SALES? What sales?
I was on there for 7 months with nearly 2,000 images and zip, nada, nothing for sales.
It is also easy to delete your port there which I did.
Great easy site to upload to but that is all.

-Larry

Why did you take your images off?

A day job 

Lol, still Lol. That was a great answer.

I'm doing OK with editorial stuff.  It's true you can't really sell late breaking news type images with microstock.

I do well with travel editorials, landmarks, touristy things, parades, cultural events, sports and occasional politics.

Since you're in SE Asia, I suggest concentrating on the tourism thing.  Think like an American looking for "exotic" imagery for travel magazines and brochures.  So that means get photos of traditional cultural festivals, dancing, music, cultural landmarks, even silat.  Don't forget to use the natural beauty that many living in the area take for granted - such as beautiful tropical beaches and people enjoying the "resort" life.  Think of things that most Americans don't see.  Even simple fishermen on an outrigger canoe ('banka' in the Philippines gives a sense of place).

Yes, I need to concentrate more on the tourism thing, resort life etc. Not always what I enjoy shooting, but buyers buy the photos they need, I guess photographers have to shoot the photos they buy. Still, in photography if you are shooting the stuff ur not really into, it still ain't bad is it? You're still taking photos and having fun.

Interesting to read all your comments. I appreciate it. News editorial is what I like, I find it much more challenging to get good shots of this type of work. My best selling shots in microstock appear to be kids in their natural environments and sunsets, neither of which i find challenging. I regretfully left photography for many years, so now I'm out of touch. I only got back into it recently with the discovery of Microstock. I'm neither a newspaper photographer nor a freelancer. But I'm in Indonesia and the elections were on, so I had to send the images somewhere, rather than not sending them anywhere at all. However, despite me sending the images quickly to Dreamstime and sending them an email for priority review. It was almost 2 days before they went online. So yeah, the images were pretty redundant I guess. These were the legislative elections. The vote for the President will be in July.

However as Flemish Dreams says "The fact is that news from exotic places (like the Indonesian elections) doesn't sell in the US market. It only sells when it's relevant to the US/EU news." Yeah that might be true also. I've often read that most of the world's media is in the West, or even from the States, but don't quote me on this. Indonesian media is predominantly about local news, unless things are flaring up in the middle east, oh and Obama's dog gets a mention too. http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/04/12/obama-girls-name-their-new-puppy-039bo039.html
I am buoyed a little by Dreamstime accepting 4 of the images on the News page http://www.dreamstime.com/news-photos as their reviewers are pretty tough. It would feel a lot better though if the images were used for something. Anyway, I'll keep shooting and searching for different outlets.

For the last few weeks I've been shooting a lot of editorial stuff as there has been a lot going on in my area. The latest event being the Indonesian general elections. I realise that there are less businesses that can use editorial images, but there are still plenty of businesses worldwide with a need for them, well at least I would think so. I have put the images I have shot recently on Dreamstime, Bigstockphoto and Cutcaster and not a single sale. You can see some of the election images here and I've posed a few more questions in the post. Hope you might be able to answer a few of them. http://microstockposts.com/in-the-news/  

Edited:modified the url link

I'll let you all know how it goes...

So how is it going? Is it working out for you there or is it slow?

When you are relieved, you won't see anything sexual here. You will just see a vet examining a dog.

I just tend to close my eyes and dream.

Warning I don't remember all the rules at BigStock, but I think I wasn't able to delete some files manually and also edit the files keywords. Then I didn't took BigStock enough seriously to continue there.

Yeah u can't delete manually, but can make a request for deletion of images after they've been on 90 days, they've always obliged when i've requested. You can edit keywords though.

Warren 123rf is definitely a go, sales could be better, but I still get enough for the size of my portfolio. Uploading is by far the easiest. No categories is great. Be careful with keywords though as u can't manually change them.

Yeah auto categories aren't working anymore. Keywords came up though.

I had a couple of 30 cent subscription sales a few weeks ago. Nothing else though, but only have 40 images there. I've seen my images on sale at  fotosearch for $99. Kind of weird to see my microstock pictures on sale for that price.

I mistakenly uploaded this with a few others in editorial about a festival in Bali. Most of the others were rejected. This got in, but I should have sent it as an RF as there are no people or trademarks. I've sent it back twice as RF, both times rejected. It has 2 downloads and 229 views. I'm sure it would be downloaded more if it was RF. Never mind, the festival is coming up again soon and i'm still in Bali.


� Photographer: Komar | Agency: Dreamstime.com

I don't upload that much. My acceptance ratio has hovered around 40 to 50 percent the last few months. This month it is 28%, with nothing pending. Not going to upload til the end of the month I think. Really surprised this month with the rejections at DT. I upload to BigStock and 123rf as well and they've virtually accepted everything this month. I'm also curious to know how people with high volumes are doing at DT.

Microstock is a brilliant business plan. Here's how it works.

The sites make a big dealing about how it's tough to get accepted.  "Send us 10 of your very best images" and maybe we'll approve you. Pathetic wannabes - like myself - upload some highly polished jewels and are rewarded with an email saying "congratulations".  After a couple of weeks, we've made $2. 

On the other side of the equation, the 'subscription' model has people committed to buying images they don't need.  A few of your recently uploaded  photos, sitting on the "new upload" page, are grabbed by the subscribers and they feel like they're getting something.

Now the really brilliant part of the plan - the $100 payout minimum.  We do the math and realize that by the time we get to $100, we'll have been dead for 40 years - so we give up.  The stock site has now acquired our best photos for nothing, and even made a buck or two.

Many truths here, for sure there will be many images online that the photographer never got a cent for. So many give up before they get a pay out. The agencies are still smiling though.