Son of a %#!h!     I've got about 48 hours to finish a website for a client and I can't download the photos.  This happens each and every rare time I have a design job..... UGH.  I'm sorry folks.  It's my fault.

I second those congrats FreezingPics!  
I want to be just like you.    Perhaps I need to specialize in that adorable, cuddly Canadian icon - the beaver   since you already have the penguin and see if I can make beavers wildy popular (LOL).  

Hey, no ideas Sharply.  

Thanks for the link!

Oh, my.  If I ever submit there may my photos end up in the Judge Ross worst of the day?  I take it they are rejected submissions.... Oh, wouldn't that be embarrasing!

I think that a professional association would be much more suited to our needs and, if established well, could wield as much clout, if not more, than a union. 

This trend of thinking makes more sense to me.

(The skeptic in me wonders why someone hasn't already run with the idea and charged annual membership?)

Hi gang.   We seem to be a pretty diverse group, so I hope you don't mind if I post here in off-topic, and sorry it's so lengthy.  I'm wondering if anyone can share some tips with me, as this will be the biggest event I have done.  It is a week-long soccer tournament the end of August with approximitely 150 teams from 5 - 16 years of age.  This is a big deal around here, the municipality throws family days on the weekend, kids bouncers, tatoos, fireworks etc.

It sounds like the photographers didn't do much in past years.  They primarily want me to do stills for their sponsors, their website and all the winners on the final day of the tournament.   We have worked out a percentage I will pay the tournament for any additional work I get.

I had investigated action photography in the past and it seemed to me that it is a hit-or-miss thing.  If you make prints up, you risk not getting them back from the coach, or not enough interest to cover the cost of the prints.  Any one have experience?   

I could publish on a website, but the passion about these things dwindles as the days pass - and the thought of posting a few thousand photos does not excite me.  If you have positive experience with this, please share!

I'd really prefer to get advance bookings of some kind and am in the process of making up advertising inserts for 2000 families.  If any of you have done this sort of thing - or have been to a tournament and noticed what they are offering your kids - I'd love to hear about it!
Here's a couple things I can think of so far:

1.  Offering traditional team photo packages.  (A lot of teams missed their photo days due to rain this spring.)

2.  Taking pre-bookings to make individual posters.   But how much should I charge?  It costs me $20 to order a 16x20 print.  No I won't print at Costco or Walmart.   8x10s are only $2.50 - but that isn't big enough is it?

Ideally, if I could book 3 or 4 individual kids to shoot at one game the prices could be lower for those three.  How many kids can I concentrate on in an hour.  Is 4 about the limit? 

3.  My nephew's volleyball team paid a tournament photographer $150 for a disc full of action photos plus a team photo.  The team split the cost and made copies.  Does this sound like a reasonable price?  It sounds like a lot but consider it's about an hour and half of shooting, plus post processing, less comission... then there's taxes, do I include them, or add to the top?  And also the fact that I'd be giving away files.  If it was Toronto, I'd say $150 is a bargain, but this is a notoriously cheap province.

Would I give full 10mb files?

4.  They have not had a photo-booth in the past and the coordinator wondered if I might have one. I am just a one-person show and my husband is not remotely interested in learning how to hold a camera, or to work with any computer program other than Exel.  I've made loads of templates I could try to sell, magazine covers, wanted posters, motivational etc.  BUT, I would have to do strictly the booth on the big fair day. 

Would I need a dye-sub printer?  Or would this be a good excuse to buy that $700 Canon wide-bed photo printer I've been looking at?   No, I'm not rich - I'm definitely on the struggling side of artist so let me clarify that it was the 90's the last time I bought a printer, hopefully I'll make a good choice again - but do I need dye-sub for this?  There's a couple other events I would be able to do then, plus I make nursery schools wait for their Santa Clause photos... could be used there as well and perhaps I could get more Santa jobs.

Hopefully a few of you can offer me a few tidbits from your experience.  I really appreciate all you can offer.  (Apoligies that this is so long-winded).

Dragging up an old thread here... but it seems like they are back to a fast review pace again.  Uploaded 2 last night and they were in my port this morning. 

- Some sites you must earn $100 before payout (unresonable).
- One site is $30 (reasonable).
- The most reasonable site (in my opinion) has a $50 payout with no fees, or you can request funds earlier by paying a couple credits.

Many will never reach a cashout at $100 so in effect the agency is witholding their earnings which is illegal in most civilized countries. 

Which category would you like your site to fall into?  I hope you would like to be thought of as honest, ethical, nurturing to the community that makes your business possible? 

