December wasn't great for me - after a run of $500 months, I am back at $430 even after two $25 downloads from Pond5.

Stats:
Shutterstock: 40%
iStock:23%
Dreamstime: 11%
Pond5: 11%
123RF: 4%
Fotolia: 4%
BigStock: 2%

I've started posting a graph of earning each month on my blog - the biggest change this year has been the focus on getting more images on-line. I have probably gone from 400 to 1300 on Shutterstock as the year went by. http://www.backyardsilver.com

Steve

Thanks! I'm sure that part of the problem of overall low sales is the lack of appropriate advertising and linking to your products and so I have been trying to mention them in related blogs and web sites. I neglected to put a link to the calendar in the previous post - here is my blogged entry on the calendar to try to build some traction: http://www.backyardsilver.com/?p=246

On a different, but related topic of earning additional money, has anyone had success with Amazon affiliate program with their links to commercial products? On the same blog I did a review of the x-rite colorchecker and signed up to the Affiliate program: http://www.backyardsilver.com/?p=260. Is this worth putting time and energy into?

Steve

I like Canstock - the upload is easy, the rejections are fair and not very severe, they are quick to review new uploads, and, with about 1000 images on the site, I have earned $144 in 2010 - helped with a couple of full priced downloads from some of the partners. Last month was $9, which is fine for a very low maintenance site.

Steve

http://www.canstockphoto.com?r=32663

I've used PSM for a long time on an XP machine but have upgraded myself to a new PC with Windows 7. I installed PSM and got it working with my database, and I had normal success in uploading images to the various sites. Then I either upgraded Java or perhaps PSM (lost in my memory now), but I have had problems with it closing with no warning and no error messages part way through the second image. Before I start tearing my computer to pieces to try to find the cause, is anyone else having issues with PSM and Windows 7?

Their support has been great, but no solution so far - hence the widened search for potential problems.

Steve

This is slightly off the topic of stock sites, but is perhaps an interesting way to monetize some of our images. I recently spent a week in Warsaw, and had many walks around the old town with my camera. Of course those images are now on-line at the main stock sites, but I thought it might be interesting to create a short Photographer's Guide to Warsaw with a street walking guide and images that you are likely to see. The plan is that I would sell it as an e-book for downloading and printing prior to a visit. Getting it high up on Google wasn't hard (not much competition!), but it made me think that perhaps other members of this group would be interested in creating such books and we collaboratively sell them.

I have created a web site (to be on www.e-photoguide.com once the internet changes take effect). It is presently under an old domain of mine http://www.backyardbengal.com. The actual Photography guide itself is linked from the main site to my blog, and there is an example file (the first 3 pages) available on the site as well.

There are two possible business models - one which works as the site does now - the link goes to the owner of the guide and they sell it, or a second more complex version would require the addition of a shopping cart, contracts etc. and I operate the site making payments to the authors in much the same way as a stock site does.

I'd be interested in any thoughts on the format of the guide itself to photographers like yourselves, and whether you think there is a market to create and sell these guides. This is obviously a market where we could do much more together as I can't do more than a handful of guides on my own.

Steve

Thanks for all the helpful responses. I suppose I could argue that some of the images were taken from a helicopter and not in the park, but I guess the answer would be that all the air above the park is also their property!  I'll just put it down to experience!

Steve

I was going to refer this promotion to a friend of mine who currently doesn't upload to Veer. Does Veer have a referral program? I couldn't find anything on the site.

Steve

I'll have a go at commenting as I have myself confused getting a tricky shot with something that is saleable. When I first glanced at the image, I thought it was a funny shaped tree with nothing interesting at all. Then I saw the owl, but it's color and contrast almost makes it invisible. Finally, the branches on the right make it very cluttered. So, while it was good to capture the owl like that, I'm not sure anyone glancing at lots of images would see the owl, and then I'm not sure how anyone would use it.

