I've downloaded the program, gonna give it a try. I'm using lightroom so it's quite nuisance. Out of curiosity how are you going to monetize the software? I didn't see any pricing on the website.

"Average review time" info just jumped from 3 weeks to "OVER 2 months".

Same here. Sit in low earners with 5.2 and being picky lol.

Well basically journalists whine about evil photographers that create unrealistic image, but the photographers create images that are in demand. Noone would ever create photos that need a lot of time to take if people wanted something different.

It's just so timeless - people were whining about corsets and how women "cheat" with them into making everyone believe they have slimmer waist.

Quote from: ShadySue on January 07, 2016, 19:55
A lot of advice I'd give would relate to the reality 'now' as opposed to even a couple of years ago. Here's a Wayback machine screenshot of msg from Jan 2013. Compare the poll results there to those being reported now.
http://web.archive.org/web/20130115230159/http://www.microstockgroup.com
This is not a business that you can accurately make any sort of projection of income and profits. As well as your skills in producing images for the market and keywording, and being at the mercy of each site's search algorithm, you're also at the mercy of changing circumstances at each agency - they can change their side of their contract at any time (e.g. demoting images, cutting prices and/or commissions, sending to distributors, removing files, etc) and our only response can be to accept the changes or remove our files. Even then, sometimes people have reported great difficulties in getting their images off all 'associate' or 'distributor' sites.

Well just out of curiosity - you gave me idea to put the webarchive results into excel. I can't go much earlier then 2013 because it seems the scale has been different before. Even based on three years it's interesting to observe the trends. The data collected is from january each year.

I was sitting yesterday at work and while browsing internet I encountered the news again and again. Each time my first unconditional response was "wow, David Bowie, I wonder what he did now" and then each time the real news got to me.

Well I do admit I love the direction this topic is going in.

Still I do not agree that every topic has been covered so there's no need for discussion. Even if it was there are new people, and things change blah blah. (Also I'm quite ingenious on asking things I really really need to know, when I do have much more important are painfully boring things to do. )

Quote from: marthamarks on January 10, 2016, 21:58

Quote from: seawhisper on January 10, 2016, 20:45
Hehe how does it happen that always when you have a topic in forum it always wonders off some other sometimes very exotic subjects?

Very good point! Who knows why it happens, but it does.

Quote from: seawhisper on January 10, 2016, 20:45
I used stocks instead of stock as for one stock (website) - few stock websites = few stocks.

That was a reasonable assumption on your part. Unfortunately, a flawed one. 

Here in the US (the only version of English that I feel qualified to discuss), "stock" in this context is a shortcut for stock photography, whether it's available on a single website or many. One stock site, two stock sites, etc. (One might also refer to a family's stock of homemade jelly, for example, or to a good stock of paper towels found on a store's shelves.)

We use "stocks" to refer to the investments in corporations that someone can buy and hold or sell for profit (or loss). 

I just Googled "stocks" to find an example for you, and this popped up from just a few hours ago:  "U.S. stocks had their worst start to the year of all time, with all the major indexes posting ..."

Hope this helps!

True, thanks!

Hehe how does it happen that always when you have a topic in forum it always wonders off some other sometimes very exotic subjects?

I used stocks instead of stock as for one stock (website) - few stock websites = few stocks.

Quote from: Zero Talent on January 10, 2016, 09:41

Quote from: seawhisper on January 10, 2016, 08:16
I always considered 500px more social website - something like deviantART. I have some photos there, but never made anything. Takes a lot of time to breakthrough. When commenting and liking while putting your work online you can easily get to popular but it doesn't seem to convert into revenue.

Here is the official answer related to how important "popularity" is:

QuoteIt does play some part in it, but so do curations, relevancy, exact matching, etc.. We also have some other secret formulas but I will say that the community affection does play a part but it's only a part and not the entire formula.

I don't comment and almost never "like"

Love the "secret formulas" statement.

Well I put the latin name for squirrels and I do find people searching by these names on shutter stock.

Just wondering. Recently woke up, drinking my coffee thinking about keywording my photos but it seems I'm not yet awaken.
As for me I'm a project manager in "real life" - it doesn't leave much time for stock photography or anything at all to be honest. But I started stocks when I was theatre photographer so they got a bit abandoned lately. Now I somehow went back but it doesn't look too bright.  Still almost all the time I had some other job beside stocks.
How about you guys? 

I always considered 500px more social website - something like deviantART. I have some photos there, but never made anything. Takes a lot of time to breakthrough. When commenting and liking while putting your work online you can easily get to popular but it doesn't seem to convert into revenue.

Hm I'm not sure. I have ONE sale on pond5 last year. Still my id is hanging there for months now awaiting verification.
This whole site is ridiculous...

