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Messages - steheap
Pages: 1 ... 47 48 49 50 51 [52] 53 54 55 56 57 ... 63
1276
« on: April 18, 2012, 09:29 »
I tried the Alamy News Upload process yesterday for some images of the Space Shuttle over Washington DC: http://www.backyardsilver.com/2012/04/space-shuttle-discovery-over-washington-dc/The upload was great - it bypasses the normal QC (where I have some images sitting in the "long term failed" queue!), and you get to keyword them and put the normal release information into the file. That moves them to "Ready for sale." I finished that around 5pm EST yesterday. I thought they would then quickly move into the main database and be available for sale - no such luck. I checked just now and they are in the same state, and not visible in the main database against typical search terms. Did I miss a step here? It seems strange to have rapid bypassing of QC and then sit for 24 hours waiting to be available for sale. Steve
1277
« on: April 17, 2012, 16:08 »
I use either black or white depending on which makes the image stand out more prominently in a thumbnail. Some light colored images look better against a black background. Not sure I can tell if that impacts sales or not.
If I have extracted with a pen tool and have a path, I save it as a JPEG from Photoshop - I'm pretty sure that you then save the path in the JPEG and I include "path" in the keywords.
Steve
1278
« on: April 12, 2012, 13:32 »
This must be the latest I have ever posted details of sales and earnings - but my excuse was that I did spend 2 weeks in England and was too busy taking photographs.... March was very good - just $15 short of my best ever, with fine performances from Fotolia with $106 and 123RF with $115. Neither site has ever been above about $70 before. Would have been a great month if iStock hadn't fallen back from around $270 to just $212 for the month. More graphs and text on my blog as usual, but here is the main graph of growth in earnings. I have around 2700 images on line - some sites more, some less.  Steve
1279
« on: April 10, 2012, 18:07 »
Thanks for all your honest comments! I think I will pass on this opportunity to upload to Picture Nation!
Steve
1280
« on: April 09, 2012, 15:02 »
Thanks David The magazine was Photoplus - the Canon specific magazine - for Spring 2012. It was an OK article - not too gushing, but a bit short on the real details of selling stock images. For that you need to get my eBook!!  Steve
1281
« on: April 09, 2012, 05:37 »
Hi Etien
I hadn't heard of ViewBook - but the design of your site looks very clean and modern. Is is a sort of blogger platform for images, or something more like Smugmug?
Steve
1282
« on: April 09, 2012, 05:34 »
There was an old post from 2009 in the forum about Picture Nation. I was reading an article in a UK photography magazine this month about turning your photos into cash (!!), and the agencies recommended were Alamy, Picture Nation, Shutterstock, Bigstock and iStock. As the posters identified in 2009, it does seem to be more of a travel/editorial site, but has anyone had any success in sales at the site with those sort of images. I have a number in my portfolio, but wanted a bit of advice before going to the trouble of uploading.
Any updates very welcome!
Steve
1283
« on: April 09, 2012, 04:12 »
Me too, and ditto about the site URL. I sometimes question why I do it, as I don't often have comments or discussions on the posts, but I enjoy keeping it up to date, adding my earnings, latest stock photos etc. It has also helped me sell my book as well, but if you ask - do you get any real financial return from a blog or website, I think the answer would be no.
Steve
1284
« on: March 18, 2012, 09:34 »
Of course - I'm an English American (if such a thing exists) and so am well aware of the needs of my fellow countrymen!
Steve
1285
« on: March 17, 2012, 21:20 »
Stu
Matt was very kind to review the first edition of my book, and so I was sending him the updated edition (as I promised to all buyers). If you don't mind me putting it like this - I'm amazed at how people will spend hours trying to find out information on forum posts when the answers may be just $8.99 away...
Steve
1286
« on: March 13, 2012, 21:20 »
It often takes longer than 4 hours for the distro to occur. Double click one of the images on Lightburner and see what it says in Stats. It should tell you the time when the upload to various sites occured. Also, the SEO tab in Analytics will tell you how many of the images have been distributed.
I have a long chapter on using Lightburner in my famous book - Getting Started in Stock. I'll send you a PM and send along that chapter.
Steve
1287
« on: March 12, 2012, 09:15 »
You can see the distribution of total files to each agency if you go to Analytics then SEO. You will find a graph that shows one upload and then the number of files sent to each of your agencies.
I use Lightburner all the time - it is a great service for me, and is a lot quicker than uploading via FTP to 20+ agencies
Steve
PS - without being too blatant, I have a chapter on Lightburner in my new book "Getting started in stock!!"
1288
« on: March 09, 2012, 08:50 »
Thanks lisafx!
