1076
Veer / Re: Veer Dash for Cash
« on: August 27, 2010, 17:03 »
Yes, received mine as well

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to. 1077
Veer / Re: Veer sales increasing?« on: August 25, 2010, 16:13 »Thanks, Brian for clarifying. +1 And while you're at it, I couldn't find my current account balance anywhere on the site. I can see total earnings since I began, but I can't find past payouts or the balance anywhere. Thanks 1078
General Stock Discussion / Re: Strategies for Self-Marketing in Microstock« on: August 25, 2010, 04:17 »If you want a simpler start, why not gather up 20-30 high end iStock contributors, and invite each one to add 10 (and only 10) of their images to a "Best Of" lightbox. That way you don't have to pick and choose which images to accept...you know they will all be great. Then start pushing the Lightbox through all of your social networking channels. How far away is that from this ? Ok, less restrictive and the social networking marketing thing is missing, but else... Anybody has seen positive effects from those lightboxes? 1079
iStockPhoto.com / Re: "Istock Collections" what ??« on: August 24, 2010, 15:38 »Actually, for the sake of clarity : This is only true if you compare the same number of sold images. But that only works under the assumption, that buyers are not working on a fixed / limited budget, but buy a fixed number of files whatever the cost is. I am pretty certain that for the vast majority of buyers this assumption is wrong. So in the end, assuming a given budget to be spent on imagery, Istock will make more money if that budget is spent on the files of independent contributors. 1080
iStockPhoto.com / Re: "Istock Collections" what ??« on: August 23, 2010, 04:32 »
Well, at least there seem to be a few exceptions to the rules.
They included one of my pics (http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-11375965-long-eared-owl-asio-otus.php) in their "compelling critters" lightbox. I'm not exclusive, the file isn't brand new (uploaded Dec 2009) - and honestly, I don't understand why they chose it. It's a nice enough shot, but to include it into a lightbox featuring "The very best animal portraits on iStock as selected by our team of editors." with a total of 164 files - I certainly feel flattered... Though I have to say it hasn't resulted in any sales yet.. 1081
Bigstock.com / Re: BigStock down for how long?« on: August 20, 2010, 08:59 »
They seem to be back up again.
1082
PicNiche Toolbar / Re: Is PicNiche still working !?« on: August 20, 2010, 08:58 »
I've got version 1.1.3 installed but the toolbar does not update Istock earnings. It also still shows the "old" greenish icon for Istock. Oddly though, on my other computer at home I remember it worked yesterday and showed the new blue icon.
I'll check tonight once I'm home... 1083
PicNiche Toolbar / Re: Is PicNiche still working !?« on: August 20, 2010, 08:37 »
It is working at least for FT and SS, but definitely not for Istock.
1084
Alamy.com / Re: how many MegaPixels for Alamy after the change ?« on: August 19, 2010, 06:59 »
A little bit above 8 MP.
My Canon 30D produces 8,2 MP and needs a tiny little bit of upsizing. You can easily calculate: They want 24 MB uncompressed, i.e. 24 x 1024 x 1024 = 25.165.824 Bytes. As an (uncompressed) 8-bit Jpeg needs 3 Bytes per pixel, you end up with 25.165.824 / 3 = 8.388.608 Pixels. And as camera makers normally mean exactly one million pixels when using "Megapixel" (wheres in computers when talking about kilobytes or megabytes you are using powers of 2, so one kilobyte = 1024 bytes, one megabyte = 1024 kilobytes) , your camera would need 8.4 MP so you don't have to upsize for the 24 MB uncompressed size. 1085
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Sales slump« on: August 18, 2010, 01:55 »Since I became exclusive, my sales went downhill. Cheer up! Once you're down at the very bottom, there is only one way to go... ... sideways ![]() Sorry, couldn't resist... My sales at IS are miserable too. May has been ok, but since then it's down all the way, July being less than a third of May ![]() 1086
GLStock / Re: Is Graphic Leftovers accepting photos now?« on: August 17, 2010, 07:33 »I just use the default price, $6. As they don't sell smaller sizes and pay a decent commission, I don't mind using a lower price than some sites. Same for me. I thought about changing to $10, but haven't found an option to change it for the whole portfolio - and I don't want to click through every single file. Maybe if I ask their support they can do a global change... 1087
GLStock / Re: Is Graphic Leftovers accepting photos now?« on: August 17, 2010, 02:26 »Just started with them, until now 420 files approved. No sales until now but since it's been just a few days anything else would have surprised me. First sale today. Not too bad for a new site and for having half of my port up there for only about a week... ![]() 1088
Adobe Stock / Re: Suprising downturn at Fotolia?« on: August 14, 2010, 16:18 »
Quite the opposite for me. I already have more sales than in July and almost as much as I had in June.
