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Messages - maunger
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151
« on: September 09, 2007, 06:34 »
must be REALLY new  sorting their portfolio by downloads, i see a whopping 7 images that have 1 download... what the heck, i registered to reserve my nickname
152
« on: August 24, 2007, 05:42 »
Today only - ProStockMaster 1.3.2 - 40% off http://www.mupromo.com/(note i don't use this software but found the discount and thought some might be interested) ProStockMaster streamlines your stock photography workflow, allowing you to concentrate on what you really love to do: create your images. ProStockMaster saves your time and frees your hands for your camera. While you are shooting, the application will upload your images to selected stock photography sites.
153
« on: August 04, 2007, 08:09 »
I started a site some time ago where i was keeping all the links to new sites posted here and that i found. It is a Wiki, so you can edit and add to it if you want... and there's links to other websites/photog info etc. http://sanibel.gotdns.com/~wikiuser/microPhotoWiki/index.php/MicroStockSites#Micropaymentyes it has some of my referrals in it -- please don't change those. Edit: our ISP was down this morning - but we're back up now-- sorry for those of you who got an error
154
« on: August 04, 2007, 07:31 »
look in these areas (see notes)    Hope that helps * captures done with Skitch on the mac - really cool tool - i have 2 invites to beta if anyone wants one. Mitch
155
« on: August 02, 2007, 06:54 »
It's not often you get a rejection that you can be happy about.
Well, if you're looking for wonderful rejections, join LuckyOliver! They give all kinds of advise and support on image reviews. disclaimer: yes there's a referral link in that... yes, i'm the forum moderator on LO so i'm slightly biased - but, you honestly won't find better reviews in my experience.
156
« on: July 28, 2007, 06:32 »
We are talking about stock right? Happy cheering people, concepts that sell. I bet someone can make a good stock photo of the concept of 'living with breast cancer' but this certainly isn't one.
I hope you're kidding. all sorts of photos are needed out there in the world... i sell photos of leaves in gutters - people need photos of leaves in gutters! They aren't "happy cheering people" but they do sell so someone must need them. Stock isn't just about happy stuff.
157
« on: July 26, 2007, 06:40 »
Five years ago no-one had heard of microstock; istock entered the market and had a new concept to sell to millions of potential design and image buying customers. They now have 2 million of them on their books. SS, DT and FT followed closely on their heels and have around another million customers perhaps.
Sorry - disagree totally there are millions upon millions of customers that don't even know about the opportunity yet. sort of like telling new car companies not to try - heck there are already 6-7 huge names out there in the biz, why start up? Yet they do it all the time. sorry but your logic is all wrong. Like others have said, i'm not giving my assets away... i'm selling them and i'm trying to sell them to as many people as possible.
158
« on: July 19, 2007, 16:26 »
Leaf, I agree whole heartedly. Spamming leads the buyer down all kinds of paths til he gives up. Why not limit the key words to the catagories, max maybe 12 keywords?
My preference is to not limit the number of words -- i can spam an image with just 5 words if thats what the limit were... "nude, sexy," etc. limiting the number of words won't solve the problem if you ask me.
159
« on: July 11, 2007, 04:37 »
i use a monopod often - i have the quickrelease head shown up above too - i would pick it over just screwing the camera to the monopod simply for the ability of the quickrelease... i use that often - when i want the camera off the monopod, i want it now! I don't want to fool with unscrewing and re-screwing etc.
160
« on: July 10, 2007, 06:39 »
Here's a link for some inspiration:
Wedding Photojournalist Association
http://www.wpja.com/for_the_photographer/
great link. Those images in the competition were really great and inspiring to look at.
Most interesting! And notice that 95% of the winners are candids - very very few posed portraits
161
« on: July 08, 2007, 07:35 »
well - IS continues to amaze me the new category system... thought i'd try it for a search - so i did this: Search Results : People > Number of People > Group Of People > Clique 80% of the shots are computer mice or keyboards - "Click" maybe that's why my sales are down 60% from my high there 4 months ago.