Steve

**Updated after further investigation about how to offer to Polylooks***

After playing with this on and off through the day, here is my summary of how to work with this site:

1. Sign up as a photographer, which, after the normal email confirmation, requires you to read and approve the photographer's agreement
2. Go to My Profile, and set your default pricing - I've set mine to Standard for now, although I think you can later go in and give your best pictures the Premium rating
3. Download the file uploading Java application. This is pretty intuitive, and in my case, I added each of the folders containing my stock photographs (I keep them by month on my hard drive), and then the application works in the background to upload each file. It seems relatively slow, but you can just leave it running
4. Go to the site under Manage Pictures, and the system will tell you if any keywording or titling is needed. As far as I can see, the problem images are at the head of the thumbnails and you can add keywords, then add description and save. I found that if you do it the other way round, the description is lost when you come back to that page.
5. The files can be checked as they are being uploaded - no need to wait until the uploading is finished. After a few are online, contact them via the web site contact page to ask for the upload limits to be raised to 1000.
6. I couldn't see how to make the default license set to Royalty Free, and so all of the uploads ended up as Rights Managed. I'm not sure that matters for Zoonar, but it does if you want to promotion for Polylooks. So I went through each page of files, marked them all, and then selected Royalty Free. As the newest files are on the first page, you can check this from time to time and just amend the latest ones
7. Then go back to Profile to Partner Management and choose which of the Partner sites to offer them to. This selection doesn't actually push the images to the partners! Unfortunately, you need to go back to the Manage Pictures, select each file and then choose "PolyLooks: Request Approval". I think I must have selected this too quickly, because I can now see that when you choose "PolyLooks: Request Approval", the system marks each thumbnail with a symbol that first states that the image is being reviewed, and then changes to either say "approved" or "rejected". One of the links on the right "go to account" shows the earnings from this promotion.
8. I think that is all that is needed to qualify for the promotion.
9. Just a comment about releases - the standard update puts the release status as "unknown". If you have property or people releases, you need to select the files and choose "Model Release is available". As far as I can see, you don't have to upload the releases themselves.
10. Finally, they do have a referral program that can be applied for on the site in the Webmaster menu on the left. You have to register a web site, but then you get the referral code. Mine is below!

One thing I noticed - I uploaded a lot more files than now appear "on-line". It could be because they didn't meet the standard (although they are on-line on many other sites), or they are less than 6 Meg files. Many of my older files are probably aimed more at the 4M Shutterstock limit, but I could find no indication of what happened to rejected files on the site - another Michael question! Although I have almost 600 files online with Shutterstock, so far I have only 180 online here, which is going to limit my earnings! I have a few more to go, but there is a disturbingly high rejection rate unless I have a lot of small files!

Final point - no work needed on the vast majority of files, so it is very easy to upload.

Hope this helps

Steve
http://www.zoonar.com/?wid=1207

I've started the upload process - it is really quite simple using their java uploader which allows you to select various folders on your hard drive and it steps through the files in turn. Assuming I understood the instructions, you can upload all the images today, but you don't select the option to offer them via the partner site until after midnight today.

I'm not too sure about pricing yet, although you can easily make bulk amendments to the images on the site after uploading.

There are no categories, which is great!

They also have a referral program. Maybe this is cheeky, but here is mine!

Steve
http://www.zoonar.de/?wid=1207

A little while ago, I put small versions of my stock photos on Flickr to see if it would generate some interest in the photos and lead to more sales. I'm not sure if it has, but I have been approached by a company called Schmap to "donate" one of my pictures to the Schmap Washington DC Guide in return for a Photographer attribution.

Here is the link to the image they want to use: http://www.schmap.com/shortlist/p=46106336N03/c=SO2005701


Anyone aware of Schmap and their approach to using photographs?

Steve

I just sold my first EL for 20 credits and got $6 something, but I noticed that current uploads are automatically defaulted to 50 credits for an EL. Did anyone find any way to change all the previous uploads from 20 to 50 besides going to each file in turn and modifying the field?

Steve