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Messages - cthoman
3476
« on: November 16, 2009, 12:56 »
I've bought a few nature landscape photos. Most of them were for car dealership ads, so it was basically looking for ones that I could Photoshop a car into. Which is a tough task to find ones that have the right perspective and an appropriate seasonal theme.
3477
« on: November 12, 2009, 13:06 »
For me, the month started off really awful, but the last couple days have really made up a lot of ground. I'm not sure if I see anything out of the ordinary there yet. Maybe one more day like this and I'll start buying into your theories. On the other hand, my ODs have pretty much disappeared at Shutterstock.
My other thought would be you could just be having a randomly good month. One of those months that is so great it takes you a while to top and busts the bell curve on your stats. I say enjoy it regardless of the reason!
3478
« on: November 10, 2009, 12:57 »
The thing I'm seeing - if there is any trend yet at all - is stronger sales on SS and almost nothing changing on BigStock. It wouldn't really make sense to try to move volume away from your flagship site to a newly acquired competitor - more logical would be to do things the other way around - kinda like IS are doing with StockXpert. Personally I'm not expecting to see a big move to BigStock, more the opposite.
That makes sense. I can't say I've seen much happening different at either, but I didn't really expect anything to happen overnight.
3479
« on: November 10, 2009, 10:17 »
I don't see a choice of "about the same". Can't respond to this poll because nothing fits.
I kind of felt the same. My income was going steadily up through June, then was way down from July to September. Now, it seems to be back to June levels. RPD is up and down, but usually somewhere above $1.
3480
« on: November 09, 2009, 14:27 »
iStock is pretty lenient with alternate versions for illustrations. Other agencies like Dreamstime or Fotolia will most likely reject similar images in the same upload batch.
3481
« on: November 09, 2009, 12:46 »
well i don't know...but this post was a "what do you LIKE about DT" post...  
Yeah, I think the haters took it over. Let's see... I like that I make money on Dreamstime because if I didn't I wouldn't contribute there.  Was that too obvious? I also like that they tell you what keywords were used to download your image. They also have a decent referral program.
3482
« on: November 09, 2009, 11:19 »
Not sure if this was mentioned, but isn't the simple solution to leave StockXpert content on the partner sites and just open up the partner sites to istock exclusives.
3483
« on: November 05, 2009, 10:56 »
It looks like they like to complain over there just as much as we do. I can understand the frustration though. Clients tend to hire you for the things that are in your portfolio. You end up doing the same thing over and over. On one hand, it makes the jobs pretty quick and easy, but it can be frustrating. Especially if you have to explain things like copyright and plagiarism to them because something is too similar.
3484
« on: November 04, 2009, 16:19 »
Command+Shift+3 on a Mac
3485
« on: November 04, 2009, 16:10 »
I think the $3 sales are for eps files. I have a bunch of them, so I assume that is what they are for.
It will suck if they eliminate OD's, but I can't really freak out about it since it is just a rumor right now. Plus, Shutterstock was a good earner before ODs, and they'll still be a good earner if they eliminate them. I think this whole experiment really solidifies my feelings on not being exclusive with any agency. You never really know when an agency is going to do something crazy or stupid, so you better have your images ready for customers to buy somewhere else.
3486
« on: November 04, 2009, 01:27 »
You can add an additional email address to your paypal account. Zazzle did this to me once and that is how I resolved it.
Edit: It's under Profile > Add or Edit Email. Hope that helps.
3487
« on: November 02, 2009, 09:59 »
A "Work for Hire" contract usually covers a rights transfer for freelancers. I assume that would probably work. Like some of the others said, I'm also a little skeptical whether you would make enough from your work to pay a freelancer. But, I guess you don't know until you try.
3488
« on: October 30, 2009, 13:25 »
Yeah, I read that as well in the forum and was wondering where it was. Maybe, it was added to the page of your "flagged for free" files?
3489
« on: October 29, 2009, 23:25 »
I use Wordpress as well. There are also a number of free options like Blogger.com or Wordpress.com too.
3490
« on: October 29, 2009, 12:47 »
Wow! That's pretty shocking and will put a pretty big dent in my income there. I'm still hoping it isn't true.
3491
« on: October 29, 2009, 11:42 »
I've had an OD today as well. I can't imagine that they would remove OD's. I would think they are a huge cash cow for Shutterstock.
3492
« on: October 23, 2009, 11:39 »
It's funny because I read the Level Ground post on Fotolia's blog the day this thread started, but now it appears to be gone.
edit: My mistake. It is still there, but not on the front page anymore.
3493
« on: October 22, 2009, 13:59 »
Well, I applied and filled out the form. I figured there was nothing to lose.
To anyone that filled out the form, did you see the "Add More" button that they were referring to on the form?
3494
« on: October 22, 2009, 12:37 »
That is definitely a fair point and I can't deny your logic. Keep in mind however that when the criteria for Emerald was switched from 10,000 sales I had somewhere around 9,985 sales under my belt. In my very biased opinion I feel that I have earned the rank of Emerald but again, you make a fair point. I am grateful for the rank crank and appreciate my high commission rate and flexibility with pricing.
I appreciate your honesty and I think a lot of us hope for the best with any change as well. Although, we all have been burned before, so we plan for the worst too. If it is not for the existing contributors, it just doesn't make sense to a lot of us that we could delete our portfolios and get emerald status tomorrow instead of several years from now by keeping our portfolio on Fotolia. Personally, I'd endure the pain of reuploading my entire portfolio to have a shortcut to emerald.
3495
« on: October 22, 2009, 00:25 »
I don't see why people that weren't contributing to Fotolia before wouldn't want to now. There is strong momentum with increased visibility in the market and the commission rate for photographers is so much higher than it is at I-stock. Doesn't I-Stock pay somewhere around 20% commissions? At Fotolia I am getting 55% commission and can charge $5 for XS files and $30 for XL if I want to (though I choose the $3-$18 range instead).
Whoever posted about the professionalism of micro-stock hit the nail on the head in my opinion. It's not a market for amateurs anymore. So many of the big dogs have made the switch. The switchover from macro to micro reminds me of the reluctance to switch from film to digital. It took a while to get the ball rolling but once it did there was no stopping it.
Ditto on what Traveler said. Is it open to existing contributors?
3496
« on: October 21, 2009, 21:14 »
I think I meet all the criteria to be bumped up to emerald. The only problem is my 1000+ images are already on Fotolia. Way to kick us below the belt Fotolia. So should we hire a lawyer to find a loophole in this? Johnny Cochran give me strength. 
3497
« on: October 12, 2009, 18:13 »
Well, I tried to promise myself I would stop complaining about things, but this got under my skin a little. Dreamstime wants us to NOT add the keyword "vector" to our illustrations until after the eps file is approved. Here's the thread for anyone interested: http://www.dreamstime.com/thread_18912I'm sick of arguing about silly things like this, so I'm just going to roll my eyes and move on. I'll just add that to my growing list of how to prep my illustrations for each different agency. Maybe it is time for iSyndica.
3498
« on: October 12, 2009, 18:00 »
I suppose there is always somebody that will do it for cheap, but it seems like you would eat into your profits quite a bit by hiring someone to do the work for you.
3499
« on: October 09, 2009, 09:19 »
Good idea for a poll. I was thinking something like this would be interesting to see.
3500
« on: October 06, 2009, 00:08 »
You forgot vectors 
Yep, vectors... the redheaded step child of microstock.
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