162
« on: July 07, 2007, 05:55 »
last i checked, IS web upload was not properly reading my IPTC data (i input via Aperture on the mac)... it would get the keywords but not the title.
the Aperture upload tool will not read the title either. I wrote the author and he said that the IS team told him to use different fields for the title etc than all the other stock sites are using. I think it is a big mistake but it seems like i'm the only one who complained. To me it was just one more example of how difficult they make it for their suppliers to upload to them.
163
« on: July 07, 2007, 05:49 »
i just did my first wedding for a good friend. Nerve racking! Test shooting is the best idea - i did the same - taught me many things about the lighting in the park on that day and time. Mine was at 6pm and it turned out to be overcast... good lighting but a bit dark... most of the time i used my fastest lens F1.8. I covered my fanny by taking most shots without flash, but i also always tried to remember to use the onboard flash just as a precaution... turns out most of those shots are the ones i'm using as best... they provided the good fill lighting even from further away and gave a little sparkle to their eyes. i also used my monopod for stability (i think i'm not as steady with the hands as i used to be)... i also think that helped compared to the test shots i did the week before... more of them were in good focus. also, don't just rely on ISO 100 like we try to do for stock - go to ISO 400 or even 800 if you have to to get good shutter speed for focus... there might be a tiny bit of noise, but in this case focus is more important and the customer won't care... they'd rather just see clear faces. I think i prefer the candid shots, but if i were you for most of it i'd stay out of that 200-300 range. Get as close as you need to get good faces - people want to see the faces! good luck!
164
« on: June 27, 2007, 20:34 »
wow bryan - interesting idea... i've not gotten into twitter, but it is interesting to see what's up. Keeping one step ahead of the competition - great job!
165
« on: June 25, 2007, 19:25 »
seems to me they need to beef up their watermarking - anyone can come along and get fairly large images for nothing and very little editing (other than cropping out the top of the image).
166
« on: June 25, 2007, 10:26 »
i'm surprised nobody's commented on that photo on the front page... is it me or is the white balance way off? The girl is cute, but i'd not have picked that image for my front page (and it doesn't seem to rotate).
167
« on: June 21, 2007, 17:30 »
i don't see categories in the search - are they required on upload?
do they have FTP?
i searched the FAQ and didn't find answers... thanks for any info
certainly doesn't look like they have many images - image number 4888 was just posted
168
« on: June 21, 2007, 07:40 »
well - i'll be darned - i had no clue there were such differences in the previews... learn something new every day! hopefully it isn't happening to the actual images... right? Bryan, here's a set of blue images for ya to compare: http://homepage.mac.com/maunger/images/stockSiteColorDiffs.jpg
169
« on: June 18, 2007, 19:02 »
Boy....after posting on this thread last week and wondering if I'd make the 100 DL's for the free sideshow.......sales have gone wild. I blew by the 100DL Saturday and got another 10 DL's on Sunday...So I time to pick out the images for the sideshow.
Tom
Congrats tom! I'm soooo jealous! Mitch
170
« on: June 15, 2007, 05:19 »
That's wonderful news and i certainly appreciate the input. FYI, i've taken the opportunity to post that info on the LO forums as well... i think we need to have this info over there as well
171
« on: June 07, 2007, 04:48 »
oh yea - down from 8000 categories to 177... now, if they'd only get rid of categories all together!
172
« on: May 06, 2007, 06:19 »
I've had the same problem as well. I notice someone said they were on a mac, i am too - is it only macs?
173
« on: April 23, 2007, 05:01 »
The difference about google adwords is, if you buy an add spot - your link isn't taken out of the regular search results. Do a search for shutterstock for example in google. Shutterstock comes up in the google adwords (in the featured section no less) as well as coming up in the regular search results.
so the difference is.
With google adwords your link stays in the search results.
with lukcy oliver your image is taken out of the regular search results.
i know i have said this before, but since this is the point of this post I will say it again
I think it would be very nice to have the image in both areas. The sideshow area and regular search results.
