Quote from: Vonkara on March 03, 2010, 16:19
[The problem to me is the portfolio with more than 1000 unsellable images, not the ones with small sellable portfolio... Seriously

I agree.  What will choke microstock to death are the portfolios in which the contributor submits 100 shots from every photo shoot... models at slightly different angles... with the reasoning that "you just don't know what angle the buyer wants the model to be facing."

I'm also a microstock buyer, and it's a frustrating experience having to cull through so many nearly identical images to get to one I want.

Just went to check my BigStock earnings and was faced with a totally new looking site.

But it's so bare-bones my immediate thought was it's been hijacked by a hacker looking to capture our passwords.

I'm not going to log in until I'm convinced it's the real deal.

UPDATE/EDIT:  After scoping it out and feeling confident it was real, I logged in.  Not sure what I think yet.  I still think it's so spare that it almost doesn't look legit.  I  do prefer a "less is more" style, but even the fonts are plain and uninspired.  If I didn't know the site, my first thought would be that it can't be one of the big players.

To luissantos84 and any other "newbies" getting discouraged by this thread.

I consider myself a newbie, just over a year in microstock and under 1,000 images, and yet I'm almost at the revenue level that macrosaur said he'd take me seriously.  You can gain, you can grow.  I started from scratch, but did my homework to figure out what sells, and I'm exceeding the goals I set for myself.  Don't worry about those who want to close the door on you.  Just prove yourself.  If you have the skills, a good work ethic, and the marketing know-how to figure out a niche you can fill, you'll succeed.

On the other hand, you'll notice I don't share links to my ports.  I agree with all the comments that say it's crazy to give your competition the bullet to put in your head.  I prefer to help by encouragement.

It's been a while since we've discussed the recent pricing and commission changes at Dreamstime.  There was a lot of concern that contributors would end up losing out.  I think enough time has passed to be able to see how it affected us.  

I don't normally click on my Statistics button in the Dreamstime management area, but something possessed me to do so today, and I was surprised by what I saw.  My monthly sales line was on a pretty steady upward climb until the end of 09, when it took a dip then regained upward momentum but not as steep as before.  But at the same time, my revenue line shot up.  Now the two lines have a huge gap between them, with revenue sharply over sales, whereas they used to be right on top of each other.  This suggests to me that the pricing changes may have squeezed my sales but at the same time put more money in my pocket.

How have the changes impacted you?

Long live Canstock!

For me, CanStockPhoto is actually in the Big 6... moving into number 6 since StockXpert went away.  I'm doing around $1-5 every day at CanStockPhoto, plus approx 3-4 times per month I get one of those Fotosearch commissions of approx $20 or $30. 

Since I started in microstock, CanStockPhoto has generated 2.46% of my revenue, while 123RF has generated 2.35%... bringing up the (far) rear is CRE at 0.75% and VEER at 0.58%.

I just saw a $.15 commission in Dreamstime.  Previously I thought the $.18 commissions I see once in a while in iStock were the lowest out there, but this one took the prize.  The Dreamstime $.15 was listed as "1 Credit (old)."  (I've actually been happy with my Dreamstime sales lately... I have a lot of "green" and "blue" level images now that land some pretty nice commissions... making this $.15 figure all the more shocking when I saw it.)

So is $.15 the lowest commission currently out there?  Anyone seen worse?

Quote from: gostwyck on February 25, 2010, 15:03
I just had a sandwich for lunch.

Dear Food Submitter,

We regret to inform you that the submitted food item has been rejected for inclusion in the digestive system for the reasons indicated below.  Please note that this is not a comment on your skills as a food preparer or eater, but simply a reflection that our standards have increased significantly due to the volume of food we have been processing.

+ Composition of food could be improved.
+ Food is grainy and/or blurry.
+ Poor lighting.
+ Not suitable for digestion.

Thank you, and we look forward to future food submissions.
iStomach

I vote for more stats.  I track my own stats every way imaginable to help make sure I'm on goal and identify areas where I'm doing something really right or really wrong.

I use this site to benchmark my progress against others to see if I'm on the right course.  I like the rankings that used to be running, and saw them as another motivator to keep me uploading.

Quote from: microstockphoto.co.uk on February 23, 2010, 16:06
I'm afraid they just recorded past sales all the same day

Doesn't seem like anyone is reporting big sales today, so the theory that a bug in Veer's system had been holding up reporting on our sales and spit them all out in one day (yesterday) seems to be looking more true by the minute.  Unless someone else is seeing a big spike today?  (  .... crickets.... chirp.... )

I want to attack this question from a different angle.

Does microstock encourage or discourage lower design standards among contributors?

And how will this trend impact the quality of available artwork in the long run?

