yes, be VERY careful about the dateline, and even punctuation.  i eben had one rejwction because i wrote N0v 10 rather than November 10 [that one did appear to be an overzealous reviewer as it was correct5ed]    problem is -- rejections often say "not suitable for editorial or something similar when really it's just the caption that needs re working

otoh, the editors there spend a lot of time in answering questions and helping get everything right.

ss doesnt break out ed vs rf, but for sites that do, about 30-40% of my sales are ed, while o nly 10-20% of my portfoilo is ed.  that's certainly a reflection of my subject matter, but it's been worth it thus far


steve

i've had total of $40 or so, a sale every month r 3 -- i'd have dropped them long ago but for

• they're easy to submit to
• royalty is high
• they're pleasant to deal with
  

new images are helpful to a company, but not an absolute requirement -- most buyers can find anything they need in current inventory and would probably be able to do so a year from now -  the buyer who needs zebras today will be looking for crocodiles next month

the touting of # of new and total numbers is counterproductive withut a dramatic improvement in search engine;  it also works against attempts to 'clean' the database, since they've convinced users that more is better.

steve

first, you're missing an extremey important ste by not adding keywords and desc to the IPTC of your image -- there are a number of free programs that do this -- i use the free MS pro photo tool

you enter your info once, and each agency reads it - no need to fill in most forms. you'l still have to add category info

second, dont upl one by 1 - wait til you've got a batch - i usually upl 40-50 at a time, and ftp to all. i usually do this at 2 am when i'm done for the night, and all finish by morning

then finish the submittal at each agency.


steve

ps i'm not too picky about categories, and skip them if not mandatory - i have well selected keywords and descriptions.  havent haeard from any buyers who primarily use categores to browse - most categories are just too enormous to make sense

Ok. This may be not be practical, but an idea borne of frustration when money is short.
For instance, when I have $200 spread over five sites, and can't get a payout at any
for weeks or months. I realize this would not apply to the more successful among us.

Simply put, there should be a central clearing house for sales from all agencies.
Maybe once a week each agency would transfer our present earnings, no matter
how meager to the clearing house. We could then take our earnings in a more
timely manner. Of course there may still be limits set, but I think it would be a
more reasonable way to do it.

reasonable for us maybe, but what agency is going to give up the float they earn on those under achieving portfolios? 

i'd also expect that a large number of accounts never do reach payout, making those little accounts even more profitable for the agencies

not holding my breath....

and of course, there's the usual reviewer inconsistencies -- i just submitted 5 money images of indian rupees to DT - they accepted 2, and rejected the others based on 'potential copyright', even though all images showed the same bills!

as others have mentioned, for your initial sub, try for more generic [but not cliched images], with a variety of subjects, well lit, brightly colored and avoid isolations unless perfect.

the Big Ben is a common shot, even at that angle, and the tower is a bit dark wrt the sky. for SS, lightening the shadows & midtones, ten increasing saturation would pop the colors and make it more likely to be accepted.  for istock it might work, but it might induce to much noise.

it took me several views to realize that the fuzzy part of the mantis wasnt a leaf, but the abdomen, due to low DOF  - dont submit anything where the reviewer has to think!  the horizontal shot is better, but at first glance there are only 5 legs

steve

Sometimes its hard to tell what will sell, I shot a bunch of doors from a city in Ecuador and a lot were rejected for being similar.  Yes they all were doors, all different doors, the thing is that on SS some sell well and some don't sell at all but who knows which will be the ones to sell.  Obviously not me, the ones that sold were the ones I thought I shouldn;t upload while the ones I liked sold well.  Who knows, DT punishes rejects by lowering your place in the search so just don't upload any similars even if they might be the ones people want, I guess that's the lesson.