I'm really just exploring this issue with the rest of y'all so please don't think i'm trying to argue about this... it is all new and an interesting concept so i'm trying to understand how it will work out as well. Good discussion. I've thought of that Leaf, but shutterstock doesn't put in their ad in google's adwords to catch those people who put in the search term of 'shutterstock' - the put in their ad with a ton of different search terms hoping to get those people who are searching for something other than their name where google won't be putting their site at the top of the first page of the list of results. The point of adwords is to get your site into searches and get your site traffic in places where it normally wouldn't be seen... and that's part of the point of sideshow, but the sideshow also includes special options for pricing (which adwords doesn't have). I agree that using adwords to get your site noticed doesn't remove you from the search results, but i think that in this case, we're talking about getting your site noticed when the search results may be in the hundreds of thousands or millions and the odds are your site isn't gonna be in the top 30. Adwords also works a bit differently than the sideshow in that you get to specify search terms that may not be 100% match to what you're trying to sell. Whereas the sideshow doesn't really let you pick the search terms. I was more thinking of adwords for its precedence of putting special results on the right side of the page which is what the sideshow is doing. So i'm still not thinking that images should be appearing in both spaces on LO (but i'm trying to think of places where it would make sense - i'm not closed on this idea
174
« on: April 23, 2007, 04:39 »
For example, an image i have that is in the first 40 on the best match search on IS gathers almost daily sales. Placement means a lot!
Wouldn't you want your images to appear at the begining of a search on LO if it isn't already?
I think i'd pay a token for that.
I would defiantly pay a token for that if it meant being on the first page, however if there are 100, or 500 side show images for a certain keyword term (and there will be in the future if people place 50% of the portfolio in the sideshow), and only 8 are shown on the first page - it would almost be better to take your chances with the regular search.
or take this example.
in a few years a keyword term YYY has 500 search results. People like the sideshow feature and many put 50% of their images in the sideshow - there is now 200 of the images in the YYY search in the sideshow.
-of the sideshow images only 8 are shown but they are apparently shown is random order and sorted every time, so any given image would be shown in 1 out of every 25 searches. If you have an image in the main search that comes up in page 1 it is shown 25 out of 25 searches.... the side show would NOT be the best option. Lucky oliver is down right now so i don't know how many images it shows on a page but maybe 50 - that means the image in our example has a 1/10 chance of getting on the first page with the regular search.
I think in the end, the sideshow would only be worth it for images that are stuck at the bottom of the search results and are neglected.
As I've said before, it is going to take some analysis to figure out whether an image should be in the sideshow. Right now, we're assuming that if someone is able to put 25% of their portfolio in, then they'll put 25% in - maybe not everyone will opt to do that. Same with 50%. If you're looking at placement issues, then it may not make any sense to put some images in. In the 'lady' example, someone with a portfolio that is 50% images with the sticky word 'lady' would be shooting themselves in the foot for putting a bunch of 'lady' images in the sideshow. But that is just one sticky word out of maybe 30 or so. Suppose those images also have another sticky word that isn't so crowded, in that case it might help get more placement. My point is that maybe it isn't just a one sticky word issue. The 'lady' and 'dog' searches are examples of common words that get lots of sideshow images right now... but look at the thousands of other sticky words that show zero sideshow images. Don't forget that also Bryan recently stated that the majority of searches done on LO are for more than 1 sticky word (if i recall, he said that the average was 3?). And lastly, lets not forget that the sideshow has another feature that isn't just a placement issue. It is pricing. Maybe you want your images to earn more money - in which case putting them in the sideshow may out weigh the placement issue. The slideshow is something new and it may evolve and learning how and when to use it for your own images will certainly evolve as well.
175
« on: April 22, 2007, 20:13 »
Just went to do a search on what this "great feature" is about
a search on dog as what bryan mention and return 2000+ images
a search on keywords like business, family, woman, love etc and you get result of "a lot" of images
What this mean is even though you are in the "slideshow"
you are still competing with thousands of images.
On any site, you are competing with vast numbers of images. The goal of the sideshow is to help bring your images to the front of the search and to highlight them as special - hopefully either getting more exposure or more sales or higher profits for you. For example, an image i have that is in the first 40 on the best match search on IS gathers almost daily sales. Placement means a lot! Wouldn't you want your images to appear at the begining of a search on LO if it isn't already? I think i'd pay a token for that.
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