There is an emotional side on it too. The way CS bluntly rejected good stuff and accepted bad stuff just gave me bad vibes. It's OK to upload to a low paying site with a high payout, as long as you get that warm (perhaps fake) feeling that you are appreciated, like on LO. CS gave me the feeling I was crap. Maybe that changed now, but for me this was the face and attitude of CS:

apart from the usual "you're doing a great job!" and "I'm proud to be associated with iStock", there isn't much to find out.

Also, thanx Zeus on the Olympus I'm exclusive. No wonder, their forums are guarded like a communist newspaper. It's a good news show. No problem with it, it's their site. But after they removed a post of me more than a year ago, I don't even bother to look there.

It's a place to upload and forget, and ask for payout some time. I wish they had FTP though. Their Java uploader makes my PC freeze, so technically, I can't upload any more.

I know that should go without saying but, from what I hear on other forums, there are people who tick that box regardless.

Maybe Alamy has another breed of photographers than Microstock.  All MS want a signed MRF. I upload to Alamy and MS, so I'm sure my MRF is OK.

Do you have images on crestock - and is it worth it?

A year ago, I sent them a test batch of my best sellers (then) at other sites. They rejected 12/20 with the blunt reason that they were not looking for that kind of shots. I emailed them back that if they were not looking for my kind of shots, I was not looking for a site like them. That's it.

Maybe they changed acceptance policy now, but I never checked again.

In the world of art, selective focus is great, but in the world of stock images everything needs to be sharp.

Depends. If it's an isolated object, yes. If it's more like part of a scene and you want to draw attention to the focus, it isn't. The "art" of stock is looking with the eye of the designer, I guess. This one is from a batch of 30 of today, of which 28 where accepted. Most is out of focus here (diet lunch hour):

I can only assume if the photographers are having a hard time uploading the buyers are probably having a hard time buying.

Whatever they might do, their brand name is pooped. I hereby declare them CrapHamlet. They will need a fresh start under another name. What about Corbillard? That's French for hearse. 

The Ultimate LO Watermark

Breaking news: LO just announced its brand new watermark, that will be definitely annoying and 100% distracting. 

Well I started that watermark issue on LO in an earlier thread there about images with a high view count and no downloads. One of my images had 350+ views and 0 downloads. Funny, since with less views, it sells well at other sites.

So I had a look at the "thumb" (hey, a giant 500px!) and the white watermark was barely visible on the whitish picture, and not on the main focus at all. It took me 2 mins of sloppy cloning and all was gone.


Bryan replied there by pointing to a Dan Heller article that watermarks don't count, and the absence of it might be a good promo. I didn't reply then but from reading Dan's article, it was about personal sites to attract focused traffic to an individual photographer. A potential customer might be trapped on that personal site and buy eventually.

On a MS site with thousands of anonymous photographers, the freebie hunters won't even care who's who and the benefit (and traffic) will only be for the MS site itself, not for the photographer.

The watermark is defective on light shots, and apart from CrapHamlet, LO is the worst on protection. It's just so easy for LO to add a darker second watermark for pictures that are whitish. But what's happening is that LO is gaining traffic and attention on our sweat with almost freebies they don't have the copyright on. Apart that I, at least, will never reach the ridiculously high payout limit of 100$ the way sales are going on LO now.

At CrapHamlet, I deleted my images except one, not for the lack of sales, but for their bad protection of images. I don't care if LO sales are a disaster, because ShutmeUp gets me in 3 days what I got on LO in almost a year. LO is a great looking site with very friendly expert reviewers. It's no hassle at all to upload with FTP.

But if LO is going to persist giving away our 500px (whitish) shots with an almost invisible watermark, I'm affraid I will have to remove those shots too. I hope they address the issue soon by just using a difference watermark instead of an added one.

1. To the OP: yes FP can be worthwhile. I'm with them since end last year and I had a payout in July. Upload is very simple, no categories, IPTC, FTP, everything iStock should have. Model Releases directory. Very well programmed and stable, right from the start. Never saw a downtime. Can't see why SnapVillage can't do all that, with Bill's deep pockets.

2 - FTP: works fine but caveat: you should upload in the folder you are assigned, not to the main site directory. Works in Firefox and with a plain FTP client.

3 - Among all beginning Microstock sites, FP is unique, in that it lets you set your own price. And you get a whopping 70%. In fact, EL, smaller sizes, price, it's all yours to decide. As far as I can see, there are roughly 3 models in Microstock: ShutterStock, Dreamstime, and Featurepics. All the other beginning sites are more of the same. FP is different.

4 - Since FP accepted all my shots till now, and FP is very easy for the occasional buyer (no subscription), I use FP to host my portfolio on my own website (it's their bandwidth!) automatically with a direct link back to the sales page of that shot on FP. It's easy to do... you can do it with simple HTML snippets, all explained on FP's site. Anybody with a site on a free server (no php, no mysql) can host his portfolio on FP with no hassle.

And yes, I got sales coming from my own site on FP. I don't care any more to set up a CPG gallery with e-commerce, since FP is giving me 70%. No separate uploads any more to my own gallery. When it's on FP, it's in my portfolio on my own site (included search funtion).

Example: http://www.flemishdreams.com/jl/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=30&Itemid=48

5 - Two weeks ago I was brainstorming with Elena, who manages the site, about free use of thumbs for blogs, as a way to drive traffic back. They were very quick to respond:
http://www.microstockdiaries.com/featurepics-gives-bloggers-free-images-almost.html

6 - I started a Flickr group for Featurepics photogs, as another way to drive traffic.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/featurepics/

In short, yes FP is a very valid model for microstock since it leaves most decisions to the photog. It sells too, for me 7 times more than LO.
If people are whining often about being serfs to the big sites, well... there is an answer: FP.

There are a lot of photographers who don't upload to istock because there is no ftp and it takes too long.

Agreed. I have about 200 at IS but I stopped uploading there a year ago because it's impossible for me on a crap 3-d world PC with 128MB. The Java uploader just makes my PC freeze for eternity. It's a pity they don't have FTP.

I just use Adobe Bridge, but it doesn't have spell check.

Correct, plus I guess you can't set separators, at least not newlines. Many sites require different types of separators (Flickr e.g. wants a newline). That's why I wrote my script for in the first place.

However, Exifer doesn't let me change the order of the keywords, so if I want to include a very important keyword in the top of the current keyword list, for its relevance, I can't.  A few sites don't care about the keyword order, but many do.

Exactly!

I wrote a script for that myself, and a few people are using it already.
It's on FlemishTagger.

It has spellcheck, templates, dupes removal, and of course reordering. I'm not pushing my site at all. It just costs me bandwidth.
I use it together with Irfanview.

Exifer is, I found out, unreliable since it can screw up your photos.

Fishy or Phissy? IMHO it's irresponsible to do internet-banking. I go to the counter and I keep paper records. Lost 1000's of $ by a Visa-fraud (copied in a shop) and Visa dropped me like dead sh*t. Cash rules from now on.