Also:  If you would like to study how NOT to launch, read about SnapVillage in this posthttp://www.microstockgroup.com/index.php?topic=1982.0

Also, if you read these forums LuckyOliver is also a yearling - the sales aren't there yet, but they have groomed a seriously loyal and dedicated community.  They are a fresh and exciting site that treats everyone with RESPECT.  Most of the others are rigid and anonymous.  At LO (and StockXpert - don't forget Steve) there's real people who have a real presence.

Good luck to you, and keep us posted

Traveler, I enjoy hearing your perspective.  First, I must say that for you to earn $90,000 per year shooting stock would put you into Icon status in my books and would very much like to see a link to your portfolios if you wouldn't mind sharing.

To be fair, I don't think many macros would take Joe's pocket camera submissions seriously.  A lot of microstockers started on public photo sharing sites and evolved into submitting to agencies, updating to a Rebel... having more and more success.  Myself, I found this as part of a family-life change.  I lived in a big city with a good job, then we started a family, husband had a job transfer to a small prairie city... salaries here suck, and I didn't feel it was worth it to work for someone else for lousy wages, and well my digital imaging business just evolved.  I didn't even know "micro" stock existed until last year when I needed images for a travel client.  

While a lot of microstockers could be labeled "hobbyist", there are serious kick-ass photographers making staggering sums of money - Lise Gagne at Istock for example was recently reported (NY Times?) at making over $100k/year - but that girl must work her *ss off too.

When I started submitting it was a thrill just to have a photo accepted.  I had no clue that that quantity meant nothing.  My idea about that has changed and submissions are now very deliberate. 

My knowledge and photography/photoshop skills continue to grow on a daily basis.  Personally, I'm not ready for macro.  But, hopefully next year at this time I will be. 

So, I sell photos for 25 cents.  I also sold one this week for $20, and two last week for $17.50.   I know it's taboo to talk money, but by the end of July I will have made $1000 this year with the disclaimer that I didn't really start "quality over quantity" uploading until February and I've only been on the 2 "best" agencies since March - with 6 on one and 30 on the other.  My portfolio is hardly macro caliber - but I'm still getting cashouts.

As a professional on the other side of the grass, how many times does a macro photo sell per year?  Based on your earnings your average is about $90 per photo per year.  If I took all the crap out of my portfolio and whittled it down to the 20 that actually sell on a regular basis, I wouldn't be far away from that average.

I'm sorry to stereotype you Traveler, but I assume you are a highly skilled and exceptionally talented photographer.  I also bet that stock may not your primary income either. 

I know micro must look like a serious insult to a professional such as your self.  It's the digital evolution.  No business can be taken seriously without slick marketing and the imagery in their ads.  Small businesses simply can't pay macro prices.  Ladies making church bulletins cannot pay macro prices.  I predict this thing is going to level out at some point.  Micro may be - not so great quality - and Istock and the likes will be charging perhaps double what they do now.

Back to the original question.   Am I a serious microstocker?  No, of course not - I've shared my numbers.  Could I be?  Yes.  I am so convinced of this that I could see myself moving towards this very thing over the next couple of years.  (No more deadlines.  No more phone calls.  No pleading with the lab to rush 100 photos through by noon.)  The first years would be lean - but think of a real estate agent - all the training, the tough first years - then the referrals come in and after 5 years or so the same clients sell and buy again.  I would hopefully get out of it what I have the time to put into it.

And would I try macro.  Definitely.  But, this microstocker ain't ready yet.

I just got approval today and would like to start uploading, but I'm hung up on the ones with more than one model.    Also, found the 2nd answer  on their forum and you have to reupload those application photos.  (I asked about this on their forum too, but no replies yet).

Is it Istock where you need to paste jpegs of model releases together?  Do I need to do this too for StockXpert?  Or can I add several releases somehow?

My sales were picking up quite nicely.  Then last week I uploaded about 20.  I also opened up each old file and fiddled around with the order of the keywords and made sure my pricing was correct for the ELs. 

Havent had a sale since.  Haven't had a view on the new files yet.  Did I mess things up when I fiddled with all my files?  It seemed like things were really looking up till I did that.

Also, one previous submission has been in a pending state since July 11.

It's quite a useful image I suspect.  Actually today I had to double check and ad in the paper if it was yours, there was a local Toyota sale and it used a similar (but with sunglasses) - having their "Sunshine Sale".

Would the output resolution not depend on the size you print it at?  A 4 megapixel has 4 million megapixels, a 16 has 16 million.  If you are printing at 300dpi with no cropping, the 16 would still be 4 times larger?

When it comes to stock approval it should be judged upon viewing at 100% size so the "illusion" of artifacts/noise shouldn't come into play.  I know that some of the book publishers (i.e. mypublisher it think) want the photos downsampled to 5 mp, the larger files appear blurry in their finished products.  I think regular photolabs have software that take care of that problem though.

But, what do I know?