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Messages - Pixart
2826
« on: November 20, 2007, 11:33 »
I am clipping this from the talkmicro forum. I hope that's okay to do, but I thought it was important for everyone to read.
Today, 03:17 PM
cphoto
StockXpert and Fotolia accounts hijacked
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I can't believe it! Someone did actually hijacked my StockXpert account, and shortly after that my Fotolia account.
I contacted both agencies immediately, Fotolia was the most reactive, they asked me to call them and then canceled the credit conversion that the guy was trying to do.
StockXpert is currently investigating, I hope they will be able to recover my money (I had over $100).
Anyway I wonder how that could have happened because my password are impossible to guess and I only check my accounts on my personal computers
Of course I changed my password everywhere else, and interestingly enough only StockXpert and FL were hijacked. (I'm with about 10 agencies)
and later...
cphoto
No kidding! Now I won't complain anymore that it takes a couple of days to cash out!
So with FTL the guy tried to convert ALL my credits to buy images, but they locked my account just in time.
With StockXpert, the guy changed my email, password, and paypal address and tried to cash out. But the StockXpert team got my emails just on time and recovered my account.
That was very close!!
2827
« on: November 20, 2007, 11:19 »
They have disabled uploading while they are upgrading. It was in the blog, I can't remember when they expect to enable it again.
2828
« on: November 17, 2007, 13:46 »
Interesting read for a Microstock Taliban (I didn't know I was so elite).
I myself don't understand enough about rights managed. Does that mean that once it is sold it cannot be sold again for the period of the license? 10 years for $69? When they are talking $, is that the amount in their piggy bank, or the amount of the transaction? Just think of what they could make at Istock in 10 years.
Boy, those macro shooters sure hate us, don't they. Industries evolve and advance, boys! I remember when I moved to Toronto in late 80's and it cost about $1.20 a minute to call home. My bills were easily a couple hundred a month. Open up the market, and flash forward a couple decades and now I pay $40 a month for my entire telephone service and long distance and that includes calls to the U.S. and most of Europe.
I can see why macro shooters are angry at what is happening to their income, but if they want to survive they have to suck it up and adapt.
2830
« on: November 16, 2007, 14:04 »
Sold today! A typical Saskatchewan farm yard. Although, very poorly composed if I must say so myself. My agriculture shots have been selling quite well this week. Must be the season for farm photos I guess. Here, I thought would do better in spring.  This is one of the shots on my list that might be culled when my port has a little more mass. What are your thoughts about cleaning out your portfolio? Lee wrote an interesting blog on the subject that you will find here: http://www.microstockdiaries.com/does-deleting-your-non-selling-photos-help-or-harm-your-earnings.html
2831
« on: November 15, 2007, 16:03 »
They have the highest acceptance rate out of them all ('cept Mostphotos who doesn't inspect). In some ways, accepting more than the other agencies is a good thing, they certainly have a database that cannot be found on IS, StockXpert or SS. And I do like the let the buyer determine what is best approach.
Searches really need to be improved. New images are NEVER seen any more. It seems the only way to get any attention is to swap image comments. So, even the crappiest snapshot with lots of comments floats to the top of searches.
I'm just not so sure if buyers accustomed to the quality at Istock would be enticed to switch agencies. I hope they don't give LO a chance only to be turned off by their first couple of searches.
We do most of our purchasing at DT - mostly because the have quite a good database and the contributer in me is impressed that they give 50% to those who make their agency possible. The IS database is YEARS ahead of everyone, but I hate throwing them business unless I have to for the opposite reason I like to give it to DT.
2832
« on: November 14, 2007, 20:00 »
Pen, go to the page with your photo. Right click. Copy the address. Come back here and use the insert image button which will give you this:  place the photo address in the middle. (Hit preview to see if you got it right). I'd post it for you but that would take the fun of trying!
2833
« on: November 14, 2007, 12:23 »
I have had more downloads at FT than DT so far this month (but much lower earnings). Something has definitely happened. I like it.
2834
« on: November 13, 2007, 23:18 »
Uhm... I'm not familiar with what goes on at Crestock - or with laws that protect public personas. Is the Bush photo from their library? Is it public domain? Is it released? Do they sell editorial? Could he sue for defamation?
Oh boy.
2835
« on: November 13, 2007, 11:00 »
I have lost so many jobs due to bankruptcies, sale by owner etc. I would have a difficult time trusting a single agency. Could you imagine if this was all you did and lost your sole source of income? Sure you could then upload your port everywhere else, but that would be some big hit in income.
2836
« on: November 13, 2007, 10:56 »
Boy, that's a thourough reviewer. Where are you located? Would YOU like to travel to Calgary Alberta Canada to attend arbitration? It won't help you with this person's release, but you should consider reading through the release (Istock's obviously) and inserting your own language into future releases.
2837
« on: November 12, 2007, 16:31 »
I just checked, the last time I purchased the receipt was in U.S. $.