I believe that every image uploaded falls into one of two categories, which I'll call "commodity" images (those which offer nothing truly unique and are similar in subject and style to countless thousands of other images) and "unique" images.  And based on which type of image you primarily upload, you're either a "commodity" or "unique" contributor.

Microstock punishes the commodity contributor and rewards the unique contributor.  In theory, this encourages photographers and illustrators to think outside the box, knowing that if they simply upload more of the same, their work will be commoditized, and the only way it will sell is if it catches a buyer's eye at the top of the "most recently uploaded" search results.

Long story short, microstock encourages creativity among its contributors and could in the long run be ushering in a new era of outside the box thinking. 

Call me Mr. Glass Half-Full

OK, I have more than 800 photos uploaded and sitting in the Unfinished area.

Anyone know of a shortcut for submitting them in bulk from the Unfinished area, or do you have to edit each one, assign categories, and submit individually?  Each one is taking about 20 seconds.  That's about two and a half hours of work to get to 500 images.  I just don't know if I want the free $100 that badly.

I also had a sales spike yesterday... five sales for a total of $8.75.  Let's hope whatever they're doing, they continue it... for many of us to see a significant rise in sales in one day, my guess is they did some kind of huge email push to a list of designers.  Maybe a special offer on credits... buy one get one, 50% off, etc.

Anyone else see sales plummet after the technical issues that started last Friday?  Each day since the trouble began, my numbers show me down between 50 and 90 percent from previous weeks.  And I'm not saying down from $1 to $.50, which is statistically insignificant... I'm talking down from $30 to $10 a day, or in the worst case the previous two Sundays were in the $8 range and this past Sunday -- in the middle of the reporting problems -- I had one commission for a total of $.35.  My sales there were on a good roll for the past few months, and now they're suddenly in the toilet.  Could buyers have been experiencing technical issues when attempting to buy?

It's great to hear anecdotes of some big sales at Veer, but my experience so far discourages me from continuing to upload there.  I've done a grand total of $130 since late July.  The peak was right around August 1 to 10, and the overall trend has been a downward slope, with a few flukey days of significant sales sprinkled in.  I refuse to upload any more until I see a noticeable uptick in the sales trend, or until I hear that their reviewers have regained their senses.  It was getting pretty offensive.  One day a certain type of image would be accepted, and the next day an image in the same style or subject matter would be rejected as not commercial or poor quality.  Or a reviewer would reject an entire batch of diverse images as being too similar. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Here's a cool find story...

I'm at a trade show for my "day job."  We have a booth and I'm typically chained to it, pushing my products.  I got a chance to walk around, and a sales sheet catches my eye.  They're using one of my images as the core piece of design on the fact sheet.  I got excited, grabbed a bunch and kept walking.  Then I realized that the company advertised on the piece is a competitor.  Argh.  Oh well, still a thrilling moment.  (Cooler yet, I remember one year ago walking the floor at this show, thinking that it would be cool to come back in a year after my microstock portfolio grows and see my images in use.  It came true... just too bad that it's my competition using them!)

This has been addressed in the Dreamstime forum.  An administrator wrote:

"Yes the problem related with the stats server is still on and we are working to fix it.
There is nothing wrong with the sales, only the server that is displaying your stats pages is not synchronized. We expect that you will see the last 3 days sales on Monday evening.
Sorry for the inconvenience."

Feb sales started out strong (avg 5 downloads each day), but yesterday and today = 0 downloads.  Still, if I take the total for Feb 1 thru 10 and multiply it by 2.8 (28 days in Feb) I get a figure that will be my 2nd or 3rd best month on 123RF.

It's human nature....

Many of us have become too comfortable with still images.  We have our processes down pat and want to just keep doing what we know for the foreseeable future.  There's a fear of the unknown when it comes to video, which leads to a dismissing of video as something that won't (we hope) catch on.

But the writing is on the wall.  In the tech community, the big buzz around the iPad is that it will usher in a new world of opportunities for content creators.  Tomorrow's media devices and formats will explode today's notions of how we consume information and entertainment.  It's common sense that there will always be a need for still images, but that's not where the growth will be.  The smartest of us have seen this revolution coming and stuck our toes into the video pool already (though I'm not in that group... yet).

Quote from: sharply_done on February 10, 2010, 05:59
I'm confused by "race to the bottom" - I'm assuming you mean a downward trend in RPDL, and I'm not seeing that at all. I've been doing this for three years, and prices have gone nowhere but consistently and steadily up.

In the "micro" view, I too have seen an increase in my RPI, suggesting that prices for my images are holding steady or even rising.

