Quote from: borg on March 09, 2011, 10:02
So, I see one black sheep in your theory, Crestock!

Promille is better measure than percentage for acceptance rate on Crestock, same is for sales there...

Lol I like that one, nicely said. I don't have account on Crestock so I can't say. But maybe since they're that picky one day they will get to their target that for who they so carefully create portfolio and the sales will raise.

Quote from: disorderly on March 09, 2011, 01:47
There's a phrase for it in Latin: Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc.  It means after, therefore because of, and it describes our belief that events connected in time are also connected in some causal way.  Sometimes they are, and sometimes they aren't.

Sure, but that's why later on ppl invented internet and forums, to discuss such matters.
Btw (useless or maybe not so useless) psychological fact - if you as a person what brand was the blue (or name any other popular colour) car that just passed, hardly noone will be able to switch back in his / her memories to the real colour of that car.

There's one more possible explanation - the new sites are much more usability trend influenced so they got better human - website interaction. But since they accept everything as it goes (because they need to build up the database and possibly fast) they don't have the quality that is or ss worked on for years...

I noticed some trend. It might probably be nothing new, or not very revealing but I didn't see any similar thread, so I decided to share. I'm curious if you have observed similar issue and what do you think about it.

I noticed that the more easy submission procedure and the higher acceptance ratio the lower sales. The best example (though I'm not sure if it's a good idea to give examples because then the acceptance ratio might drop lol) is for me yaymicro. Absolutely wonderful user interface, about 99% acceptance ratio... And absolutely no sales. Similar with depositphotos - lovely interface, high acc ratio, low sales.

Now take a look at fotolia - quite nuisance especially with aligning the keywords from the most important to least, but quite nice sales. IStock - awful procedure taking LOTS of time, and the top tier.

Have you noticed it? While high acceptance and low sales is at some point natural (this concerns usually new stocks), then the easy submission procedure and low sales is for me quite worrying...

And now Yuri will be wondering why everyone started uploading squirrels on the trees.


But it's working for me.

Quote from: bobkeenan on January 27, 2011, 19:16

Quote from: seawhisper on January 25, 2011, 19:07

I don't know how I missed it but here is a great site on the net called Microstock Diaries.   He publishes his monthly earnings so you can see the portfolio quantity vs sales.

http://www.microstockdiaries.com/tag/earnings-reports

That's an interesting website. Thanks!

As for the other subjects in this thread I think they're quite interesting too. It's nice to know others do share my own thoughts / fears etc.
I mean how many photos does the stock site need to not be in need of a new photos at all? I billion? 10? Maybe 100 and then you can tell most of their contributors bye, bye...
I wish stock sited did show some statistics on acceptance ratio / new submissions and so on, maybe the microstocks trend is about to go down, since many obviously cut the revenues.

Quote from: louoates on January 25, 2011, 23:12
The downside to doing this type of calculation is realizing that the overall trend, at least with my images, is decidedly, unquestionably, inexorably, despondently, and suicidally DOWN. Have a nice day.

Well the calculations are just for something to talk about when the photos are uploading. The trend is something to cry aloud. ;/

Quote from: sjlocke on January 25, 2011, 19:10
1 really, really good one.  Or 1,000 really poor ones.  Or something in between.

hehe yeah this is exactly how statistic works so how about a bit more 'standard' or medium ones?

I was wondering how many photos (statistically) one needs to have $300 a month.
Now mind you (before you start lecturing me that the numbers are not important, but the subject is ) I do understand that some photos sell better some sell worse and there is also good time for a specific photos and bad time for them.

It's just a statistical wondering - maybe you already got this moment when you have $300 a month, maybe more.
(I picked the number $300 because it's more or less how much I did already earn on stocks, and because I spent this very money on a compact camera for a friend).

So, what do you thing - how much photos one need to have in the portfolio in for example shutterstock to earn $300 a month?

I think it would be nice to know which site was that. Just to know to which support not to write lol.

Quote from: leaf on December 31, 2010, 11:25

They apparently won't let you.  It costs them about 34% more to have euro submitters, so there isn't much motivation for them to switch you to being a Euro paid photographer.  I am in Europe as well but get paid in USD, so when I get paid $1,000 my neighbor who is getting paid in euro's would get $1338

Hm how can you do that? And why in the first place? 