2838
« on: November 12, 2007, 13:37 »
edited: duh, I just looked up the link and posted it and penguin man had already done it!!! (welcome Freezing). Just read it first you may have to remove things like country, province of, etc.
2839
« on: November 12, 2007, 10:54 »
We have had several discussions about the current value of the U.S. $.
Last night I was looking at buying credits at Istock and they are charging in Canadian dollars. I haven't purchased there in a long time, but I am quite certain that I paid in U.S. $ the last time I did.
When I log into the new 123 site, it says "buy photos from .25 CDN".
I wondered if it's because I'm at a Canadian IP - but I expect these guys are taking advantage of the Canadian dollar. (But, of course, my earnings are still marked U.S.$)
If they are charging in Canadian and paying in U.S., what exchange rate are they giving contributors? Shoot, first paypal's crappy exchange rate and now agencies!!!
2840
« on: November 12, 2007, 10:42 »
I noticed that Ron Chapple puts a unique number in his keywords. LOL, if you have 12,000+ ms photos you have to keep them straight somehow!
2841
« on: November 12, 2007, 10:37 »
I'm shocked. I always have in the back of my head that SS is the site that "only pays 30 cents" (well 25 until October!) so I was totally shocked when I saw what my $ per month per image is. Last month $1.35, every month over $1 and in April - my second month there it was $3.23. Those 25/30 cent sales sure add up.
2842
« on: November 11, 2007, 20:45 »
Just goes to illustrate one of my pet-peaves. I wish we could keep record our own file system, but once our photos are adopted into databases they lose our unique coding. It would be so much easier for contributors if they remembered own numbering system under our private user preferences.
2843
« on: November 11, 2007, 20:23 »
You are saying that the order of the keywords makes a difference in the search engine? Hmmm....
I clued in late at this about adding IPTC in photoshop. I was too lazy to try something new for the first six months. Then I started finding new sites and oh, boy, wish everything was just attached to the photo! Now, every photo is keyworded with the most important at the top. Mainly because of Fotolia. Then I don't have to reorder them after upload - it's important on FT that the most important are in the first 7. Others, like DT, for example, reorganize your keywords alphabetically. I also try to put in as many variations of the same word as possible. skate, skates, skating, skater... SS will disqualify two of them, but some sites will not find "skate" on "skates" searches.
2844
« on: November 11, 2007, 17:00 »
The most important keywords in title, description and appearing first in list of keywords.
2845
« on: November 11, 2007, 16:50 »
Just last week I added up my sales for some "cute puppy pix". Maybe 5 pix in series, not exactly a popular series in itself - but what I was very surprised to discover is that I sold more cute puppy photos from the series on BIGSTOCK than any other site. Maybe it's the site to sent that pet photo that you love so much but wouldn't think of submitting.
2846
« on: November 09, 2007, 16:00 »
I forget who it was, they had a request for RAW, submitted it - and it was downloaded as a subscription. BUMMER.
2847
« on: November 09, 2007, 11:27 »
It didn't look like that this morning! Looks good though.
Question - on my home page it says "for as little as CAD $.25".
I haven't been there long enough to cash out yet, don't they pay in $U.S. ?
Maybe it says buy in "CAD" because their system knows I'm in Canada?
2848
« on: November 09, 2007, 10:54 »
Hey guys, saw your featured galleries in the recent StockXpert newsletter. Good stuff, I hope your sales double, TRIPLE from the attention!
2849
« on: November 09, 2007, 10:00 »
I know this is a search engine thread, but I find these numbers quite revealing.
In the past couple weeks I reached 500 lifetime sales at both DT and Istock.
DT - started uploading in about Jan 06 - 217 photos
IS - started uploading Mar 07 - 23 photos
That's quite a difference in size - I was at DT for a long time before I turned onto the other sites (dumb!) and to be fair, at least 100 of the early photos at DT are really not stock in the end, so they should be disqualified when comparing sizes.
I've only sent a few to IS knowing darn well they don't want to see anything else. Still, my reject rate is around 50%.
I find it mind boggling that IS could sell that many photos in so little time. But I have a huge mental block sending stuff to them. They are like an abusive spouse that I love and hate at the same time. Since individual sales are at the same level - I can see the overall earnings are at least 40% higher at DT with the same number of sales.
DT has always been consistant for me. It seems I have bursts of sales, and then doldrums. When the month is over, the actual number of sales is quite predictable.
2850
« on: November 08, 2007, 16:25 »
Pixart,great looking to read more then:)
I did a test between vertical and horizontal shots with few pics and got interesting results will post it on my blog
Good luck for the x-mas cards 
Hey, nice looking blog. Let me know when you write your story. I notice you don't have a referral badge for StockXpert. I tried earlier and just gave up. Finally, got back to it this morning and came up with something. When I was looking around at other people's blogs I couldn't find a StockXpert badge and wondered if it's not just me - that there is something wrong with the code StockXpert has on their site. You have to apply first to get a referral id. I manged to figure out some code if you want it to make your own StockXpert referral badge I can send it to you.
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