I'd certainly upload images on an exclusive basis for some sort of extra reward.

Not to mention the fact that if they refuse a photo you would still be able to shop it around to other agencies.  For someone like me with a bad approval rate that is a big deal.   Virtually every photo IS has refused has been approved every where else (and some of them actually sell! LOL).

Hi Jay, I've had your blog in my RSS feeds for a while now.  Nice to see you here.

Micro sales vary hugely from person to person.  Stock oriented concepts sell.  Well executed people photos sell.  Random, common subjects go largely unnoticed.  Nature photos are usually low earners, but the lifecycle of a good nature photo will go on and on and on.  One of my first nature photos is very consistent and sells just about every day, and several times a year sells larger licenses - so it will definitely be on my lifetime best seller list.

The longtail effect becomes more evident as portfolios grow.  Say you have 1000 photos.  150 sell regularily and make 80% of your earnings.  The remaining 850 photos bring down your average but do sell occassionally, say .5 times per month.    It looks like the bulk of the portfolio is underperforming - but it is still 425 sales.  I think I read that Amazon's longtail sales are about 80% of their business.  Millions of titles, and many of them selling just a couple times each year.

Micro buyers are different as well. 
-They seem to want "ready made" shots - copy space - just add their
own brand and text. 
- They don't seem to want art.  They want boring wrap-around lighting with non-distracting backgrounds. 
- They buy a lot of tiny little files for blogs and websites and change them frequently.
- They do pay more for large circulations and use on products. 
- I think macro buyers are exclusively professional.  Micro is a mixture of pros and everyday people.  Bloggers, design houses, freelancers, mom'n'pops. One RM photo would bust the budget of a small busness.  With micro they can do their marketing in-house.

Just to add, I think this series was in the cue for about 15 days, so that would mean my upload was about 20 day ago maybe?

Fotolia's hoverover view works quite well, so I doubt many viewers actually click a photo - makes less views. 

Hey grp_photo. I think you already know as much as I do about all this... but here's my tips.

If you plan to submit to Fotolia, place the 7 most important keywords first.  You can rearrange them after upload, but it is a pain.

Make sure you place a comma between keywords.  For some dumb geriatric reason I keyworded a whole batch in PS without commas and of course only the first three words appeared upon submission.  Oddly, they all arrived on IS though - the most difficult site.

I don't know if you want to do this - but I just went through all my photos at one site and placed my user name in the keywords.  This makes it easier to find my photos in a search on their affiliate sites.  (LOL, also, everyone who has stolen your keywords and has been too lazy to review them pop up when you search your user name.)

Some people here swear by prostockmaster or cushy stock - I don't know - never tried - but I think they have keywording tools built into them.

If they are paying by the hour, the salaries should be considered part of the initial production expenses, while the royalties will be collected on forever.   Their break-even points will be extended much farther than a solo shooter - but they also have a team that (I am speculating) gets the photos live much faster than the solo photographer.

All photos have to be edited, keyworded, and submitted.  For every hour that Yuri or Ron spend shooting they would have to spend another nine preparing their files.  They do what they do best, and they must see much better returns shooting all day than fiddling around on the computer.   Especially after sessions reach their break-even point.  It's profit thereafter.

I get having a high price for super and ultra...

But I don't get not even offering some kind of extended license for the smaller versions. 

Don't you think buyers will find a photo they want and say "What, no extended license?  Well screw you, I'm putting it on calendars and coffee mugs anyway.  You just saved me 50 bucks."

Steve, I have to say it is a bit of a nightmare for a contributor to have images on Photos.com.   It would take me hours to find all of my small portfolio to evaluate if everything was correct.   When I did a few searches on launch day, I didn't seem to have any of the ppd options on many photos either.  I'd love to look into it and see if for some reason those photos were cropped by me but I just don't have the time required right now.

What are the dimensions we should be looking for again?

I'm not sure where the other content comes from either, but when I was searching for some of my own photos and getting frustrated, I tried to narrow the searches down by keywords, the first pages of results were stuffed with spam.

I'm getting a complex.  I don't upload nearly as often as I should, but, are they trying to tell me something?

DT: 
ERROR: Error uploading file. Please try again in few minutes (1)

IS
File uploads have temporarily been deactivated for all users. Please try again later.

Chumley, at this moment there's 1672 members on this forum, and many, many more visitors who haven't registered.  I think that one or two of our members were riding you a little hard but you have earned the respect of many more.  I, for one have read everything you have said and I thank you for your time.  I wish you would stick around, you are a great mentor.  If you think about starting your own blog on the topic, I'll be the first to sign up.

There is no problem with photos 'going to other accounts'

But why is someone else's photo in MY account then?  Just their thumbnail, but it leads to my photo, and this particular photo is not in the search engine.  The keywords are attached, but this photo does not return in searches.


Now, a robot comes along hourly and processes a set amount of photos, thus distributing the load across the day and night. So if files have been approved but are not in your Art Manager / port page, it means they are lined up ready to parachute onto the site.   

If hourly is they way it is supposed to refresh, these photos have not refreshed in 4 or 5 days.  I don't even know what they are.  But my cue goes down and my approved photos number goes up, but the number stays the same in my art manager.

I know I have to sound like the biggest complainer, there's some things about the upload process that have put me off a bit.  But I'll make a good list and maybe they are not so unreasonable.  I just can't get back to my cue this week, but I'll keep a list when I do.  Still in Beta, so maybe you don't mind the feedback.

Not today, but it happened to me once last week.  It took about 3 hours, but the numbers came back and appeared to be correct.  I had sent a note to support while it was down, and they responded the next day "this is what I see in your totals, is it wrong?" - rather than addressing the fact that 5 days earnings had vanished entirely.