Welcome back, Batman 

Quote from: oboy on May 21, 2009, 18:42They struggle to find high-quality, affordable images for their company brochures, Web sites, advertising and newsletters. Today, the struggle is over," explains Patrick Lor, President, PhotoXpress North America.

Today, the struggle is over for a good laugh, looking at the result of some test searches.
Like this one by the keyword "Chinese".

Quote from: whatalife on May 21, 2009, 13:34Oh okay, that's really interesting. My clients are all on PC and I have never had problems with my zip files being "PC compatible", nor heard of others who did. I mistakenly thought Winzip was a standard part of Windows that just automatically handles zip files, and I thought the very nature of zip compression was cross-platform.

Actually zip is cross-platform. I kept out of this discussion because I don't do illustrations, but it's very easy on a PC to zip within the Windows Explorer by selecting the files, then right-click and click zip. You just have to install the free Winzip from here (use evaluation).

Quote from: Peter on May 21, 2009, 10:07If may is bad in europe, howcome Fotolia is doing well, and they sell mostly to EU.

Perhaps they're infidels 

Don't forget that May is a very bad month in Europe. Many people take trips in the extended weekends of May 1-3 (Labor Day), Ascension (today May 21 - 24), Pentecost (May 29 - June 1). Expect very bad sales from today on till next tuesday.

Quote from: melastmohican on May 21, 2009, 00:17Any suggestions?

Use a tripod.

Quote from: click_click on May 21, 2009, 02:31I think there are quite a bunch of people on this forum who beg to differ when it comes to defining "quality" and not to speak of "collection"...

Mr. Locke is right. I did video for a travel agency a while after college. For non-steady shots like travelings, we had a shoulder mount with oil-damped head that weighed much more than the camera. Handheld video is snapshottish. The rolling shutter is a very serious issue on the first generation video-too DSLRs. On waterfalls it would pose no problem. The 5D is already better than the D90 but still not good enough for moving horizontal edges.

Quote from: shutterdrop on May 20, 2009, 13:31He was asked to stop taking photos and refused. Mistake #1! When the police arrived he refused to provide identification. Mistake #2!  That is what put him jail.

Doing "risky" photography often, I can only agree. Look totally stupid and ignorant, quickly survey the terrain, be fast to take all your shots, then revert to you stupid role again. Never object, always comply, act ignorant, and make sure you keep the bait  (your CSF card)

I have a nice collection of "news" shots here, but I play the game always fair. If I feel there could be a security breach or sensitive issue, I always ask the advice of the brass afterwards. On the spot, just comply. FYI, I'm doing some war photography at the moment. Same rules as for stock apply. It's a market and the medium is the message.

Quote from: YadaYadaYada on May 19, 2009, 20:20Fine if you keep a desk drawer full of real money around to use as props and hope you don't lose any during the shoot.

Those are like food shots. Props consumed right after the shoot 

Quote from: MichaelJay on May 20, 2009, 10:00Exactly what I thought when I see 10.000+ images on Dreamstime of which less than 2% had 10 or more sales. There are certainly quite a few brillant images among them. Why not drop the other 98% and double the amount of work spent on the rest...

The problem is a bit you never know in advance what those 2% will be. I have some weird (in my opinion) good sellers and some very bad sellers that I thought would make it to the top. And the weirdest is they are largely different at different sites. So how to chose? I don't have a clue.

Quote from: Perseus on May 19, 2009, 14:11i  love that idea of a converted greenhouse.

Might work in Denmark but don't try that in the tropics (200m from the sea, air humidity 95%, air temp 34C). Washed out make-up, droplets of sweat on faces, wet rings under arms in shirts, tired models, etc..
I had to move all my stuff in a tiny closed room with a 2HP airco. 

Quote from: Peter on May 20, 2009, 13:05Since change my sales have dropped dramaticaly too. I used to have 10-20$ per day, now when I have 3$ it is "good" day.

