I'm preparing a batch to give iStock a go. BigStock haven't replied to my query via their contact form yet... It's been almost 2 weeks now and it's probably never getting answered. Nothing unusual actually. Of various support emails/forms I have sent them over the past 3 years they've only replied to 1 out of the 6-7 -- including one about a new buyer I referred not being able to retrieve their password right after registration (this happened last month).

They used the contact form too and after a week of being ignored (never actually got a response) they just signed up at 123RF to purchase photos instead. I didn't think they'd even ignore queries that involve buyers not being able to spend money there. Really, their customer service has left much to be desired.

Quote from: Tazzy on May 23, 2008, 18:41
LOL  Joyce!  I had to laugh at your comment about the bird because they did a similar thing to me.  I have a picture of two rhinos sleeping in the mud.  They rejected it and said I should use a color enhancing software to bring out the colors.  I resubmitted it with a note to review it again and said if you don't like these colors, then what colors do you want me to make them because this is exactly what colors they were.  I never got a reply, but in a couple days they accepted it.  LOL

Haha, that's great Tazzy! I'm still waiting to hear a reply from them on mine though but I had something along those lines.

ShutterStock for mine. It comes and goes.

Glad to hear it's not just me. I mentioned this in another thread here about whether BigStock is worth it. I normally get a 95% or so acceptance rate at BigStock, but my last batch was 15% (85% acceptance at other agencies, a direct opposite). Among the rejection reasons included "Dull, lifeless color: Colors are dull or lackluster. Sometimes this can be fixed using some saturation boost in Photoshop" for a bird whose plumage is a natural dull brown for camouflage. It downright annoyed me that they wanted the colour to be "boosted" in such way since it'd no longer be the same species. They haven't replied to my query yet either.

Quote from: sharpshot on May 21, 2008, 10:21
If I was only going to upload the images I was really proud of, my portfolio would have 3 photos in it

Me too. Or more like my portfolio will have 3 submitted to it, and 2 rejected because it's more artistic than stock. =)

I had a few cases of rejections for Overabundant Categories a while back on ShutterStock for flowers. They do actually still accept flowers, but as it's a overpopulated category they're more strict than usual. So it seems that if the picture's not perfect in every way and has a bit of "wow" then they'll just reject for that reason. Fair enough I think when you have too many. They also went through old flowers a while back and deleted all the more average photos, including those without scientific names.

Those three weren't as bad as I was expecting from reading the thread. The first two are average to me, but the third one with the reversed censorship banners was great. I thought it was a good image, and a great concept.

At work I'm responsible for purchasing images at times. Occasionally some less work-safe images crop up thanks to keyword spamming by the site's submitters. Otherwise, I don't have a problem most of the time. Luckily for me, my boss has been around the internet long enough that an out-of-context non-worksafe image isn't enough to get me into trouble.

I'd place myself somewhere between Strictly Amateur and Full Time Wannable. I doubt that microstock will ever make enough for me to quit my full time job, but I'm serious about making microstock a steady secondary income stream to supplement my full time income and pay for my photography equipment.

It's working quite well at the moment as I spend my weekends either out taking photos (for fun, art, or stock) and then some weekdays editing and submitting to stock. I find the industry interesting it makes me consider the things I take photos of. There's a bunch I take for my personal enjoyment that'd never make it as stock, some I take for stock only which I find quite dull, and some that fall in the middle.

The customer is always right...

I uploaded some trash photos for fun a while back, just experimenting with new equipment. They were accepted, and they're in my top 10. I feel dirty (no pun intended!) but hey, if the customers like it and find a use, who am I to complain?

I've seen a drop in sales for most of this month, though yesterday sales have jumped back up again. I'm not sure whether this is just a random spike, but I'm hoping it's going to carry through to the end of the month.

It's a bit early yet to tell whether the changes from the 14th are going to make a major difference.

In 2005-2006 they averaged around 1 week for me. 2007 about 2-3 weeks. So far this year it's been 3-4 weeks. Hopefully this doesn't mean a trend of 3-4 months by 2015!

I've been at BigStock since around mid-2005 and am seriously considering pulling all my images from the site. BigStock's always been the lowest earner (I submit also to SS and 123RF on a regular basis), but I kept submitting there to see if things changed. Among the 3, they had the highest acceptance rate and lowest requirements too in terms of resolution so I was able to submit some good shots that would make other agencies, but whose only failing was resolution.

Sales tend to be very slow. Reviews take a good 3-4 weeks with some weeks having uploading disabled entirely across the whole site. Service very poor when questions are asked via support as well (as a photographer, and for buyers I've referred). The uploading process is also a bit of a chore in comparison to other sites as well (biggest gripe: 7 word description makes me stuff descriptions for simple objects).

On top of that, the most recent batch of 24 I've submitted to agencies had a pretty high acceptance rate (~20/24) to all except BigStock, which accepted a dismal 4 out of 24. The rejection reasons I find quite questionable too, among them:

"Dull, lifeless color: Colors are dull or lackluster. Sometimes this can be fixed using some saturation boost in Photoshop."

for the Papuan Frogmouth bird species, whose plumage is dull brown (camouflage) and artificially making the plumage rich is a mis-representation. Some others involved blur rejections because the backgrounds of macro photos were not in focus (even though the subject is perfectly sharp). Previous rejections made perfect sense, even if I disagreed with them but these are simply ridiculous. So this, in addition to the above things (as much as I don't like removing work I've put so much effort on) it's looking like it's not worth it anymore.

The only issue I have now with pulling my gallery is whether BigStock will actually follow through. I left the site at one point in the past and requested deletion (due to their past licensing issues), but came back 6 months later to find out that they kept all of my photos on and ignored the request. That worked out well enough for me since I felt like giving them another chance after they were changed.

Those are my experiences with how successful BigStock has been, though I know others have had better luck. Has anyone else had similar experiences with them? Or anyone want to try to convince me that there's cause behind these sudden reviewing changes?

And that's the end of that BigStock rant. Thinking about giving the other big 6's that I haven't tried a go with re-invested time. =)