Cathy's advice for research is good, as long as you pay attention to the "no copying" part... 

I'v spent plenty of hours weekly on istock for a year without even realizing the photos there belong different individuals, because they all look the same... and those were the top sellers too.

If you can think of a unique take on a popular subject (business, food, lifestyle), you are likely to do very well.  Also, if you manage to come up with a niche that few to none have discovered, that is the key to initial success. 

I guess the bottom line is that this is late in the game to be joining micro.  All the easy stuff has been done to death.  In order to succeed at this point, you need to be better and more unique than what's already there in abundance.  Not trying to discourage you, BTW, just encourage you to bring your A game .

For DL's to pile up the shot has to be as generic as possible, so being unique is out of the question.

China has 7400 + km high speed rail, and looks to expand it  to 16 000 km by 2020, which  means they probably finish sooner. China is the future, their cities will be center of commerce, shopping, entertainment you name it, the places everyone wants to go to live. I have a friend teaching english there, and he always notes me I should go there if I like shooting nice gals, because chinese girls in the cities are dam' cute, very body conscious, you can walk all day without seeing a single girl who isn't slender (opposite of usa), and they gladly model just for pics.

Quote from: molka on December 09, 2010, 11:14

Quote from: donding on December 09, 2010, 11:09

Quote from: RacePhoto on December 08, 2010, 23:46

Here's what stands out for me, that hasn't been discussed here yet.

"Over the past few years, we have also acquired several hundred generic domains to capture natural "type-in" traffic. "

I noticed that but didn't give it much thought. I think there is someway to link all those sites to you main site. If you notice you put in a similar domain name...it will take you to the main site with the correct domain...not the one you typed in. I don't know how it is done but it can be done and I don't know if all those domain names would have to be maintained or just links put in them. The key word there is "natural "type-in"

you don't have to link anything, the same thing can run on several domain names. domain name =/= place of hosting.

Thanks for the explanation. I knew there was some way to do it but didn't know how.

another thing ppl do is get a bunch of domains and sites just to fill them with links to their business, trying to structure it in a way that doesn't alarm the google bots. I know many who do it, and they are nailed to top 3 position in searhes related. It gives fast results, but it's hazardous, if you get caught of backlink spamming thru worthless content, you get deindexed, no quetsions asked, and your complaints go to dev/null forever. If you think dealing with microstock sites was painful, try google. They just behead your site and never-ever talk to you again.

I just had a series of photos rejected with the following message...

* PENTAX K100D native resolution = 3008 x 2008. Your file is 2704 x 2801. As part of iStock standards, we only accept files at their native resolution. *

This was an isolation photo.  All I did was crop off the excessive white space on the left and right edges.

I had another photo rejected recently because it was shot at ISO 400!! 

I'm beginning to agree that we should strip all the camera data from the files before submitting.

You shoot a portrait oriented shot isolated on white, you crop it larger for that copyspaced thing, into a square or into landscape orienited. There are tens of thousands of shots like that up already, and it gives them the chance to sell XXL. So what's the problem now? It's pretty darn obviuos they are self righteoulsy picking on people, and with the latest situation when there's competition for 'elite' getty and agency placement they have all the motivation they need to actually deny the best pics. God knows how many sales this inspector mob denied from istock. They should be removed ASAP, and forget the incredibly dumb idea of hiring contributors as inspectors and admins forever.

Untill that, for the 100th time: wipe the exif, because they are looking for excuses to deny.

I can tell you I was a buyer on behalf of the ad agency I worked for more than a year at istock without even realizing that pics actually belonged to individuals there, who have their individual little ports. I always was in a rush, focused on fnding the pic best fitting a concept as quickly as possible - which was a huge pain in the as* -, I didn't even realize the pic I downloaded actually belonged to some user on the site. I didn't know about shuttertstock untill some of the marketing people emailed me their options for pics, which were usually from SS, that seems to be marketing ppl's favorite.

The only reason I realized what's up is because on of my colleagues told me his boyfriend shoots for stock, and showed me his port. After that I did try venturing into lightboxes and ports, but it was a completely useless waste of time, so I never did that again, went back to chewing thru endless tsunami of generic shots like most of do, I guess.

Quote from: molka on December 08, 2010, 13:40

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on December 08, 2010, 13:00

95% of the images that are produced are no better or worse than a dozen others of identical subjects that are already in the collection and all the frenzied image production activity is doing is allowing submitters to jostle with each other for search engine position.

Istock's business would probably be better and more sustainable with 10,000 absolutely superb files entering the collection each month and no dross than it is with the avalanche it has at the moment that sometimes buries the occasional gem so deep, so fast that it vanishes forever.

But that's the nature of microstock, so what you gonna do? I hope for gods sake it doesn't need explanation why the micro model outlaws uniqeness and originality... you never know tho: I do see dumbos in site's forums going around giving advice to newcomers like "be original and unique" over and over again, while one thread away someone asking about 'how to get more sales' is told that pictures have to be as generic as possible to get a lot of dls. Are people really that stupid that they don't se the oximoron there?? Unbeleivable. : >  It's not hard to see how that makes this unsustainable for contributors on a longer term. And for the 100th time: microstock's death is the inspection / acceptance system.  There's nothing else they can do with clueless, art-uneducated 'inspectors' than set up a technical quality barrier and nothing else.

You misquoted. That was BaldricksTrousers. Not me.

sry, I corrected

To play devil's advocate for a second, how hard is it to switch your search to downloads instead of best match? That eliminates a lot or all of the Agency and Vetta. The best match has rarely lived up to its name, and I've always assumed many buyers (at least mine) don't use it.

maybe some people don't really want an image that's all over the place a 1000 times already. I did spend an awful lot of time searching and dling from istock, and out of respect for my own work and the client, looking thru the most downloaded was the very-very last choice.

""As I've said, we will re-examine targets once the year-end numbers are in, especially if our projections prove wrong..."

they wil re-examine it to make sure they screw everyone : > so you can't say you'r not all treated equally. : >

You're arguing that the admins only select vetta files from their friends and coworkers?

Not 'only'. But they are pretty shameless, given that you can zoom in on shots at istock.

I've been very disappointed with IS lately but compared to their usual shenanigans this is nothing.

Oh, great attitude. They started pimping kids at projects years ago, so when they got your daughter, it's not worth a mention, really. Congratulations. : )

Thanks Sean...that's a very interesting interview

 ..photos any more have to be perfect in every way...

was?? : ) You mean technically. If they had the ability and 'inspected' for aesthetical and style virtues, there wouldn't be diluted sales, because they wouldn't have 10 million pictures... maybe 1,5 mil... or less. I always said their dilettant inspection - acceptance policy is the death of microstock, very few understood.

Quote from: molka on December 06, 2010, 06:07

always wipe the exif when dealing with the dilettants at istock,

Interesting I would assume this would cause more suspicion among the inspectors if there would be no Exif-data.

maybe, but you eliminate a number of things they can simply pick on. when you got simpletons who to punch in rezzed-up for having a file that's larger than than the MP size possible by exif, you'd better deny them any info that might get the poor fellows confused.

I think it is time to try something different.  My idea would be for us all to have our own sites, using the same software and hosting company.  We all pay our own fees and take 100% of the profit.  Then we could pay a monthly fee for a site that hosts all the small preview images and a database to search all our files.  Obviously there would be advertising costs but I believe a lot of buyers would find the site if they knew they could buy directly from us and we could charge fair prices, as there wouldn't be a third party taking a large commission from each sale.

http://www.stockartistsalliance.org/pluspacks/index.htm