Interesting service. Does a nice job of bulk finding files instead of having to do the Google image search one at a time. Has some nice options for submitting a case, DCMA takedown, and flagging for later use. I'm showing 13,000 matches. I could spend hours wandering through this.

One thing I already knew was a problem is FineArtAmerica. I have probably hundreds of images with their watermark being used on personal Twitter accounts, Facebook, blogs, couple's wedding websites, and on and on. And then there's all of the commercial sites where images are cropped right where the FAA watermark should be. And that's part of the problem with RF and micro. Almost all of those images have been in micro so there's almost no way of telling what's licensed or stolen. All of my newer stuff is only available through RM on my site so if it shows up somewhere that I'm not showing as a customer there's no doubt it's stolen.

I've been wanting to go after infringers so Pixsy may be a good place to start.

ETA: Looks like freeimages . com has copied the entire Istock image library.

I currently sell stock and prints direct. I'm going to eventually add video so I can only really comment on the direct sales part.

I use both Photodeck and Photoshelter because they met my specific requirements. Both support video but only Photodeck allows direct uploads where Photoshelter only supports a reference to a file stored elsewhere. Both sites are turnkey cloud based rental models. No coding is necessary. You sign up, pay, and you have a site ready to configure design and add video or images. Both support some SEO configuration but Photodeck's are more advanced. But SEO configuration is only part of SEO. To be successful at driving traffic and sales you really need to understand the SEO strategy or some other ways of driving traffic through social media, email marketing, or whatever.

The good news is if you can come up with a strategy for traffic, brand, pricing, target buyers, etc that there are buyers. My stock and print work is fairly unique and priced high. So I don't have a lot of sales volume but at my price point it way more than makes up for the lack of sales volume. I had a multiple print sale to a business yesterday that was $2,500.

I still have some stuff in micro but it's really only stuff that is so common that I don't think anyone would pay more than micro pricing for it.

Regarding no more agencies, I plan to have a mix of both direct and distributors. I think it's a good idea to spread sales over multiple sales channels. That way if something happens to one of them, like Google does a massive change and my site traffic drops to zero, I still have other income.

Good luck.

Having Deja Vu yet again.

Here's a quote from this article. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d2e39a0a-eaa0-11e5-bb79-2303682345c8.html#axzz45BJ8Fzam

Christian Toksvig, the start-up�s founder, knows the industry well: he was previously vice-president of business development at Getty, the market leader. But the entrepreneur insists that �we�re not trying to disrupt or steal their business�. Stock Unlimited targets those who have never previously paid for professional imagery because of its expense.

Where have I heard this before? Oh yeah. Microstock. And of course we all know micro had no affect on image prices.

I'm on the wrong side of this business.

I keep most of my RAW's but never jpegs.. once the jpeg has been uploaded or delivered to the client - they're deleted.

I mean if I ever need that jpeg again, i just export another copy from Lr.

What happens if your RAW file gets corrupt? I've had quite a few problems with LR file corruption. The file gets a "!" icon and when you click it, it says something like "Lightroom cannot read this file".

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on April 03, 2016, 10:10

Also, if you don't have a paid account there, that's probably another reason. It's a numbers game. Unless you're already world famous or have the most amazing work, you're not going to get sales with 30 images. I have almost 2,000 images there and had around 300 sales last year.

so you think the game rules change too???
i remember when you were with istock exclusive, you said it's not the number but the quality.
you said you sold more with less.

The rules always change. Obviously ideally the best thing to have would be a huge quantity of amazing sellable images. But I'd rather have 100 amazing highly sellable images than 10,000 pictures that nobody is interested in buying.

Sorry to ask. What do you mean by SEO optimisation? Some photos I turned into digital art. I don't have a website of my own. I just add photos onto their website. I don't have a paid account there. I spend a lot of time on these photos. Microstock only gets the easy to shoot photos from me. They don't get holiday photos either from me unless it is one that isn't excellent for digital art or canvas prints. I went through a holiday brochure today and someone took a stunning photo in the golden hour in the morning. I wondered if the photographer had put this stunning image on microstock. I just hope he hasn't. He/she should get lots of money for it. It's just stunningly beautiful.

