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Messages - hatman12
Pages: 1 ... 38 39 40 41 42 [43] 44 45 46 47 48 ... 51
1051
« on: May 30, 2007, 12:16 »
Wow Sharply - that is some picture production machine you've got going there.
I have suspected for a while that you are not actually human.....
..... and I think you've just confirmed it......!
1052
« on: May 30, 2007, 12:14 »
Been fine here Leaf, but then I do live in Australia which is an upside down world.......
1053
« on: May 30, 2007, 03:27 »
Wow - a zero download day! That is definitely not good. Hope it picks up again for you.
1054
« on: May 30, 2007, 01:59 »
Well sales seem to have returned to normal overnight so clearly it is/was just a holiday weekend thang.
Nonetheless, with SS I think I'll stop uploading a few at a time and go for larger batches just a little less frequently and see what happens.
1055
« on: May 30, 2007, 01:55 »
Yeah, just started to notch up a sale or two, so it looks as though the holiday weekend/week had a bigger impact than I expected.
1056
« on: May 29, 2007, 16:42 »
Yes, I think I'll avoid uploading at holiday weekends in future; it seems that peeps like to tack on an extra holiday or two either before or after these long weekends (or both), and new uploads can get 'lost' during this period.
Next hol is July 4th and I think I'll plan to stop uploading a coupla days before and save those for a larger upload burst once everyone has returned to work.
1057
« on: May 29, 2007, 15:18 »
FT must have upwards of a million images with zero downloads. Let's hope that they take the opportunity to change that misleading 3.3 million headline figure.
1058
« on: May 29, 2007, 15:16 »
Well the mention in the newsletter generated a nice burst in sales activity, and last week was easily my BWE at StockXpert.
Naturally I have written to Steve and his team to thank them for the exposure.
Ironically, since then I've had a period of several days without any sales at all! I know it's been a holiday weekend in the States, but another couple of days with zero sales will make it the worst consecutive sales period for me since I joined StockXpert.
So my best week looks like being followed by my worst week. That's life I suppose!
1059
« on: May 29, 2007, 15:12 »
How's it going for everyone at Shutterstock?
I had a problem period about a month ago when I couldn't upload for about ten days; sales dropped considerably during that period. However since then I have been back into my routine of uploading every couple of days, but I don't seem to be able to kick-start SS back to my previous sales levels. Very frustrating.
Is this just a problem I need to resolve somehow, or are others experiencing the same thing (I recall some members here expressing concern about a gentle decline in dales at SS)?
1060
« on: May 29, 2007, 02:22 »
Very useful. Thanks.
1061
« on: May 26, 2007, 16:32 »
Good advice. Thanks for sharing.
1062
« on: May 23, 2007, 16:53 »
I listen to and watch all the tutorials. All of them are very informative and much appreciated.
1063
« on: May 22, 2007, 11:30 »
I deleted this post because it criticised one of the leading microstock photographers. I don't like to criticise others so I'll keep my thoughts to myself.
I'll just say that I'm surprised at the deterioration in quality being submitted by some of the photographers with large portfolios (one in particular).
I don't believe that quantity will win over quality in microstock; the buyers will buy quality and relevance; photographers can try to saturate the market but unless they maintain quality they won't get the sales.
1064
« on: May 20, 2007, 09:54 »
I really appreciate being able to see and listen to your tutorials. Many thanks.
1065
« on: May 19, 2007, 13:57 »
I'd give him 1/10 if I were you; I mean, he completely MISSED the alien spacecraft........
1066
« on: May 18, 2007, 17:33 »
These size statistics are largely irrelevant, or at least possibly misleading.
As mentioned in another thread, advice from hidesy says that if you have images available at XL and/or XXL size that sends an important message to potential buyers that you are a serious player and are prepared to invest in the best equipment. That might generate downloads of smaller sizes that wouldn't otherwise happen.
1067
« on: May 18, 2007, 17:09 »
I'm surprised and delighted to see my small gallery highlighted in StockXpert's latest monthly newsletter.
My thanks to Steve-Oh and the team at StockXpert.