Only thing that worries me is that the majority of sales is subs or XS now. My RPD is down to the lowest level since August 2007. (although my observations are not based on a port comparable to some of the others here, so statistical relevance is close to zero...) 1089
GLStock / Re: Is Graphic Leftovers accepting photos now?« on: August 13, 2010, 17:47 »Click on the unfinished file link and see if they're in there. I've had a few get stuck in there for whatever reason. Might need some finishing work on those files before submission. Thanks for the hint, but there's nothing as well... I'll just re-upload them once the current batch is approved. 1090
Pixmac / Re: Big ambition from Pixmac [Press Release]« on: August 13, 2010, 17:22 »
I'd say:
![]() ![]() ![]() 1091
GLStock / Re: Is Graphic Leftovers accepting photos now?« on: August 13, 2010, 15:35 »
Just started with them, until now 420 files approved. No sales until now but since it's been just a few days anything else would have surprised me.
Easy upload, though some of my uploads seem to end up nowhere (the numbers I uploaded simply don't match approved + rejected + pending). I don't have anything needing an MR though. I started because I read some positive opinions here on MSG, so let's hope for some sales. 1092
Off Topic / Re: Anyone else ever get an email like this?« on: August 13, 2010, 08:34 »
OT (in the Off Topic board
![]() How a country like the US can still heavily rely on almost all payments using paper checks is beyond me... You'll never have such a problem here in good old Germany, we simply don't use checks any more, they are gone for decades now. (doesn't mean we don't have scams, they just don't work the same way...) 1093
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Sales slump« on: August 13, 2010, 03:23 »Their profit margins must be similar to those of sites that pay between 50% and 20% in commission, to achieve that they need at least half the credits to go unused. They need their customers to use a lot less than half the allowed downloads. Look at Fotolia as an example. Their marketing says "Images from 14 cents". That's the theoretical cost of an image with their biggest subscription (full year, 250 pics a day, single user). For comparison: the "most expensive" of their standard subscriptions (one month, 25 pics / day, unlimited users) comes to a price per image at 40 cents. But they do have a fixed payout per download of 30 to 37 cents (depending on the contributor's rank). So to reach a profit margin similar to let's say paying 50% commission, they must expect that users only download around one quarter or less of the biggest subscriptions and around half of the smallest ones. To reach a profit margin comparable to paying 20% commission it's obviously a lot less... 1094
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Sales slump« on: August 12, 2010, 06:37 »I have to disagree (to the statement bolded above). No, certainly not. But if (big IF) buyers would move to Featurepics due to their lower prices, I would make more. That's why I think it doesn't necessarily hurt to offer images at a lower price point. 1095
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Sales slump« on: August 12, 2010, 03:19 »
I have to disagree (to the statement bolded above). As contributor I can make more on a site that sells for half of Istock's prices - when they give me 50% comission, as still some sites do. If Istock wants (independent) contributors to stop supporting cheaper sites, they must raise comissions. Simple. 1096
Pixmac / Re: Big ambition from Pixmac [Press Release]« on: August 12, 2010, 02:22 »1. On Fotolia you should be able to see "Sold via third party channel" or something like that. I hope it's still there. This was discussed in some Fotolia forum thread about a year a go. Yes, it does show something like that. But with FT's gazillion different partners there is no way of knowing where such a sale originated from. I personally had that happen exactly once, and this obviously was from Pixmac (see below for explanation). 2. I don't think you'll be able to see it on Dreamstime. But I'll ask Serban... No, nothing can be seen on DT. It shows up like any other sale. I had one at Pixmac for my DT portfolio, that showed up at DT as "sold with 2010 credits". 