I posted something in the spring.  It was approved on a Monday on SS and the next morning it had its first sale - an EL.  It sells now and then, but I sure had high hopes when the first sale was a big one, and within 24 hours.

On the other hand, it's nice to know that they do have one other reject button to push and you were special enough to get it!

I wonder too if the statement "this work is innapropriate for Fotolia customers" has anything to do with the fact that she's perhaps a little too sexy.  This is the same site that rejected one of mine, a week old naked baby, (no private parts showing) for "morality" reasons even though it was "excellent".  

P.S.  I saw the first shot and thought "nice backdrop, I wonder where Karin bought it"  hehe, then I saw the location.

Something has changed for me.  Before when I went to edit a post, all I got was a green bar across the top saying Loading....

Now I get the green loading bar, the edit box (this is farther than I could get before, I can enter my edit and hit save, but my post above does not appear as edited (to me anyway).

Just tried spell check and it seems to be working now though.

Me too Takestock, I can't spell check or preview either.  Leaf knows about it and it is on his list.

Since September:
SS
DT
FT

Until August it was always:
SS
IS
DT

Found the forum link:
http://www.stockxpert.com/forum/show_messages/17021

But my old link does not work either.

Penny, the only thing clear is that whenever you bring up exclusivity you will get a strong responses.  I am not an exclusive kinda gal, but I can see very strong arguments for it, especially if I was full time at this. 

All the negative about FT aside, I'm surprized more people don't talk about going exclusive with them - especially once they've passed silver.

Now that FT has fixed its search engine I can finally see why many love FT.  For me FT doesn't earn the most each month, (although this month they might) but they certainly sell more individual photos than anyone but SS of course. 

According to the charts  found here http://www.fotolia.com/Info/Pricing#item_8: 

A Silver contributer earns
1 Small sale = .37
1 Large sale = 1.48

A Silver Exclusive earns
1 Small sale = $1.64
1 Large sale = $6.48

Or am I reading that wrong?  But then again, FT has such a bad history of f**k ups that who could trust them to go exclusive?

If I remember, when he was on Oprah a few years ago and I had no idea who he was and she was telling him he should run for president some day he said he chose to be black.  Something about coming from a mixed family and the angst of not knowing where you fit in, that it was a relief to finally just be black.

LOL, but with my memory these days that might have been Michael Jackson on deciding to be white, who knows.

LOL, I think I first heard that on Strobist from David Hobby but I think it's a phrase that Joe McNally came up with.  It's so appropriate though, isn't it?

I'm a mad chimper, especially when someone is wearing glasses.  I have to restrain myself from doing it too much, but it's really neccessary at the beginning of a setup and then I try try try to trust the blinkies as much as I can.   I'm super bad when I'm shooting action shots.  When the ball is in the other end there I am chimping.

I'm with ya WarrenPrice.  I paid for it, I'm gonna use it!

hi everyone, not sure about this.  bit worried about this extended licenses. does this mean you sell the right or does it have to be exclusive, anything like that? just read through one of my other sites and it said for their extended licences you sell the rights and cant show/sell it anywhere else etc. so i am a bit worried about it. as far as i understand it doesn't look like its the same thing on StockXpert but just want to make sure, dont want to get into any trouble. 

Do you have extended license confused with sell the rights?  Which site do you refer to?  On DT, for example you can opt in to sell the rights.  You just have to be able to delete it from all other sites once it sells.  If it sells as EL, nothing changes.   I find that it's often the same photos that sell over and over as EL's too.

Istock should just put us all out of our misery, become an exclusive-only site, and send us all to StockXpert.  But, can they?

Bear with me, I'm going to compare Istock to my school cachment.  I live in a bedroom community 1.6km from school. If we were 1.7km (1/10th km farther!) my kids would get a free bus and be able to stay for lunch.  The school bus stop is 3 doors over.  Instead, I have to drive out past the bus stop every day and pay so that my kids can stay at school for lunch.  Although I am not technically in "the town", the "town kids" pay for the entire lunch program.  There would be no lunch supervisors if the "town kids" didn't supplement the out-of-town kids.  If we all brought our kids home for lunch they would be f*cked; the school board would have to somehow pay for the supervisors and everyones' school taxes in this cachment would go up.  It would set a precedent and they would have to do the same in all their other cachments in this district.

As delicious as it sounds, can Istock become an exclusive-only site?  I doubt it.  I think they likely need the 80% bonus they receive from every non-exclusive sale to maintain the exclusives, marketing, and business.

Not hoping to jinx it, but I've had daily sales again this week.  They likely realized with their best match in October they weren't grossing enough % and had to give non-exclusives more sales to plump up the bottom line.

My last month was bad.  Really really bad.  Today is the 5th of November and already I am just a few cents short of what I made in all of October.

Why?  Marketing?  Glitch?  Contributor activity?  Search rotation?

The only factor I can think of is that I didn't upload a single photo in October and I've sent a handful this month.  Has anyone noticed if your own level of contributions affect this site that much? 

Is 123 another Beast that needs to be fed?