I'm optimistic that this will work in our favor.  Both agencies have treated me well, with few if any moments of what? decision making.  The only problem with BigStock is the revenue it generates; a serious marketing effort could make all the difference.  If they see synergy, I'm happy to sit back and watch them, ummmm, synergies.

I use Transmit.  It'll definitely support multiple concurrent uploads in separate windows.  Alternatively, you might try the ftp command from the Terminal.  I use it from my web provider to upload files to all the sites (except one; you know who you are) at once.

Where are you seeing this data that compares US Sales to Non-US Sales?

-Mark

On the Submit page, under PERFORMANCE STATS, click on the details button.
At the bottom of the page, under Gross Earnings, click on the link for payment history.
For the last two months you'll see Gross, US and non-US income.

No joy trying to fulfill my upload quota this morning.  The web interface claims my image isn't big enough.  It is; it's a full 12 megapixel image.  I wouldn't mind quite so much if their quota system didn't penalize me for every minute I'm permitted to upload and don't.

According to their website, they've been fixing upload problems.  Guess this one's still waiting to be repaired.

To quality, quantity and variety I would add relevance or perhaps usefulness.  This is still mostly about images people can find a use for.

I'm having the opposite experience.  But first a question: are you comparing results month by month or over a longer period?  I find my results to be so volatile month by month that it's hard to see any trends, whereas using a trailing index of several months (I use a year of results) makes things more clear.  I blame seasonal variations, but there may be other factors.

With that said, I am seeing a significant year on year growth at Shutterstock, and none at all at iStockphoto.  As a percentage, my growth at SS is more than an order of magnitude greater.  At least some of that is the difference in their upload quotas.  Maxing out my uploads at iStock has produced only a 4% increase in revenue in a year.

It may be the relative sizes of our portfolios that explain the difference in our results.  With a couple of thousand images at iStock and a weekly quota of 20 uploads, I'm only able to increase my port by 10% in a year.  At SS I managed to double my port in that time.

Just to be explicit, the requirement is for images of 4-6 megaPIXELS.  That's independent of file size, which is measured in megaBYTES.  It's the nature of JPEG files that their size can vary quite a lot depending on contents, even though the pixel count doesn't.

Wasn't targeting you. Just a general observation. This place seems like it used to be a majority of people who were the "open sharing" type. That seems to have swung to the "not helping the competitors" type.

Or maybe this particular question struck a nerve.  It was neither the general request for guidance nor the more specific "here's what happened; what am I doing wrong?"  More of a "tell me exactly what to do so I can be successful without going to too much unnecessary effort."  That might get a few people's backs up.  Purely unintentionally on the part of the original poster, of course.

Let me try to answer your question in a different way, and that's to explain why I really can't answer it.  First, if I knew in advance which isolated subjects would sell well, I'd shoot lots of them and stop wasting my time on stuff that won't sell.  You might think that looking at top sellers at the various sites would give me a clue, but you'd be wrong (or at least partially wrong), because it's as much the execution of the shot as the subject that makes it sell.  If I discover that fruit salad shots sell, can I create one that's better (whatever that might be) than what's already out there?  If I can, will it get noticed among all those other fruit salad shots?

Besides (what is this, point three?), you stand a better chance of being noticed with pictures that aren't already available in large quantities.  Find a hole and fill it.  Which goes back to point one: if I knew which holes to fill, I'd be busy filling them.  Instead I keep coming up with different ideas, shoot them, submit them and see if anybody bites.  Sometimes they do, but mostly they don't.  Good thing I'm patient.  And imaginative.  And patient. 

Here I am, enduring the tedium of uploading my weekly twenty.  I notice upload #12 seems to have finished.  But no, it's something else:

File uploads have temporarily been deactivated for all users. Please try again later.

Think they'll compensate me for the time lost by their unexpected and unexplained downness?  No, I didn't think so either.

I said I was going to stop uploading, but thought I'd try a few more.  After all, I'm up to three sales and $4.10!  But my latest rejections aren't exactly encouraging.  Guess I encountered the fashion police:

Other concerns. Out of style, clothing, hair, background

I guess only the au courant need apply.  Wonder what they'd have done if I submitted something truly vintage

Quote from: disorderly on August 29, 2009, 14:12

It's a good start.  Now I can see if I have new sales without checking dozens of pages.  Lots to do yet, like a way to view sales by date so we can see what sold recently.  But thanks for at least getting us a summary.

Click on "Display as table" on the statistics site, that will show you all your sales in chronological order.

Thanks!  I missed that one.