Yes, to me it's silly to complain about it.  It is incredibly obvious that there will be exactly as many photos that benefit as there are photos lose out.  The only reason to complain is if poor photos are being artificially moved up front due to what collection their in, etc, like at istock, but htat doesnt appear to be the case here.  The photos near the beginning, while different, still seem to be good.

FYI, i seem to have lost out mildly on this.  Definitely most photos are a little further back, but nothing huge.

When I read lagereek's shout, I really had no idea if he meant that we are spitting on the agencies' hands, or if they are spitting on our hands.  Don't know if he intended this catch-22, but it sure made me think.

ok I got the SS tool to work:

http://submit.shutterstock.com/darkroom/keyword_trends.mhtml?time_span=12_months_ago&searchterms=flower&searchterms=christmas&searchterms=uniball&searchterms=&searchterms=&search=

that links to my search (i hope).  flower was searched, because thats often stated as "the #1 search."  "christmas" was searched, and the third keyword is "uniball" (because I wanted to make sure the bottom of the graph was basically zero, so I looked around and saw a uniball pen next to me).

If you look at the area under the curve, aka total searches, ... well I'm not getting out my ruler but it looks like flower is about four "boxes", and and christmas seems to be well over four "boxes".  So this means total demand throughout the year for christmas is greater, even though for much of the year it is below flower.  I know its dangerous to link searches with sales, but this is the best I can do.  If you want to follow the "peak" metric, it also surpasses the "6x" yardstick, it looks to be about 7.5x as popular.  Thoughts?

RacePhoto:  Rinder might have easily had the longest post, but ironically, in your post complaining about how he put you out of the running, you failed to notice that you easily had the WIDEST post of the year 

I don't know if it has fully dawned on istock yet, but I think it is probably dawning.  It HAS to be, right??

My take is that all of this downward spiral is due from pressure from Getty to grow.  It's an incredibly well entrenched, though I believe old-fashioned and out-dated, business belief that a company must grow in order to survive.  Companies aren't allowed to remain static, but rather must grow... if they aren't growing, they are dying.  I'm not sure I think business model really applies to microstock, though I'm sure some people here will say otherwise.  But if you have the market share that iS once did, I don't think its possible to grow much, in this business.  Getty pressured them to grow or get slapped on the wrist, and that forced their hand with all these changes.

Some might call attention to the fact that SS is growing without these changes, but that's because it didn't have the marketshare iS once had, so it is growing by stealing its market share.  If it once reaches that near-monopoly status, I don't think it can grow anymore (besides the things stated in the SS forum like exclusivity options, etc).  My hope is that if and when it reaches that status, it is happy with sitting on that throne, and does not feel immense (outside or inside) pressure to grow.  Because if it does, that's when we get screwed.

Hey all, just started uploading to Alamy a few days ago.  When I got to the "image manager 2.4" or whatever, I can sort my images by "images not ready", "images ready", and "images for sale".  I have some images "ready" but none "for sale".  Where can I find the button, if there is one, to move them from ready to for sale.  Or do I just have to wait for them to be automatically catalogued or something.

Hi all, very new here, not too new to microstock or photography, but it's always been a hobby.  Photography, a very large and influential hobby...  submitting to stock, more of a footnote.  Please don't take that as any sort of smug superiority, it's just meant to serve as an excuse for why I've never really taken the time to nail down exactly what to write in a description.

I have read many threads here in the past few days, and have learned a TON, even though Ive been on istock for 6 years.  But, most of you tend to submit, for the most part, different types of photos than me.  I submit almost entirely landscapes and nature.  So I haven't really found the answer I've been looking for in old threads.

Sorry for beating around the bush.  My main question is this: for landscapes like mine, should I include the exact location in the description?  Right now I've been: never including it in the title (unless, like SS, there is only one title/description field), sometimes including it in the description, and always including it in the keywords.  This really is more just hedging my bets though, as I'm not sure what the best tactic is.  For stock photos of a waterfall or meadow, say (which I have many of), would knowing the exact location scare off some buyers?  For instance, I have some very popular "rain forest waterfall" images, which I have seen advertised all over the place, including tourism brochures for places that are NOT where my photo was taken.  Or advertising tropical rain forests, when in fact the waterfall was a temperate rain forest.  Any thoughts on this?  Has this been discussed before?

For instance, take my "Hidden rain forest waterfall with lush foliage and mossy rocks"... this thing is all OVER the place in rain forest ads, tropical and temperate.  Would adding "taken in North Carolina" diminish its value?



Please let me know if this should go in critique.  Since it is more about general landscape strategy, I thought it should go here.

Dt's system is the opposite of disambiguation.

I always thought DA is going to be the only way to deliver the best possible search results in the future.

Me too.  It is the ONLY part of the iStock process which I like better than the rest (in fact probably the only part that isn't the WORST of them all!).  Sure it takes extra time when uploading, but I know that people who want to see my image are going to get to see my image (best match sorting aside )

Right, that is what I'm talking about.  So there's absolutely no way to get "golden gate bridge" for example as a singular keyword?

Hey guys, I have a question about keywording on DT.  I ran a search and came across lots of little issues, but surprisingly not the one I'm confused by.

My question is simple (so simple, in fact, that I will probably look like an idiot): What is their keywording method?  I've tried comma-delineated, and I've tried space-delineated with quotes around compound keywords.  In either case, if I import keywords from a previous upload, all the compound keywords always get split up.  So for instance, when I keyword with either "..., golden gate bridge, ..." or "... "golden gate bridge" ...", and then use this file to import metadata to the next, I find all three words separated and strewn about.

Thoughts?

Hey guys, I'm brand new to this site, but not to the microstock world.  I joined IS in 2005, and made some good earnings there (not living wage, but quite profitable as a hobby I guess).  I have a pretty small portfolio, though I like to think high-ish quality (don't we all) of landscapes and nature scenics, as that is my true passion.  What with my small portfolio, IS's new royalty structure really hit me hard, and so I rescinded exclusivity about 4 months ago, which made the hit twice as hard.  For instance, august 2010 vs 2011 saw a 20% increase in downloads, but a 65% decrease in earnings!  65%!!.  In addition to the two obvious reasons stated already, I think this was also because of best match loss (though honestly I think most of my sales come from the 'popular' sorting), but also because I had a lot of images in Vetta that were selling.  Which perhaps made it a dumb decision to rescind exclusivity.

Anyways, now that I've started uploading more places, I see a very slow but steady crawl back upwards.  It might take me a while to reach where I once was, but honestly I'm very happy with my decision.  It has, believe it or not, been fun to upload more places, and I find it spurring my creative blood.  Also, I feel more at ease without having to worry quite as much about the endless stream of unsettling news coming from IS.  So that's that.

Anyways, I've spent the past 4 months strolling around the forums on several of the big 4, but each forum has its own way of bugging me.  Then I found this place, have lurked for 2 or 3 days, and think I've found the right forum for me.  This place looks great.  I also recognize lots of familiar names here.

Anyways, long story short: Hi!