I'm glad to be in Europe. Still it's kind of weird. I wonder how do they pay in Istambul.

Thanks so much, and thanks for the link!

I'm a bit confused. I'm trying to figure out how much do I got from fotolia and found in one place that 1 credit is worth £0.75 (http://en.fotolia.com/Info/Contributors#item_8) and in faq that "from" £0.63 (http://en.fotolia.com/Info/Credits).

So how much is 1 credit worth for a photographer?

Quote from: leaf on December 26, 2010, 21:52
It's working for me now...

I still cannot connect to their ftp... :/

Quote from: luissantos84 on December 26, 2010, 14:09

Quote from: seawhisper on December 26, 2010, 12:58

Quote from: luissantos84 on December 26, 2010, 12:55

Quote from: seawhisper on December 26, 2010, 12:54
Assuming that someone still uploads files there... 

right

Hehe what about that thread I've read somewhere to support smaller stock sites and hoping (for the best ) that some day they will be competition for bigger players?

I have no problem regarding that, I have more than 1k pictures at YAY, they aren't going well but maybe it's just me

Nah, I guess it's just everyone. Pity because for me Yay is most usable and user friendly stock I've ever seen. At least from submitter's point of view.

Quote from: luissantos84 on December 26, 2010, 12:55

Quote from: seawhisper on December 26, 2010, 12:54
Assuming that someone still uploads files there... 

right

Hehe what about that thread I've read somewhere to support smaller stock sites and hoping (for the best ) that some day they will be competition for bigger players?

Has something happen to Yay? I can't upload files to ftp, and all my photos are in 'pending' queue suspiciously long... 

Is it just me or you guys have similar? Assuming that someone still uploads files there... 

Quote from: lisafx on December 22, 2010, 00:32
Wow, some pretty sharp criticism here!  Thanks for providing the 100% view Paula

I agree with the comments about the noise.  The noise and artifacts are definitely the reason this was rejected. Looks like you applied sharpening along with saturation boost.  It's just too much.

Personally, I think it is a very attractive photo of a peacock.  If you have a RAW and can reprocess very minimally, without boosting the sharpness or saturation, and maybe do a bit of noise reduction in the green background areas, I think you might have a shot at approval. 

Problem is, though, that would be an awful lot of trouble for a shot that ultimately isn't going to sell much even if approved.  As has been mentioned, it's a low demand area.  I even have a shot of a peacock from early in my micro days available in the free section of a couple of sites and it isn't even downloaded much for free. 

Yeah, *some* ppl just weren't quite nice / delicate...  But what I like about this forum here, is that even if you get sometimes unpleasant reply most of ppl are so helpful and very patient, I really appreciate it here.

Still I'm kind of confused here. Just about few responses earlier someone said that very saturated photos sell awfully (surprisingly) good on stocks. And from this file I must say I do agree - on dreamstime it had 4 sells in a row, then one other photo and then again two more. Quite similar on shutterstock. So this is the very reason for my frustration when it was rejected. I have no idea what to do to have nice saturated colours and not overprocessed photos but I think I'll need to work on this.

Btw do you have a good way to reduce noise? Like someone said 50D is not the lowest noise making camera (even though I believe that saying it's unacceptable over ISO 200 is way overstated )  I'm using mostly nik software Dfine in photoshop, or trying to force lightroom 3 to do something with noise (not with best results I must say, it's getting too smooth effects on the details...).
Maybe there's some good tutorial, or just good software to use?

Quote from: lisafx on December 21, 2010, 16:21
Maybe it's just me, but I can't download the photo to see at full rez.  I think you have to be a member of that site to be able to download the image. 

Silly picasa - I have option 'let everyone download' on and it doesn't let anyone download it!  
How about here: http://strony.aster.pl/paulamozdrzewska/msg/IMG_5572.jpg it should download straight into the browser, does it work?

