You've got some great photos on Instagram. I'd put some of them on micro stock. Also, buyers generally want photos that have extra saturated colors. I ratchet up the saturation on everything I sell (except editorial). Unless you're going for a more somber mood deliberately, making the photo look like the best possible version of the place you're at is the thing to do. Obviously not every day has perfect sunlight or clouds, but you can make just about anything look better with simple photoshop effects.

Most of my images are landmarks and nature. I'm fairly casual; my portfolio is only about 300 images; I shoot stuff as I go places and upload it. Last year I probably had about 1,000 sales across five platforms, although I'll admit 40% of that is one image.

In case you're reading this on a mobile device -- it doesn't look like the change has happened there, but the desktop site is doing what it should be!

Somehow it got changed to Payoneer. I changed it back yesterday.

I told myself I'd see what the January sales looked like before leaving, but more than 10% of mine are now below $0.25, which is not okay. To others who left iStock, did you see any sales increase from the other microstocks afterward, or should I not expect to see a bump?

Question for those who are not on ESP yet (if ever) :
I need to delete 1 file, or deactivate it, or just make it unsearchable by taking away the keywords.
Is this in any way possible at the moment?
Another agency wants to sell the rights, and I can delete it from EVERY agency, except Istock.
Any one knows the trick to do this?

 You have to send them an email asking for them to remove it and telling them why. They removed the ability to do it yourself.

Anyone receive iStock or Pond5 yet?  I'm never sure if a form might be buried under a pile of paperwork or if it simply hasn't arrived. Or are they downloadable somewhere?

If you're on mobile, you should use their app. It's so much cleaner and easier to use.

I never actually checked it out before. I downloaded it. I really like it visually. I wish it had the world map that the website does, although I recognize that a map of where people are downloading stuff from doesn't really tell me much. However, it's completely missing an Image Insights page. I can individually click on each picture to find out how often it's been downloaded, but it doesn't have an overall Insights page.

Quote from: sinnlos on January 20, 2017, 11:19

...I just dont like to put so many keywords because if I have for example a fireplace video,
I just add "fireplace, chimney, fire,warm, burning, wood, flames"
I mean whats the point in putting 30or more keywords for this simple scene? The buyer will look after those words if he wants a fireplace.... not "romantic" or sth. Like that...

Buyers may not search the way you think all the time, so sticking to what's in your scene/footage is important, but - as an example - including living room, cozy, house, home, interior along with fireplace, mantel, mantelpiece, gas fire (or wood or whatever) may well help your files sell if the buyer looks for "cozy living room" not "warm fireplace".

Looking at Shutterstock's list of keywords used to find my sold files,  I see some files have house selling more than home and others the opposite - so I now always include both; for interior shots, sometimes room is more important than bedroom or living room, and so on.

Ditto Jo Ann. I've had photos sell before based on the oddest keywords. I also include common misspellings of words if possible and Latin names for plants and animals, which while arcane, has landed me one sale. I use xPiks, which will do keyword searches for you, and if there's a way for me to get close to 50, I go for it.

I have a handful of editorials, and it really depends on the photo. I second the message about time sensitive photos not having a lot of long term value, although that's just a gut feeling, as I haven't done a lot in the way of that. The editorial photos I have up are of buildings/locations where it would be impossible to remove all the logos or where doing so would end up removing the subject of the image (copyrighted building design, sigh). I'd rather have them as commercial, since they would have more value, but that's obviously not going to happen, and they do sell.

When in doubt, err on the side of submitting.

I recently got a $50 'Single and Other' sale. I've never had one for anything close to that before. Why would someone end up paying such a big amount that I would get that much? I'm not complaining! I'm just curious.

I do reverse image searches on my photos from time to time, but on two occasions I've seen my images truly "in the wild."  The first was on a news story that a friend of mine shared on Facebook. He shared it because of the news content, and had no idea that it was my photo at the top of the article. The second was an online humor-based website I read that used one of my images in a visual joke montage.

 I also have a sneaking suspicion a few of my images have ended up in 12 month wall  calendars, because I can't think of any other reason to buy them. Unfortunately, I don't spend a lot of time in calendar shops.

I don't think so. You can always get a rough idea by just multiplying the left-most digit in the width and height. If your image is a wonky size, that will only get you close, but if it's 6,000 x 4,000, you'll know it's 24 megapixels.