Quote from: RT on December 19, 2011, 18:09

@ joshsprague

What's happening with the FTP, I uploaded over 1200 files over the weekend and none of them are showing up in my author dashboard.

Oh man!  Can you give me your PhotoDune username so I can take a look? You are uploading them to the "bulk_import" folder correct?

Thanks for getting back - Yes uploaded to bulk import as before, sent you a PM.

I'm not a car person either, a neighbour of mine bought a Ferrari testarossa once, it was the most uncomfortable car I've ever been in, and very basic inside, he kept it a week!

Why do you keep going on about RPD as if it is the be all and end all? If RPD is so very important to you then why aren't you selling all your stuff RM at Alamy or macro agencies? You won't earn much but you will have a fantastic RPD.

I'll ignore the reference to macro agencies because I'm sure you understand the principles of microstock so I presume that was tongue in cheek(and you're getting RPD and RPI confused), however you don't seem to understand the basic fundamental problem of encouraging buyers within a 'microstock' targetted audience to go to the site which pays you the least.

At the very least you sound like a perfect candidate for exclusivity at Istock. Just opt out of the PP and you should enjoy an RPD of $3.50+. Surely you would be willing to sacrifice your status and some of your income as an independent contributor to maintain your RPD? No?

Like many others in the top 500 or so in this industry I did consider it once, but A. I wouldn't qualify because I had/have contractual agreements with some distributors for RF in both micro and macro & B. my premonitions of going exclusive and relying on the management of just one sales outlet and the possibilities that could incur would have and did come to reality!

I'll ask again __ can you just explain how SS ceasing trading will benefit us all? How? What do you think will happen in that event?

I thought I had, you amongst others have said your selling more on SS but making less overall than in previous years.

In simple terms:

You're an egg supplier, you have four shops selling eggs in various schemes in your town, you make less per individual egg sold at shop A than any of the others but you sell the highest quantity there, shop B suddenly alienates all it buyers and they come to you asking where to buy your eggs - why oh why please explain to me your reasons for sending them to shop A ?

Or for whatever reason shop A suddenly closes down, people still need and want to buy eggs so they go to the other shops in town - as things stand can you not see that you'd end up making more money.

Now in answer to your next question - Why do I sell on SS - It's because I'm in dependant and I understand that SS have a lot of buyers, I also understand that in this industry buyers don't shop around like some naively think they do, and if I wasn't on SS any buyers that go there would just buy someone else's image. But given the choice I would rather the buyer bought my stuff from a site that pays me more, which as things stand is any of the other top three microstock sites, and if SS were to cease trading the buyers would have no choice but to buy from a site that pays more.

That's me done on this subject, if you haven't got it yet you never will.

Yes, I agree with you to a certain extent as long as thinkstock go as well.

Wouldn't we all, but I have no doubt you understand why Thinkstock came into existence in the first place!!

^ It surprises me too.

Although I don't have anything personal against SS, and they do what they do well without too many complications, if I could have one new years wish it'd be that SS ceased trading. Most people won't understand this but it would benefit us all.

Quote from: RT on December 15, 2011, 15:14

Quote from: gostwyck on December 04, 2011, 05:38

On IS last month my average sale was $1.73 and on SS it was $0.62. However I sold 4.5x more images on SS so I made a lot more money there.

So taken as an average, every sale you lose from iS to SS costs you $1.11 in lower commission.

Subs are obviously not the same market as IS single image sales and never have been. With OD/EL sales my average commission at SS is $2.84 __ so on that basis every 'single image' sale that is transferred from IS to SS gains me $1.11. Just depends how you like your statistics served up.

Funnily enough the customer (for single image sales) is paying almost exactly the same average of $9.60 for my images on each site. The difference to me is that SS is paying me 30% of their money and IS only 18%.

I'm confused, when you quoted your average sale on SS as being $0.62 I presumed that took OD/EL sales into account, which it must do because if it didn't your average would be $0.38 - the highest amount SS pay for subscription sales.

Percentages mean nothing whatsoever, all I'm interested in is the financial figure, and my personal experience and others mentioned both here and in private conversations is that the 'assumed' migration of buyers from iS to SS is losing us money, like you I sell on average 5x the physical amount of images on SS as I do on iS however given the choice I would take every one of the sales on iS as apposed to SS any day of the week.

If you're better off financially as a result of recent disastrous management at iS then I am genuinely pleased for you.

Another big selling  independent on here also reports lower overall sales this year which looks like the fault of IS sales falling. 

I'm in the same boat as Yuri and many others, the sales lost from iStockphoto to Shutterstock has meant less commission in my pocket.

Quote from: heywoody on December 07, 2011, 17:45

The word "any" is open ended - looks like usage allowable under the agreement.

Surely the agreement would have said "any products" if it was intended for multiple usage?

No they don't need to use the plural of 'product' because -

From the Oxford dictionary (and pretty much all other dictionaries I'd guess):

Any - "used to refer to one or some of a thing or number of things , no matter how much or how many"

If there is a company that was to provide keywording for  $2 per image ( including   caption  and description)
 and including uploading for an extra $.50

Would you be interested in such a thing?
 If not, or if you have questions what would they be?
 Is it too expensive?

No, the reason being I haven't yet come across a company who's sales pitch isn't full of basic grammar mistakes, if they can't even get that right why would I entrust them to keyword my images.

I did try a free trial with a well known company in this field (I'm sure you could all guess who) - despite being in possession of the model releases (with the ethnic origin included on all) for the batch of images I uploaded to them they used the keyword 'hispanic' for every image with a model in (none of the models were hispanic) and on two of the shots that were close up face shots where the model was wearing glasses, they neither included the word "glasses" or "spectacles", plus in general there were between 5-10 spelling mistakes on all their keywords. All this on a trial set of images with the intent of pitching for my business.

So my advice to anybody who has a basic grasp of the English language, don't use any company who's main language isn't English.

Hi again RT, thanks for taking the time to respond, I know your time valuable.  Again, I apologize for the issues you are experiencing for what it's worth.  As to the 405 error, we are aware of this and there is a thread here http://photodune.net/forums/thread/405-not-allowed/54869 discussing it as well.  Long story short, it appears that your submission may have went through just fine (did you get an email confirming such).  We also have a support ticket in so this can be addressed properly with our dev team.

Hi Josh,

Once again thanks for taking the time to respond, I fully appreciate any new site will have teething problems but these are basics that should have been addressed earlier, saying you're aware of all these issues is all well and good but how does that look to someone like me who has to "discover" them, if you know about them put something on the upload page!

I've just received an email so will see what happens from there, as for the other issue regarding model releases, again I suggest you implement (sooner rather than later) the same type of procedure every other agency uses, having to upload model releases with each and every batch is not something I'm going to do, it's a needless waste of time.

This agency, let me tell you all, is like Tony-Stone and Image-Bank, were in the film days, 

Apart from the commission!

@RT, pancaketom is correct.  When you are uploading your initial sample of 5 - 10 photos, you need to create a zip with your photos and model releases and upload them from the PhotoDune "Submit a portfolio" page. (where you land after taking the quiz) This is the only time you will need to do it in this manner. After you are approved as an author,  you will then have the correct directory structure in the ftp that will allow you to easily upload photos and MRs both.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions at all I am more than happy to help

I've just sent you a PM, did what you've suggested (maybe it would help if you gave these instructions on the site), passed the test (for the fourth time) zipped ten files, uploaded them (again), got a tick next to the zipped file, went to submit them and got presented with a 405 error page.

@jsnover - just how much slack do you suggest I cut them!!