Quote from: arquiplay77 on December 21, 2010, 16:16
I know how frustrating this can be, but what the law says is no important, is what they (microsites) allow or not on their sites, they are over racting most of the time because they just don´t want to have any chances of a demand, and on the other hand they have so many images that just don´t care on rejecting anyone of our beloved images. Particulary IS deactivated my most downloaded image a orange flame (more than 40 dl/m) just because they think a barelona chair has risk of copyright, (was an illustration BTW)

From what admin told me the stock require releases of building that are copyrighted. That means they also have a list of 'restricted' buildings (Eiffel tower night shots and so on). The others is a matter of communication between you and a stock. If stock site is that paranoid not to respect local law it's their lost. And honestly it would be stupid if stock required release for each and every building, road or a pavement shot... Pity some stock goes right in this very direction...

Quote from: gostwyck on December 21, 2010, 14:47
I wouldn't worry too much about saturation, if you can get away with it. We 'purist' photographers may find over-saturated images offensive but a significant number of buyers seem to love them. Do a search on almost any wildlife or landscape subject and you will often find the best-sellers have horrible saturation and/or obvious and crude use of basic filters. That's stock for you.

Hehe I was thinking absolutely the same! I do put heavy saturated photos do deviantart, and I always feel guilt that they look like 'kodak dreams' even if people prefer very saturated images. I thought that on stocks people are more 'reasonable' and do not accept such saturated photos. But it seems that buyers are mostly only people too, and like these shiny vivid colours.

Quote from: rimglow on December 21, 2010, 14:24
My first impression was over saturated. That's not a green found anywhere in nature. Dial down the Saturation 15-20 clicks.

If it was accepted by 6 other sites, you failed to mention if iStock was one of them. They have the hardest inspectors of the top six.

I'll try with saturation then since two person already have said that.

It's accepted on SS, DS, DP, 123rf, YAY (though maybe I shouldn't mention yay, I got a more and more feelings that it isn't serious stock, however it does look nice... :/)

You think IS is more picky then SS?

Quote from: gostwyck on December 21, 2010, 14:13
It does look crudely over-saturated to me but, as FV has already said, you would need to link a full-size version for us to see.

My guess is that FT really rejected it for lack of saleability and then found a 'technical' issue to give. From a commercial point of view images of peacocks are huge in supply and very low in demand. We all like taking photos of peacocks and they make great subjects. Unfortunately very few buyers have a need for them and therefore only the truly exceptional images gain significant sales.

FT already has 3500 images that correspond to a search on 'peacock bird' and of those the best-seller has only 76 sales after 4 years.

You have link to full size in second reply in this thread. As for commercial value, it's selling quite nice on ss. I sometimes really don't understand fotolia, they accepted slightly blurry image of another peacock that was rejected on major stocks. But they decline the photo all my other stocks accepted... 

Quote from: fullvalue on December 21, 2010, 13:55
You need to post a link to the full size image for people to judge the technical quality.

http://picasaweb.google.com/missdaredevil/CCBAG?authkey=Gv1sRgCNOW8qLOr9X1xQE#5553135116143294402

You need to download the photo to get full res file. (Obviously the submitted one doesn't have the watermark if someone will point it out. )

I mean we all know how unspecific are fotolia rejection reasons.  Especially technical ones.
I got rejected a photo that has been accepted on 6 other stocks: http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=43128544

http://strony.aster.pl/paulamozdrzewska/msg/IMG_5572.jpg

I got the usual 'technical issues' rejection reason that includes I think all possible technical issues.

So my first question is if you can suggest me what could they didn't like here, and second if there's a good way to find out what is wrong with photos rejected by fotolia? Maybe there's some place on their forum or a procedure to ask them what exactly is there to fix?

Dunno how it is in other countries, but in Poland ANY building (that refers also to monuments)  that is in public space is NOT copyrighted. Pity that the stocks doesn't know that. I've exchanged that info with 123rf mod on this very forum but got no reply. This way I got rejected two of my bestselling architecture shots: http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=43220404 , http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=44790370 (And I don't even say that the second shot are simple STAIRS, not a building at all. So maybe cities are copyrighted too, and got owners? )

Beside I believe this is whole madness - some stock removes photos of cars (even if there's no logo), shoes that are too characteristic (like the case with Puma shoes), and computer parts - specific logitech mouses and so on. One company can SELL items that look identical as other more known companies products, but we can't take a photos of too characteristic stuff...

This is not Sparta, this is Maaaaadnesssssssssss!