerous OS galleries (Coppermine, Gallery2) can be buggy and they are not really stock oriented with their ratings, comments, etc...
- It takes (too much) time and PHP knowledge to modify the sources, and with every next version, you can start all over.
- The free cart plugins can be buggy, they are not supported, and hence they can have security issues.

------------------------------

The major disadvantage of an HTML gallery is that it is static and not searchable for keywords, etc.. You can easily add/change/remove images by regenerating it, but for the user it is static. When you consider that your own gallery will never attract buyers in volume, but just browsers that might get interested, it is a lesser disadvantage. In return, you'll get many other advantages.

* SEO optmized: the images appear along with their textual meta-info in one single DIV, which the Google Image robots love, and the title of the image is repeated in the page title. This is an unbeatable solution in SEO since a robot will never issue a query command on a site: it just tracks the static pages.

* Fast: I made a prototype in a couple of minutes. Fine tuning the design took a bit more, but all info for the generator is stored in a text-only parameters file so the process of adapting design and type of info to show is very transparent.
Once you have the design in place for one gallery, you can just copy the parameter file and change folder names for source images and gallery title.
All image info is taken from the image's IPTC.

* The watermark looks good and is very adaptable. You can also add image overlays to brand your shots.
The resizing is done by superior algorithms, since they are done on your local PC and not on the server which usually has crap fast algorithms: the resized images look better than when resized in one of the OS frameworks.

* How to sell from your gallery? (to the spot-buyer). It seems you can easily add a cart but I didn't explore that solution. I just put in a link to the image on the site with the highest prices, and for me that's the 3DStudio. You can use any link though since the generator is very versatile.
To avoid having to poke in the link or image ID every time I regenerate the gallery, I put it in one of the unused IPTC fields of the image itself.  I put the image ID number in the IPTC-field 'special instructions' and the script of the generator does the rest, like adding "http://t3ds.com/" in front of it.

Quite some work if you have thousands of images, but you can replace the link then by a generic link(s) that point to your port on one or more sites. Even if you have no time to put in all the individual image IDs, you can catch some referrals straight from Google Images.

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Demo.

This is the standalone gallery: link,
and this is a version embedded in my site (Joomla) in an IFRAME: link, with the copyright notice and the home button removed since they are on the site already.

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If there is some interest in this solution, I can write a short tut or just send me a pm.

Quote from: FD-amateur on June 02, 2010, 08:18

Quote from: borg on June 02, 2010, 08:08

Is this a sadomasochistic ritual, or you simply forget quickly....?

"Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, dar�ber muss man schweigen." (Wittgenstein).

Yes and "He who forgets history is doomed to repeat it."  Santayana (paraphrased).

1 - The original quote is - of course - from Toynbee.
2 - The quote is irrelevant in this discussion (unless you'd like to shine with a witty quote, in which case I'd rather recommend Voltaire).
3 - The right honorable gentlemen from one of the PIGS countries that obviously spends more time posting than shooting, missed the point of my quote, hypothesizing about Stockfresh. As it happens, I was the first on this forum to tell about Peter's intentions. That might have led the right honorable gentleman to the conclusion (not so hard to reach) that I probably knew more.

And now, allow me to fart in your general direction (Monty Python, of course). 

Ran across this site with Strip Cartoons of a Duck Photographer(s). I am getting a kick out of it.

Try ducks as models. They even sign model releases, but you won't like the ink. 

I hear you on SS. We'd love to have them in and we'll keep working on it. Things are already more open this year than they were the year before so I hope we keep heading in that direction.

Good to hear. Add Fotolia to the bunch and with those 4 you will have a winning app that covers 80% of the earnings of most.

You see the ad here on top for iSyndica?

No. I use the Adblock Plus 1.2 addon in Firefox. I don't see any ads.

I dont know why some users have Ants in the pants about that???

I don't have ants in my pants, if you would worry about that. I have been doing some information work in war zones, and I lost that feeling. 

As I understand it is like you have you own web site with images which any of image have you referral link and thats it eg like my ref link below and it is Win/Win game?

It's not. All the referral sites will deduct the referral cost from their sales. That's fine when the referrals add traffic, not with mainstream sites like DT. I would expect they use the lessened commission from 50 to 30% for some proper marketing to the target group, not for web-based referrals.

Somebody of us are unable to make they referral link/s in signature for forum

My dear Suljo, do you think that only your kind of East-europeans can make referral links? You must be kidding. I just refuse them. If it wasn't for our Western-European subsidies (that break our neck by taxes), you would still be suffering under Moscow's rule and we would have much less crime in the Western EU. We are better. 

More of us are unable to make they own blog with adds and ref links

I have more (co-)blogs than you'll ever know, and a couple are about Eurosceptics. I know politics is not the issue here, but just don't tempt me, guy. You would be nowhere without us.

More and More of us are unable to make any kind of they own site with ref links too, More and More and More of us are unable to make referral site with DT API which is for that purpose, and More of 99.99% of us are unable to make real affiliate site like real third part site which present and sell our work like some kind of indirect stock agency.

Blablabla. Get a life. Where was the Internet invented? You're all doing well as imitators there, but I'm still waiting for the meat. I just don't like "referrals" from my work, just as you. That's why I opted out of DT's partner program. I only have one referral at DT, of a lady that begged me so since I helped her out. Most "referral" sites and links are hidden, so people just stumble in there. I wish sites would delete that program and give us a raise. And I'm sure, so would you.

So I dont know from where there are so much skepticism (Ant in the pants) about Jareso's work???

You underestimate Jareso. From what I saw, he's a good photographer.

Maybe Jareso is not successful in photography or illustrations but he want to find his way to success in programming or web developing or in some kind of in this case marketing which is provided by DT API and he know how to use it.

My dear fellow, we know how to use that too. I as not attacking Jareso, if you read well, but the sites that allow referrals instead of putting their money from us in proper marketing themselves.

So. Are you "Ants" jealous on Jareso's skills which you dont have, or you are just uninformed and think how he want to screw you and steal few cents from you royalty?

My dear Suljo. I'm not jealous of Jareso at all. I'm involved with a design/programing company (not in Mumbai like the moron spammer here but..) in Chennai. We prefer Indians over Easterneuropeans because they are less drama and low maintenance, and most of all, cheaper. For support, we use Filipino call centers, also less drama. When we explored Moscow, we were frightened away by the corruption and the crime, although there is plenty of talent. India has more talent, it just needs to be harvested. So, just don't think we are morons. Photography is just a nice hobby for me. Never take anything for granted, and do something about your English. 

In case of me, I take 25 cents any day with Shutterstock because each month my total is bigger than Istock.  But for other agency I don't think it is worth my trouble.
Other people here , you agree?

Basically yes. If you're shots are usable, you will be soon in the 33 and 36 cents range on SS anyways. Not to mention the ODs and the ELs there. If it has to be (or below) 25 cents, I'm not interested any more. Certainly not on StinkStock that has nothing to offer in my niches anyways. I can as well offer them for free on a site with added content and reap the associated Google ad rewards. I'm trying that now for my editorials/snapshots, along with some textual content, and it looks good. This requires an integral approach in which stock only plays a part.

Hi, I'll be there, looking forward to it...will feel a bit nervous to be among such prestigious company!

Hmmpfff... (off topic) - you have amazing shots at DT. Just added you to my favs there.

This question is directed at the photographers here... I promised myself when I reached a certain earnings level I would purchase a full frame body. However now Im thinking perhaps the money would be better spent on studio lights, flash meter and any other bits and bobs (I currently use continuous lights and have long ago realised there limitations) Any advice much appreciated!

Go for the cam.