[youtube][/youtube]

i agree completely - problem is, the day after getting rejects as "too similar" i'll get shots from the next batch accepted;   if reviewers are paid by # of reviews, it's far easier to reject for 'similar' since you can do it with thumbnails.   it's frustrating since our income is dependent on factors totally outside of the content and quality of our work.

i would stop sending similars if i could figure out which f the 10 DIFFERENT images all agencies will accept, but each agency will accept 1-4 of a given series, and the ones chosen are not the same ones.  it's unfortunate since bits are so cheap there's no reason not to offer everything of quality

there is a solution to this and some enterprising new agency could use it to REALLY distinguish themselves - accept ALL technically correct images, but develop a search and display algorithm that actually helps the user.  eg, if i enter "fall leaves" i'd first get images showing a range from detailed macros to panoramic landscapes, and the user can then drill down; when there's a series of similar images by one photographer, determined by image analysis, only 1 is shown, with indication of 'more'

the technology's there - the work is in designing the user interface



steve

I would have answered the poll but I don't use any of those .. I actually use Pro Photo Tools 2 for IPTC .. it's free and can be downloaded from .. dare I say .. Microsoft

same here - it's a great freebie, does multiples, easy to use and even has geocoding

i keep my captions & images in an excel sheet, so they're easily avaialble as templates for new shoots, etc

steve

Quote from: alias on September 24, 2009, 08:22

I never looked at BigStock before. This is interesting:

Quote

Truly Royalty-Free
Additionally, our royalty-free licensing agreements cover usages that other so called "royalty-free" agreements fail to offer - such as use within web design templates. If you are a creator and seller of web design templates most services like Getty and Photodisc, etc. limit your ability to resell your templates with their so called "royalty-free" photos in them - but not at BigStockPhoto!

Is that the same at Shutterstock?

No, it most certainly is not.

At SS, and most other microsites, such use requires the purchase of an extended license.

That's a very interesting (and disappointing) quote, if it really means that the standard license allows use in a web design template. If so, I hope one change that SS makes immediately is to the terms of BigStock's standard license.

Good catch!

pretty sure they werent referring to the standard license:

http://www.bigstockphoto.com/licensing-buyers.html

BigStock has over a dozen special licenses that photographers can opt-in for - the costs are more in line with ELs elsewhere

results really vary - over last 2 years my is portfolio went from 400 to 600 - sales were rarely better than 3rd or 4th [after dt, ss and usually BigStock], except fr 1 or 2 EL blips.  so i dont upl very often to is. 

once again, i'd strongly discourage newcomers from going exclusive - my sales lines weave in an ut for the top 8 that produce for me -- only dt and ss consistently come in 1st or 2nd.  the market is too volatile to risk it all w 1 agency for both near and far term.

...  Sounds like Albumo is definitely the worst of the lot, which agrees with what I have heard from others too.  It's definitely worse to have the images still available for sale but just no payouts being made.

I agree with you 100%.  It is good to be cautious about joining lowest tier or newbie sites. 

the eupside is albumo get zero traffic s there arent any 'sales to be worried about -- i got my payout for the initial uploads, which only albumo has thus far risked - actually PAYing contributors for trying a new site.  since then, afew sales, but i can't see it hurt sales elsewhere

if you dont try new sites, you're stuck with the competition from millions of others in the big 5-6-7

i do try new sites, but weigh the costs in my time -- right now, 3d studio seems a good decision - for secobd month they're my 3rd best agent - beating ft, 123 is and BigStock - and their upl prcess is much easier.

s

Hello,

We are thinking of inviting photo retouchers/editors ... So, we decided to outsource part of the process.

In short, we are going to provide pre-selected (only images we consider worth sending to microstocks) unedited RAW (Nikon NEF) files. We expect to get back our images decently adjusted to micro stock quality standards (levels, wb, color tweakings, some minor retouching like dust spots and logos, etc) with the Meta Data (name, description, keywords) filled in. We'd like to get back layered Psd files, so that we could perform some minor fine-tunings if we feel the need to. Conversion to Jpeg and sending to microstocks remains on our side.

   when you solve this problem please come back and tell us, since many people here would like to do it that way!   but when ms pays pennies per DL, it's hard to justify paying minimum wage to someone to do all that you require -- you're not asking for retouching as much as complete post prcessing, and workflow management.     some agencies will now do keywording for you for a cost/ image

   otoh, i have had good results in getting slides scanned thru scancafe.com - their pro scan is 4000 dpi, and includes manual adjustmet for colr, dust & scratch removal, etc - about $.60 per slide - they send slides to india for scanning & processing.   good results means most images get accepted by ss and dt, but it usually still takes additional work on my part

steve