I had a peak in March-April when they briefly changed the default search to 'downloads'. It all died away now. (part of the peak last April comes from EL). Port size N=862.

Quote from: greengal on May 19, 2009, 12:37You can try Lookstat. Its free right now and looks  great.

Lookstat was great till SS blocked it. With only DT on it (and IS, but that's not important to me) I can as well check DT directly. It also remains to be seen how long DT will tolerate Lookstat.
What's really needed is a desktop-based client that is under control of the contributor and that is able (1) track the same image on different sites (what Lookstat did) and (2) to group images from the same shoot in order to calculate YPS (yield per shoot).

Unless the sites offer APIs, the web-based applications that crawl the HTML and log in from a centralized IP are always vulnerable to a boycott from the sites. Rahul has been very silent lately...

Quote from: lisafx on May 19, 2009, 17:25Thanks for the update Tim.  Good news on streamlining the upload process.

Which made you the top Weekly Featured Photographer on BigStock 

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Quote from: Suljo on May 20, 2009, 03:25Tomorow I will chill out and see what the damage make to me........

Try Buddhism. It really helps in controlling rants and against Tourette behavior. 

Quote from: Dawn Donahue on May 20, 2009, 01:15Most of the downloads are from $1 credits; therefore, you are getting 50% commission for almost every download.

Just checked my latest 30 sales at BigStock: 20 of them are 1$. That makes the 0.50$ sales (with 50%) a minority of 33%.
Hence, the RPD on BigStock was around 0.83$, roughly half of the 1.67$ with competitor DT last April.
There is also the continuing mystery surrounding the origin of sales on affiliate sites, which are not indicated as such.

My best sellers are nature and editorial, despite my involvement with models. Nature has a lower RPI in general, but it can't be copied easily by the volume studio shooters. Those images have a very long shelf life on stock. Some of my best sellers over sites since 2005/2006:

I always use real money.  It looks err... real.

Quote from: click_click on May 19, 2009, 19:35I don't want to see a "discussion" with people claiming to know better without having sold exclusive usage rights before.
Too many trolls here that don't contribute anything constructive.
Nothing personal.

Find a dating site then. This is a forum.
Nothing personal.

Quote from: Lizard on May 18, 2009, 21:52With or without the tripod avoid Etihad Airways , they just made me travel 1000 km for nothing , didn't sent my documents on time , I didn't get my visa approved
they wanted to make me pay about half of the ticket price more  to cancel the flight for a day or two , and they don't want to refund my money.

Ah sorry, I forgot to mention, I took Etihad for the first time last month. What a mess. They objected I had no visa for the Philippines in Brussels but I just buy the Visa on arrivals and that works fine and cheaper. No use explaining them that on my previous 11 flights or so with Gulf, I had no problem at all with visa. They made me lose two hours at the airport and I lost the time to buy a Canon D5-II or an HD video tax-free. Never Etihad again. I bet they are running an undercover action giving kickbacks to travel agents, since my usual travel agent pushed them through my throat.

Great! One competitor less 

Quote from: click_click on May 19, 2009, 18:43Please PM me.

Why? Can't we all know it? 

Quote from: gostwyck on May 19, 2009, 08:50When I first signed up to BigStock the commission level was 50%. Full stop. Period. I am not aware of any announcements or emails to contributors indicating that commissions were to be reduced and can now be as little as 20%. Judging by the surprised responses from senior contributors earlier in this thread, when I pointed out what the current payout levels actually are, I clearly wasn't alone.

Is that so? I'm on BigStock since August 2005 and I thought it still was 50%. How dit that happen? I didn't see any announcement like from DT when they made a major change (actually improvement) on their commission scheme. 

Quote from: sharpshot on May 19, 2009, 13:42I only had to log in once and haven't had to do it again.  I don't mind them doing this if it increases security.

This is not about security but about pestering people. If they were worried about security, they would have had an https long ago.