3. We take all the images that FT and DT offers via their API. We update that every day (every 24 hours) and there's no way how to choose which images we take and which not. So if it's sent over API we have it. In some cases the updating may be broken, so there might be delays in the sync. But if you spot any significant differences and if they have any logic in it, just let me know, because I want to have complete data not a portion of that. If you upload to DT and FT at the same time, part of the images might be set as duplicates, but together it should be the same amount of images. If not let's investigate the case and fine the cure. Ok, now to how you find your own pics on Pixmac. Do a search (on Pixmac.com) for any of your topics / pics using less common keywords. Take a look if you can find one of your pics, then click on it. (I could easily find the same pic twice with such a search, one is from DT, the other from FT). The detail page has your name with the distributing agency added to it as a link below the pic (e.g. Dirkr (dreamstime)). Click on that link, it will show all your files on pixmac from that agency, together with the number of sales (for me one on each agency) and a list of best sellers (so I could easily identify the sold pictures - the one of FT matched the one where I got the special sales notice on FT for). In my case that results in 628 pics from DT (where I have 832 online) and 609 from FT (where I have 634 online). This shows, that there are a lot of duplicates (explanation might be, that I keyword in German for FT and in English for DT - if the duplication detection relies on keywords it must fail ![]() In addition (if you look closer) both prices and sizes are different for the same file from FT or DT ![]() 4. You'll be in our subscription (which most of you don't like) and you'll be in our API chain of partners as eg. http://www.ccvision.de/de/microstock/ but currently our focus is to generate serious sales. As we've started with paying for uploads as any other new agency did and found out that we were not able to satisfy contributors later on with sales. In general I would welcome your effort to generate more sales. And I am not totally against the concept of distributing files I have already online to partner agencies. What troubles me is the lack of control I have over this distributions (not really your problem, but maybe you can talk to FT and DT about that). Ideally I would like to have a list of all available partners with their exact conditions and an opt-out possibility on a case by case basis. With FT I get nothing (no information, no opt-out), with DT close to nothing (no information, just a global opt-out). That certainly is bad. And one more thing: You are giving prices on your website (for direct purchase without use of credits) which are well above the FT / DT prices (e.g. the smallest size is advertised at $3.88). If these are sold, I will still just get an XS download at Fotolia, netting me 0.28. That is less than 10%. So in light of all of this, would you recommend taking down all our pictures on Pixmac as distributed from FT / DT and uploading directly to Pixmac? And if so, what would be the conditions (couldn't find that easily on your site)? 1097
Pixmac / Re: Big ambition from Pixmac [Press Release]« on: August 11, 2010, 07:04 »so i think everyone porfolio in dreamstime and fotolia will be available in pixmac? On FT you can't choose. You're in. And any kind of "duplicate avoiding software" or whatever they intend to use - it does not work. I can easily find (some of) my pictures twice on their website - for slightly different prices ![]() ![]() And those prices are strange as well, for what would sell as an XS on FT (customer paying 1$ or 1 depending on location) their price tag is $3.88. I'm afraid there's really nothing we can do about that other than delete our port on FT and opt out the partner program at DT... ![]() 1098
Newbie Discussion / Re: Expectations?« on: August 11, 2010, 01:49 »
Go with the advice given already:
Join the big sites if you want to make more than a random dollar every other week. Be prepared for a lot of frustration (rejections, no sales and such). Organize your workflow (especially keywording offline to allow you to upload to more agencies without having to do it all over again). Expect that you will need several hundred photos on more than just two sites to reach your goal. Good Luck ![]() 1099
iStockPhoto.com / Re: New iStockphoto web design - IT'S LIVE!« on: August 09, 2010, 06:40 »Is there any way to see when someone rated your image? I see my ratings count go up, and then I want to look at the rater's port to reciprocate if I see something wonderful in their own work - but I end up having to trawl through my rated images and try to remember if I've already reciprocated previously. Am I missing something here? Don't know about the Istock website, but Deepmeta shows ratings in chronological order... 1100
Alamy.com / Re: IN in less than 5minutes..« on: August 06, 2010, 07:23 »
So actually uploading your micro portfolio to Alamy is a good way to increase exposure ![]() ![]() ...with the added benefit of the occasional Alamy buyer without knowledge of such tools... |
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