1069
« on: May 17, 2007, 16:18 »
Okay, thanks for the reassurance guys; my experience at FT has always been a wait of a coupla days, so this super fast approval was a new thing for me.
1070
« on: May 17, 2007, 15:43 »
Well all five got accepted. So I decided to upload another four. These have been accepted within half an hour.
I suppose it's nice to get acceptances so quickly, and with any other agency I'd be pleased. But as it's FT I'm simply suspicious and this speed of acceptance actually discourages me; I don't believe they have actually been 'reviewed' at all.
1071
« on: May 17, 2007, 14:54 »
This morning I uploaded five images to FT at 05.00am Australia time. I sorted the keywords etc and submitted for approval.
It is now 05.52am and I have received acceptance notices for four of those images. In fact, the first three images were accepted ten minutes after I pressed the submit button.
You all know that I am suspicious of FT; this just makes me even more suspicious. How can they have examined my images and approved them so quickly?
Doesn't sound right to me.......
1072
« on: May 16, 2007, 17:08 »
Other advice from hidesy was:
"Get the highest resolution camera you can (she uses 16mp) and ALWAYS upload the largest possible image size; you will be surprised at how many of these largest sizes you will sell; designers can crop large images and still end up with excellent quality."
"Having a professional camera (16mp) sends an important message to potential buyers - I am a serious player and I am prepared to invest in the best equipment in order to produce the finest quality."
"NEVER believe that you know the market; only the market knows the market, and the market will decide for itself which images it likes and wants to buy and which ones it doesn't; if you try to second guess the market you will fail; have a high quality, varied portfolio, and let the market decide."
1073
« on: May 16, 2007, 15:52 »
I agree with you Ichiro that SS requires too much work. It's okay if one has a constant supply of new images, but a couple of weeks ago I had an accident and couldn't produce any new images for ten days. After a few days my downloads at SS started to dry up.
Usually I get an average of about 28 downloads a day at SS, but because of the 'gap' in production, this week I've had two days of only 2 or 3 downloads; in other words my short period of being fallow destroyed my SS income.
What I want to do is spend time designing and creating; with SS there is too much time wasted by having to plan upload strategies, stagger submission of images etc. Also, the long term asset value of an image is much less at SS - elsewhere I can be confident that my images will sell and sell perhaps for years, but that won't happen at SS without uploads.
1074
« on: May 16, 2007, 15:44 »
Sorry, but I couldn't disagree more.
Before I decided to enter the Microstock market I was lucky enough to share a coffee with hidesy, who is the second most successful contributor to IS (nearly 300,000 downloads). She gave me lots of advice, one of which was to resist the temptation to create compositionally pleasing images. As an example, she warned me not to cut off the top of heads in portraits and to leave plenty of space to one side or both. Now today's 'pleasing to the eye' portraits tend to focus in close and cut off the top of the head, so her advice would be going completely against my own inclination.
When I looked at her portfolio I saw that she was indeed correct - most of her best sellers of people have lots of space, and preferably three corners of the picture left empty to allow the designer to resize the canvas at will.
In Microstock, there is a HUGE difference between a great picture and a picture that SELLS. And if we want to succeed, we have to create pictures that SELL.
No offence, rjmiz, but given that hidesy has 300,000 downloads, I'll take her advice rather than yours.
1075
« on: May 15, 2007, 20:58 »
Well (fingers crossed) I actually had my best week ever on DT last week, despite my complaints about the risk of the new search throwing me to the bottom of the pile.
I can understand DT's thoughts about placing established photographers with big downloads in a priority position; the job of an agency is to sell images, and if they have established contributors who sell and sell and sell, why on earth would they then want to give any form of priority or even equal standing to a newbie who has yet to prove anything?
I think from now on the acceptance ratio might become important; mine is at 76% mainly due to early rejections; but from now on I intend to be more selective; I suspect that there is a trigger point at which one's standing in the search will be affected.
Might also be a good idea to throw a few exclusive images to DT - if exclusive gets any priority it might be important to have a few of those to hopefully direct a buyer to one's broader portfolio.
Just thoughts.
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