Quote from: dirkr on February 05, 2013, 15:53
I don't think you need an EL on either of those sites for a book cover.
Anyway, if you want to check on FL you can sort the "sold files" list by image id, that may make it easier.

That turned out to be the fastest method although still required couple of minutes of pointless clicking just to get to the info that's just one click away on DS and SS.

Turns out I did not get an EL from Fotolia as well. 

The image in question was uploaded only to Shutterstock, Fotolia, Alamy and Dreamstime.

I have one image that has been used as a book cover and I checked on all sites but Fotolia and it was not sold as an EL elsewhere. Apart from going through all the downloads in the 'sold files' page and looking for that one particular sale is there a faster way ?

OK. I feel a little bit relieved that it's not only me. At least we can hope they will resolve it faster than an individual case.

I just received the usual e-mail with payout confirmation from SS and the total sum is missing a significant amount (about 30% of my gross earnings, so nothing to do with the tax withholding). Has anything similar happened to anybody.

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admin edit: fixed the subject to be more descriptive.

My 7 day ranking stayed in the 120-100 range for some time now (my record high was 80), but to be honest it's not the level of earnings that one could live of. I don't see how someone could be an exclusive @ Fotolia and make a living in a first world country. Unless you're in the top20-30 it would be extremly hard to be a 'full-timer'.

Not sure if that cheers anyone up, but it's not only your drop in relative performance, but the actual earnings at the top aren't  that great.

Quote from: Colette on January 09, 2013, 17:09
Must be simple. Wherefore does Her majesty has Her servants? 

Haha ... I wish it was true.

Keywording is by far the most annoying thing for me. Since all off my IPTC-saved keywords get imported to Alamy as 'comprehensive keywords' I just cut and paste one by one all the words, but it's a very slow process. Anyone found a way to speed this up ? I have another 90+ images waiting ....

Funny thing is I had two in January (2nd and 3rd) that were still the 60% ones. Just today got the first 50/50 cut.

Quote from: luissantos84 on January 06, 2013, 15:52
a very low January and why? I would say because ....

By a 'very slow January' you mean the first 6 days including January 1st and two weekend days ? I really don't know what's going on .. 

I honestly think the transition was pretty smooth. Went better than I would expect.
I think you'll grow sales on both SS and Pond5 for the next few months. Looks like you'll be making more than previously in a relatively short span of time. Revostock, for me at least, was a bit of a waste of time, although I know some people get regular sales over there. For me even Fotolia does better (and you can opt-out of the subscription sales for footage).
Good luck.

Quote from: Poncke on January 03, 2013, 17:27

Quote from: jsnover on December 27, 2012, 22:50
I have often found the Adobe reps in the user forums to be pretty unsympathetic at best and snarky frequently. When you need their help, you put up with their bad attitude Sort of like stock agencies - when they sell well, you put up with their SH*t...

I have to say I do have the exact same problem the OP in that Adobe thread is explaining about PS locking up all memory after working on a large pano. Even when I close the file. So I do restart PS as well, to clear up the memory and then its fine. So that admin in that thread is a bit thick imo as what he is saying is simply not true. PS does have a memory issue after having worked with really large files.

edit -> purge -> all should do the trick.

Quote from: stockmarketer on January 02, 2013, 15:45
I was going to say the agencies are probably giving him special treatment because of the volume of his sales, but that's not the case on DT... he only has 390 images there and his downloads per image is only 0.44. 

Unfortunately from my own experience I can say that Shutterstock at least, does favor some people. I have twice reported a situation when my work was copied (not directly stolen, but recreated to a degree that it was a clear plagiarism). In the first case they acted immediately and within a day or two the images were removed. The second time it took them a month to answer and informed me they won't do a thing. The second user had over 10 thousand images and was definitely doing very well (my guess is he's in the top50 at least).

By the way the MaxPhotographer's port is still online although with only 15 images. So it looks like you can do whatever you want and if you get caught the worst thing that can happen is that you won't be allowed to continue. You get to keep the money and keep your account.

I'm using, the one you already mentioned, quicktimes MOV with the PhotoJPEG codec. Never ever had any issues with stock agencies, including mid- and macro- ones. 

I actually think that iStock failure would be a good thing for the whole industry. It's one of the companies that took the commission levels to record lows, the discussion boards over there have a level of freedom similar to  North Korea and they present to me a complete lack of communication with photographers.
So if a company like that fails and a company  like Shutterstock or Dreamstime (just an example) grows it is a good thing. Maybe the next greedy *insult removed* that thinks about squeezing contributors like a lemon, will see it's not a good idea.
It could have just as well been the opposite and with Getty's support iStock could have succeeded. I think that would have been a much worst scenario.

I doubt we will see the day iStock changes their policies, so for all the exclusives I just wish you will as soon as possible drop the contract with iStock and start selling your work on other sites. You have other options.

Nice to know it's not really Getty. Any other 'surprises' over at Zoonar. Not that there are too many sales in the first place.

Just to give you and example, last year first half of December made up 70% of the month earnings. So I expect that sales will slow down after this weekend.
As for January for me only the first few days are a bit slower and as for February you need to remember there are fewer days as well. March is typically a good month.

As for the question whether you should upload or not, there is no good answer. The pros would be less competition and faster reviews (hopefully), the cons are obviously less clients and less sales. I personally upload constantly whenever I have something to upload, but that's just me.

First of all ignore all the people asking for your port. That's the last thing you should be doing at the moment.

I did go full time and it took me only a year to make up for the loss of income from my 'day job'. Since you are already making much more from stock it's not that important I guess. The change in life's quality is so great that it's worth it even if you would be earning less.

Thanks for the answer. I wouldn't be surprised if IRS taxed our money going through PayPal as well.
Whenever I think about the fact that all non-US microstockers pay taxes to the US government I somehow remember the old 'no taxation without representation' line. Oh sweet irony!

does PayPal send those papers only to people from US or do they send them to everyone, no matter where one lives. I have not yet received ANY papers from PP.

For some reason it always takes more time (up to two weeks)
And as for US banks ... the experiences I had with clients from 'Merica sending me money were usually horrible and surprisingly US banks are behind rest of the world with technology (the fact that in the 21st century people are willingly using paper checks just blows my mind ).

BME as well. High hopes for November. 
And yes, I did notice a slight slowdown since last Thursday.

Quote from: Poncke on October 31, 2012, 00:16I guess the dollar is not too low.

That's not the point. Some people (not many I give you that) are making way more. There are a few people with just a few hundred images making a couple of thousand dollars a month. Nevertheless that's a very small group so statistically speaking irrelevant.

It really depends what are you doing. There's a huge difference between illustrators and simple isolation shots for example when it comes to RPI.

Quote from: gostwyck on October 29, 2012, 11:20
Good luck waiting for a sale of 0.0005 credits then! My guess is that these figures are generated by their internal currency/credit exchange rates.

I don't think so. I believe Fotolia uses their own 'credits' so on the contributor side you shouldn't be affected by which currency the buyer uses. I guess it must have something to do with tax withholding.
I do wish they would either send payouts once a month, or process them quicker. Takes always a while. Long enough for me that I'm sending another payout request as soon as the previous one gets processed. So I'm in a permanent 'payment pending' state