There is a ton of information on SEO. It means Search Engine Optimization. And I don't mean the old methods of gaming or tricking the search engines. SEO optimization just really means adding the right content (titles, keywords, descriptions, etc) so that more buyers can find your images. If you respond with "I already do titles, keywords, descriptions, etc" I'm sure you do, but that fact that you don't know what SEO is means your stuff isn't optimized which is the important part.

I've seen plenty of contributors say they add titles, keywords, descriptions, etc. I then look at their work and their title for a picture of a cat on a sofa says something like "Furry Love" or even "DSC_1234.jpg". Search engines use all of this data to try and match your image to a buyer search. If a buyer is searching for "Cat on a sofa" it is going to give better search placement to an image that has more content of "Cat on a sofa" then "Furry Love" or "DSC_1234.jpg". And that's just the beginning. There are so many little intricacies of SEO that affect search placement such the order of your words. Meaning "Cat on a sofa" will get different search placement than "Sofa with a cat". And it also matters what buyers are searching for. If 1,000,000 people per month search for "Sofa with a cat" vs 10 people per month searching for "Cat on a sofa" it would probably be better to have "Sofa with a cat". I've been studying SEO for close to 20 years. It's a huge and complex topic. It also may be changing again because of new image recognition technology that may make titles, keywords, descriptions, etc less relevant.

Photoshelter has a good primer on it so I'd suggest searching "Photoshelter SEO" and reviewing the doc. 

No, I don't have the microstock images on FAA. I have completely different photos on there. Microstock is not getting photos from me which I shot for hanging on someone's walls. Microstock is not getting sunrises or sunsets...from me when all I get is a few cent. These photos were taken specifically for hanging up inside someone's living room...

Okay then, sounds like you have a strategy. There are a ton of posts about sales on FAA and there are a lot of reasons why people may not be selling. I sell quite a bit there and in my opinion the most important things that most artists seem to dismiss is SEO optimization. I believe an average image that has high visibility will outsell an amazing image that no one sees.

Ughhh. I knew this was coming at some point. And this sucks because FAA has really been doing well for me. Subscriptions eventually destroy everything for contributors of every artist industry. I'm not interested in going from selling $50, $500 and $5,000 prints to getting a few cents a month.

I think I'll focus even more on Alamy (50% share) now

No agency is immune to cuts. I like Alamy but they cut commissions to open a New York office. They all do it.

Me neither

I have both Photoshelter and Photodeck websites with mostly RM licenses. Photoshelter uses the Fotoquote system and uses the traditional multiple selection process to get a price. Photodeck offers a couple different RM options and is totally customizable. I took their PLUS model and changed it to my needs. The buyer really only needs to pick from a handful of types (Advertising, Editorial, Personal Use, etc) and then selects a use duration (1 week, 1 month 1 year, etc).

Of your two models of course the buyers will like the most simple method. This usually is unlimited usage for a small fee. And of course sellers like the second model which is usually limited usage for a higher fee. Problem is with one fee what should it be? $1? $100? $500? Too low and you leave money on the table. Too high and you scare aware buyers.

I'm not interested in unlimited licensing for my personal site. Your option 1 may be fine for agencies selling high volume/low cost but it would be extremely difficult to generate the volume that would be required to be profitable on a personal site. This simple licensing seems to have been created to benefit the buyer and agency with little consideration for the producer. Yesterday I sold a single-use five-year RM license for $450. But I'm mostly targeting commercial buyers who are willing to pay high prices.

Success with either model largely depends on strategy. If you have unique work you only sell through your site buyers are likely to put up with the 2nd model and higher prices. If you sell the same stuff on your site with the same prices as micro why would buyers buy from your site?

The problem with RM is the ton of options that confuses people. I dont think RM is the problem. I think we need to keep the concept of RM and replace the calculator configurator with something user friendly. Maybe just have a search box with "What do you need to use the image for?" and have a smart system guide the user through a couple step process.  If the user answers "Website" then the system moves on to "How long do you need to use it for?". The user adds to cart and checks out.

And I think we need to start heading back to single-use licenses.

Not sure if I answered your questions. Maybe more of a brain dump.

They've gone from MSG to MRH. Microstock Retirement Home.