But I'm talking about the "macro" view... the big picture down the road.  Consider the current big discussions on this forum... ThinkStock's .25 commission plan, Fotolia's pricing direction, etc.  The big sites will be under more and more pressure to cut prices, and our commissions along with them.  Those pricing pressures, plus a rapidly growing base of contributors in countries like India and China who will be happy to work for tiny commissions, will tip the supply/demand equation so far that we may see commissions reduced to pennies.  It's even conceivable that images will be available free in a new microstock model that derives revenue from ad placements on the download pages.  In five years, we may look back at $.25 commissions as the lucrative days of microstock. 

I don't mean to be such a pessimist, but this is what is happening to every industry today, and there's no reason to think microstock will be immune.  In fact, this scenario has already begun playing out.

Quote from: sharply_done on February 10, 2010, 06:50
I disagree about video - I think it's a trendy fad that will quietly go away sooner rather than later. Those investing time and money into it are going to be very disappointed.

?!?!?!?!?!?

If you mean that microstock video is a fad and perhaps a flawed model in some way, that's a reasonable thing to debate.

But the presence of video in our everyday lives is in no way a fad, and we will certainly see more and more video on websites and in emerging media such as books and magazines reformatted for devices like the iPad and Kindle (future video capable versions of it anyway).  These and other expanding markets for video will create greater demand, and that demand will need to be filled, if not by microstock video, then by another model that will surely emerge.  Today's forward-thinking microstock contributors will be watching for that model and hopefully the first to profit from it.

Quote from: WarrenPrice on February 10, 2010, 04:38
...I think Video is the way to go in microstock.

I think you might be right.  With magazines and newspapers going the way of the dodo, we'll be relying on electronic media more and more.  And in the near future, instead of seeing still images alongside articles on the Internet, all those images could be animated to better illustrate the points in the article.  We're already heading in this direction... the new version of HTML (HTML-5) will make it easier than ever to embed video in a page, no troublesome plug-ins (Flash) required.   Hmmm... Warren, I think you just flipped a switch inside my head... for a while, I've been thinking I need to explore video, but now I'm convinced it's where I'll need to focus my efforts very soon.

Lately I've been thinking about not just how much I can grow my microstock revenues in the short term, but also about whether I can count on it in the long term.

When I started nearly a year and a half ago, I set short term and long term goals for myself.  I recently hit my short term goal, and if my rate of growth holds steady, I could hit the long term goal (which involves making microstock my main source of income) in a few years.

But with all the recent changes in the industry, I'm wondering how realistic it is to think that a microstock income could last me well into my golden years (another 20 or 30 years).  Of course evolution will be constant, and this market may look completely different in just a year or two.  But I also strongly believe that communication will only become more and more visual, and images will be relied upon more than ever to convey ideas.  Therefore good imagery will always be needed, and thus, valuable. 

So here's my prediction:  Globalization and the race to the bottom will make our returns become smaller and smaller, but if the rewards of doing this work become so insignificant that talented artists (or even the copycats) can't justify the effort, then the supply and demand equation will level out making it worthwhile at least for those who can do unique, quality work in volume.  Today, of course, we all aim to do "good, quality work in volume," but I think the future will redefine the meaning of that (think 5x or 10x what it takes today to make a decent microstock income).

What do you think?  Does microstock have a decent lifespan in front of it, and if not, what might replace it?

Quote from: packerguy on February 08, 2010, 20:31
PD,

Wasn't the US east coast just hit by a big snow storm?  Maybe people cannot get to work.

I know the Washington DC area was hit pretty hard a few days ago, but I think by and large people are at work today.

Oh well, Mondays are typically my worst weekday, so maybe it's just that.

You may be right.  

For me, today has been a healthy day on StockXpert, but I noticed a surge starting around Jan 18 or so, and today has been similar to all the weekdays since then, likely to end up my #3 or #4 site for the day, as they've been for about a month.  I sure am going to miss them.  Just hoping those sales go to another site where my portion won't be too drastically reduced.

I only wish I was having a good day on all the other sites today... this is shaping up to be my worst Monday in the past few months (overall sales could be down by about 50% from my recent Monday average).  Is it a holiday somewhere?

Quote from: Jonathan Ross on February 03, 2010, 23:55
That could be why there are no sales there this week as they move the collection over, just a guestimate ( fancy word for guess ).

I actually saw fantastic sales at StockXpert yesterday, almost all PPD sales.  Of course, they haven't moved my collection over yet, so maybe you get sales at StockXpert until they've actually moved your stuff to Think, and after that, it vanishes from StockXpert?  But the flurry of activity I'm still seeing at StockXpert is a good sign... buyers are still there!  Once the lights are turned off, those buyers will be whisked off to iStock and/or Think and they'll hopefully just buy our stuff there. 

Also, in reading all the posts here, I was thinking that Think only offers sub sales, but the language on the StockXpert site says we get 20% on single image sales.  Maybe that will be a decent commission?  Haven't investigated the pricing yet.