Quote from: Karimala on June 17, 2012, 15:18

What would be helpful is if the micros allowed phrasing, so I could add "kids food" as one word instead of "kids" and "food."  That way the Jello wouldn't show up when people are searching for children or goats.

Yes it would. It is problematic that some do and some don't. Istock has them, but often in a very weird way (once they've been mashed through its CA). SS seems to, but DT splits everything and list's it in alphabetical order. It also doesn't recognise anything with an apostrophe in it, splitting it into two "words" and I think SS does the same. Alamy doesn't have an automatic singular/plural condensation, I still haven't worked out which micros do or don't.

The only rational way to upload to multiple sites is to keyword and then send identical files all over, so the fact that they read keywords differently is a significant issue.

That's what I do.  No way am I keywording for each individual agency.  I make sure the first seven keywords are the most important (Fotolia, ease of copy/paste at Alamy), and then I include every spelling/hyphenation/apostrophe/plural variation I can think up to ensure my images are found in the worst search engines.  I also make sure to add different meanings for the same word: restaurant, cafe, bistro, diner, eatery...vintage, antique, retro, old, fashioned, old-fashioned, "old fashioned"...you get the idea.  Those 50 keywords add up quickly.   

Quote from: WarrenPrice on June 17, 2012, 10:29

Does anyone really expect a resolution to the constant bickering over keywords?

Hopefully we are not bickering. I'm just trying to explain the way the agencies tell us they want keywords done, which is less inventive than some people seem to think.

@ Karimala - if you notice, I said my portfolio is NOT perfect and that my older images are much worse than more recent ones but I haven't got time to go through them all. For a long time I have tried to stick to the rules as best as I can.

Why is everyone picking on me?  What did I do?  

Just kidding.  It's fine.  

I've just had some relevant keywords flagged, which I illustrated with photos in a following post.  That's all I was trying to say originally.  By no means am I an expert on keywording...too many differing opinions for anyone to be an expert.  The trick is understanding the various ways people search.  Some use only a handful of keywords, while others use a very precise description as their keywords, like "Middle" "aged" "Asian" "man" in his "40's" "wearing" a "casual" "blue" "linen" "suit" "holding" a "red" "fountain" "ink" "pen" with his "toes" "putting" or "inserting" it "inside" a "keyhole" or some crazy thing.  I know a few buyers like that.

Using my Jello photo as an example, someone might want an image of Jello with fruit, or specifically peaches and pears, inside.  Mine fits the bill.  FYI -- you can see the fruit through the Jello at larger sizes...kinda hard to see at the small size, because the Jello is fairly thick.  

What would be helpful is if the micros allowed phrasing, so I could add "kids food" as one word instead of "kids" and "food."  That way the Jello wouldn't show up when people are searching for children or goats.

Wow.  I just noticed that Art of Business Cards, Mostphotos and Red Bubble are each earning more than Fotolia for me this month!  Even the t-shirt printing company I only started submitting to in mid-April has earned more!    That's seriously pathetic.

I have just been and looked for one of my highest selling images using it's most relevant keyword.  It usually sold several times a day at FT and has about 2000 dls but I've just realized that I haven't seen it sell for ages.   On the dl search it comes in on the second page (20 a page),  but the relevant search where it used to be one of the first images I now can't even find it after going through about 10 pages.

Yep...same here.  My top seller at FT is a simple green fabric background.  It shows up as #2 in the DL search, then drops to #210 in the relevance search (photos only).  

What's worse than the crappy placement is that only 15-20 or so of the preceding images depict green fabric backgrounds or are fabric backgrounds with patterns containing green.  The rest are spools of thread with zero green or fabric, piles and piles of laundry, and every type of object and non-fabric background imaginable.  40+ don't even show any green...not even a smidgen (several are plain backgrounds of a completely different solid color: white, red, brown, blue...take your pick!).  Why would a buyer even stick around when literally 91-93% of the relevance search leading up to my top-performing image is littered with irrelevant images?  

Thank you!  I really didn't want to leave Veer.

"It's almost like Flickr got married to iStockphoto and they had a love child!" - Techcrunch

Yeah __ right!

It's more like some boy in his bedroom had the same idea as everyone else ... and probably didn't actually have a girlfriend to have a 'love child' with.

HA!     Thanks for the early morning belly laugh!

Mine reads zero...but that's only because I processed a batch of 50 over the weekend.     So...at least as of this past weekend, mine was still at 50.

Sorry guys, but I find it oddly comforting that your graphs look so much like mine.  God that's twisted, but I was seriously thinking that I had been fired - and I know I haven't said a thing bad to be punished somehow because I've always been a vocal supporter of DT.   So, this is what everyone else has been talking about.  Oh, my!

Hahaha!  I had the exact same reaction.   

I wasn't seeing the problems everyone else has been...until this month.  Crikey!  2,300 images and I only had 3 sales during the first 5 days, and none this past weekend.  That NEVER happens.  Here we are, nearly halfway through June, and my sales are 1/4th of January's sales (December and January tend to be my worst months)!  Sales have started to pick up again, but nearly all have been subscription sales or small sizes.      

FYI -- March was a unique BME for me.  Someone bought the largest size of my entire neon alphabet collection...24 images total.  Without those unusual sales, I would have ended up close to April's numbers.

"A clicked on urbancow, and looking at the pics, zooming in on some I could only say "how on earth do you get thru with junk like that? I bet my azz the guy is an inspector"."

Hey dribble, 'urbancow' has been around since the early days of the site.  Perhaps you were looking at very old contributions and couldn't figure that out?

Exactly!  Y'all should see the photos Jon Oringer used to start Shutterstock.  And Yuri Arcurs first photos when he just started.  Terrible, horrible, awful.     

Quote from: stormchaser on June 06, 2012, 14:59

Pin was using Skimlinks but publicly admitted to have stopped the practice. See the link from Feb 2012

http://marketingland.com/pinterest-skimlinks-might-try-ads-copyright-issues-not-significant-6213

They've probably found another sleazy scheme by now.

Good to know, thanks for the link.

You're right, they probably have found another way or will in future.  It wouldn't surprise me if they have a bunch of fake memberships registered that are 'pinning' using their own affiliate code or 're-pinning' to alter the link to replace code with their own.

Thanks for the article!     Pinterest is still removing affiliate links on my Zazzle and Skreend products, but it doesn't appear they are replacing them with their own anymore.

Mine still says 50 uploads.