MicrostockGroup

26

General Stock Discussion / Re: Uploading portfolio to Fotolia - less sales on SS?

« on: July 16, 2015, 10:09 »

SS is down and FT is up. I attribute this to the marketing blitz done by Adobe recently. This blitz included adding the marketing to the creative cloud. I mostly do wildlife and nature so I sell quite a bit this time of year compared to other times. July is a bigger month for me but SS has totally gone into the crapper. I am even seeing extended sales in FT. Everything turned upside down. How it falls...

1. FT
2. IS
3. DT
4. SS

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

27

General - Top Sites / Re: Interesting Month

« on: July 13, 2015, 08:22 »

No ELs. My ELs have for the most part been through SS and DT.

28

General - Top Sites / Interesting Month

« on: July 13, 2015, 07:19 »

For the first time since I started in stock a year and half a ago, Shutterstock is the clear looser this month. My personal rankings for July so far...

1. iStock (really?)
2. Dreamstime (another surprise)
3. Fotolia
4. Shutterstock (oddly enough this was my biggest earner last July)

I also wanted to add that Shutterstock is being outsold 2 to 1 by Fotolia.

29

Adobe Stock / Re: The new fotolia...low sales

« on: July 08, 2015, 09:34 »

Mine have actually increased and currently are outperforming Shutterstock for the month.

30

Shutterstock.com / Re: Shutterstock Reviewers Beating Me Up.... Anyone Else?

« on: July 02, 2015, 15:41 »

This whole reviewer thing is funny. They reject my images quite a bit for focus which is silly for bird photography. With an f4 lens, you will never have the subject completely in focus. The important focus point is the facial disk/ beak and eye. I just wait then resubmit until I find someone who actually gets it.

31

iStockPhoto.com / Re: Istock/Getty communication on Adobe Stock

« on: June 26, 2015, 13:52 »

Definitely a sign of desperation and shows just how much they think this will affect their business. IStock is only maybe a week or two of downloads ahead of my Dreamstime port and Fotolia is closing fast.

Sadly my largest port is with iStock and my sales are pitiful there compared to Shutterstock. I am waiting with great anticipation ,as I am sure others are, to see what will happen with Adobe Stock.

32

123RF / Removed

« on: April 30, 2015, 11:39 »

I recently removed all images from 123RF. I wasn't even competing or worth my effort.

33

Shutterstock.com / Re: Did you apply (get accepted) to OFFSET?

« on: April 30, 2015, 11:33 »

I applied and they told me to apply to shutterstock. Lol, I am already on shutterstock.

If you look at their curated collections they are quite nice and somewhat unique from shutterstock's guy shaking hands and iphone on white. Not that that is all shutterstock has.

Now, if you do a search directly and bypass their collections then you see quite a bit of crap. I inquired about this discrepancy and never got a response. My take on it is that it is a "club" of sorts where they are trying to find some unique photographers who are pushing the envelope a bit so they can market that to the end customers.

Are they any better than the best at Shutterstock? I don't know, maybe but I have seen quite a bit of junk also. Oh and they also look for photographers with clout. In other words, photographers who have a following on social media and who might have a podcast. I am not mentioning any names mind you

34

Shutterstock.com / Re: Shutterstock Reviewers Beating Me Up.... Anyone Else?

« on: April 30, 2015, 10:58 »

Within the last month or two I have noticed a huge problem with the consistency of the reviewers at Shutterstock. Sometimes I will slip in an image I know has been approved or is flawless as a litmus test and I can tell you that if they reject several they will reject that one also.

I think part of the problem is that photography is so subjective and the reviewers show that in their review process. They have always been picky about noise of any kind but I find any noise at all now is not tolerated. In my mind a little shadow noise is fine if it only shows up at 100%, but I will get rejected often with even small amounts of noise.

I wrote an article on my blog recently I was so disgusted. I think the blog entry is somewhat overly critical but I think I also made some valid points.

http://mattcuda.com/index.php?/essays/2015/03/shutterstock-inconsistancy/