In no way does my book glamorize this business (unlike a few of the glossy ones on Amazon!) I just explain how to do it, how to make yourself efficient, and cover things that people can find out if they read forums long enough (like faving on 123RF), but they are missing income if they don't do it. I learned a lot on this forum in particular, but it can be a slow and painful process.
Steve
1289
« on: March 08, 2012, 17:14 »
Thanks tab62 - edition 2 is in your inbox. I am making good on my promise to give buyers the future updates at no cost.
Steve
1290
« on: March 08, 2012, 11:30 »
It certainly makes a big difference in my ordinary google searches (not the image variety).
Steve
1291
« on: March 07, 2012, 20:58 »
This has spoilt my day. I used to think that I was doing really well with my blog as I would appear on the first page of results for search terms like "sell your photos." Now I know that it was all just smoke and mirrors. When I log out of Gmail and then do the search for those words in Google, my blog appears for the first time on page 7!
Bummer...
Steve
PS - maybe we should fight back by all setting up a link to each others blogs and websites. If we created a post where we put the title and link of the various sites, we could add that to our own blogs.
1292
« on: March 07, 2012, 20:25 »
Vita
I have 1564 images on Pixmac as a result of uploads to DepositPhoto and I have had 9 sales in the past year. Is there an advantage to directly uploading my images to your site, and how do I tell which of my 3000+ images you don't have online?
What do you recommend for photographers who have a partial collection on your site through another agency?
Steve
1293
« on: March 07, 2012, 16:47 »
About 12 months ago, I published my first edition of the eBook - Getting Started in Stock Photography, available from my website and from Amazon. It has proved popular with people looking to get into Stock Photography, and I've formed some great relationships with some of my readers as a result. This last 12 months have been pretty good for me in the stock world, almost doubling my earnings from $600 a month to $1100. In that time, I've started uploading to a broader set of agencies, probably taken a wider range of images, moved into editorial shots, and, finally, learned a lot about how to get your images in front of buyers with accurate keywording and descriptions. I finally had some time to commit this learning to words, and am very pleased to announce that Edition 2 of the book is now available for sale: http://www.backyardsilver.com/stock_photography_ebook/There are obviously many successful stock photographers on this site and I don't expect it to be of much interest to them, but if you are a beginner, supplement the learning that you get from this forum with an easy to read "how to" guidebook to stock photography. Steve
1294
« on: March 01, 2012, 18:12 »
how do you calculate iS earnings? Are we supposed to include TS earnings from PP and from StockXpert? Aren't those earnings from previous month? WHERE do you pull those figures from? You are absolutely correct - the way I get round it is to make an estimate (low balling it a bit) of what the PP earnings are going to be in February. I then report that. In my internal system I eventually correct that estimate by inserting the correct earnings amount when it finally becomes available, and so my graphs are automatically corrected at that stage. Steve
1295
« on: February 29, 2012, 22:50 »
Wow - do I get to start this month! My February was pretty good, but not great. I had a great start with 3 enhanced licenses on Shutterstock in the first week, but that was it for the month. It maintained its average of about one Enhanced for 200 downloads - I had 3 for 700 overall downloads in the month. iStock was pretty good though, with one ED in the last week. Seems like months since I had one of those. Here are the graphs - more details as normal on my blog:   Steve
1296
« on: February 29, 2012, 10:13 »
LOL - my user name and password still work and I have 31 images online, with a grand total of earnings of, wait for it, $0.00
Steve
1297
« on: February 29, 2012, 10:12 »
I had forgotten that I had even tried this site! I wonder if I have some juicy sales commission waiting for collection??
Steve
1298
« on: February 29, 2012, 10:10 »
I think Fotolia have decided they have enough of certain types of image - I uploaded about 180 shots from a trip to Hawaii and I think about 150 were rejected. Shutterstock was the reverse. I just upload and ignore - why get worked up about what different sites want and like?
Steve
1299
« on: February 27, 2012, 17:20 »
I would agree - it is definitely not either or - it is as many as you can comfortably support! I currently upload to about 20 sites, and it is surprising how the income can grow with occasional sales at these smaller agencies. $40 here and there add up month by month. Steve Of course, you could buy my eBook on getting started in stock to save yourself a lot of time and hassle... 
1300
« on: February 27, 2012, 13:20 »
Known issues:
- I am still unable to make FTP upload working for Veer. Don't know what's the reason, but it does not work even with FileZilla. If you have any useful information about this issue - feel free to send it to me I have Veer working in Filezilla. It is set up to Explict FTP over TLS as the encryption method Steve
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