Quote from: KnowYourOnions on January 08, 2016, 01:08

Quote from: seawhisper on January 07, 2016, 13:50

Quote from: kenwood on January 07, 2016, 03:42
It was mentioned on the pond5 website that the new average wait time is 4-6 weeks.  I also submitted some back in Nov, still waiting to be reviewed.  If you are uploading seasonal stuff, better upload them at least 3 months ahead just to be safe.

Whoa last time I checked they said 3 weeks. Seems like maybe it's better idea to hire as stock reviewer then a stock photographer.

Ha ha ...so true...as if they care. Haven't they said they are artist most friendly company? Well, once they ve got 61 mil funding, they don't care much about artist any more.
They used us all nicely for their goals to get rich and live in Brazil on eternal vacation. Expect  worse yet to come dear artists....

Yeah, problem is they still stick in Top Tier, so they're still tempting to deal with.
They got there fast, and I have a feeling they will go even faster back to Low Earners where they got from.

Though I didn't get the reply from them. Few days after the mail to support all the photos were submitted. So it's worth to ask them.

Quote from: stephenkirsh on January 07, 2016, 02:31
looks like Yuri's site is back up.

Yay! It's back. It doesn't look like anything has changed. Anyone knows what happened?

I believe they got some sort of bug.
I wrote then an email. Didn't get the reply (or didn't find it anywhere) but next few days everything went straight to accepted.

Quote from: kenwood on January 07, 2016, 03:42
It was mentioned on the pond5 website that the new average wait time is 4-6 weeks.  I also submitted some back in Nov, still waiting to be reviewed.  If you are uploading seasonal stuff, better upload them at least 3 months ahead just to be safe.

Whoa last time I checked they said 3 weeks. Seems like maybe it's better idea to hire as stock reviewer then a stock photographer. 

When I read this topic I think it must be quite discouraging.
One might even think we would do that so we don't get a competition.
But I do believe many people put so much time and effort into building a portfolio so it's hard to get out.
And I do agree with most of opinions here.

The stock market is a hard one. It eats a LOT of time and builds frustration and disbelief in your own skills. I do believe it's much more profitable to became a wedding or any other kind of photographer. BUT you don't deal with customers you do as much as you want to, when you want to any way you want to. If you're smart and dedicated you probably might get some living out of it after a year or two.

The real question is if the stock sites will be able to support you after this year or two. I ask this because I see quite a worrying trend. More and more photos in the database, lowering the revenues and accepting lower quality photos.

I have a feeling in a time this market will have to change. I'm wondering what will come next.


But to sum up - if you still want to get in after reading all the advices. Focus on... focus and the noise. Low end cameras and lens tend to get highest rejection rate on these two aspects.
Do a lots of stats - how many photos you get accepted, what are main reasons for rejections, on which stock nad learn from it.

Predict on the data you have. You still need to work, you need to sleep, eat and have some family, maybe social, life. (Yup, that's also important. ) How much time does that leave on pushing photos into stock sites? How many photos do you already have and when do you find time to make new ones? How many photos are you able to put in one week, one month and so on? So how many photos accepted will you have in next three months, half of year, by the end of year?

Build your process - how do you keyword your photos, what software and what is the best way to automate it and do it faster.

Invest in learning digital photo enhancement - how to reduce noise, how to work on curves, how to best sharpen your pics. Learn much more about photoshop and lightroom then you already know.

Your time here is priceless, stock sites takes a lot of time so you need to maximize your results and minimize the time needed to do it.

Hi guys, and Happy New Year!

Does anyone have access do poll results data? I'd like to do some other analysis - especially mediana and value graph for each stock. I assume the data showing on the right is the average which is nice information but quite easily manipulated for deviation results.

Of course I don't want any names who submitted how much, only numbers for each stock. I can share the analysis when I do them to show on the forum for all of us.

Quote from: Jan on December 30, 2015, 14:57
We are very much still alive. Though all of our efforts now are put into our subscription website, yayimages.com. Today we announced that we are shutting down yaymicro for customer sales. You can still access it as a photographer, upload images and request payouts. We hope to refurnish the photographer pages and relaunch them at a later stage.

The subscription site is getting good traction now, and as a contributor you should see sales picking up over the next months.

Of course, we are still a rather small agency, compared to the top earners. But we are not giving up! With yayimages.com we're ahead of our competitors when it comes to user experience, search and features. We will continue to work on that and are confident that our good customer experience will lead to more customers, which again generates more earnings to our contributors.

Great to hear that! All the best for the new website.
I'm not sure if I'm fit for the new website business model. If I decided to close the account will I be able to withdraw my revenue even though I didn't get the min €30 amount?

Quote from: sgoodwin4813 on December 29, 2015, 15:20
Happy New Year everyone, and hats off to all those who stick it out!  Best wishes to you all for 2016.

Well said, and Happy New Year to you too!

Does anyone submitted this to 123RF support? I was wondering why my files wait for so long. Then I noticed they all seem "incomplete" even though they look like they have all the info they need... And then I found this post... -_-

Sooo if I have €25 and they min pay is €30 and now they're closing - how do I get this money from them?