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Messages - cascoly
4151
« on: January 12, 2010, 23:22 »
Hi All,
If you feel strongly that your image is a good seller please email us. We're always happy to hear you out and perform a re-evaluation.
ROFL sorry 123 but that was not my experience -- when i reported this new avalanche of reviewing laziness, i was told they'd check, but the next 2 large batches were rejectede with the SAME silly reasoning the next day as far as pointing you to our best sellers that you've rejected -- i was told you had crack reviewers who knew their jobs, so i wouldnt want to second guess them s
4152
« on: January 10, 2010, 02:15 »
i've had exactly that poblem too -- whole batches rejected for 'lighting' - when i asked if they were training new reviewers i got an abrupt reply telling me their reviewers were highly trained and that many of them had large portfolios themselves! then next 2 batcdhes of over 50 images were rejected the same way.
that's it for me - 123 has been a poor perforer, even when they took a reasonasble approach to reviews; it's no longer worth my time
your mileage may vary
s
4153
« on: January 09, 2010, 02:39 »
i dont really pay attention to views -- it's an easy site to submit to, and the staff is friendly and helpful - much better than 123 and foto that reject entire batches for ridiculous reasons
steve
4154
« on: January 08, 2010, 19:23 »
been traveling so missed this neat tool's debut
Dreamstime
Sales 122 / 398
Uploads 30 / 398
iStockPhoto
Sales 281 / 454
Uploads 120 / 454
why not add the option to dislay the list of top 100 [or even all] in each category -- you could make it an opt in chocie in the profile so people could have their name hidden
it would provid an easier measurement than trying to read all the indiv postings
s
4155
« on: January 08, 2010, 19:10 »
3242 images, 190K views, 18 sales - one of the easier sites to submit to -- would be nice if we could do multi image category settings, something like the new BigStock method
but since the $ is larger than other ms, a few sales can push them above the sales for is, Foto, BigStock or 123
2 sales so far this month
s
4156
« on: January 08, 2010, 19:05 »
i gave up reading the fp reject reasons lng ago - they're just too arbitrary - i submit when i have some spare time, like during commercials while watching tv.
they come in about #5 or 6 each month for me - fighting it out with is, 123 and BigStock
steve
4157
« on: January 05, 2010, 17:03 »
if rejects were solely on quality it wouldnt much matter - but most of my rejects at dt, BigStock and ss are for subjective reasons like "not suitable for stock" or "we didnt like your framing of the shot", etc
Its not a trivial issue since the process is SO arbitrary, we cant pick 1 or 2 best images as recommendedd, since our best wont necessarily coincide with a particular reviewers notions and sometimes, a series of similar shots ARE accepted eg, what if I had only submitted the 4 shots that were rejected? Instead we have to submit any shots that are technically correct and not dupes of others, resulting in more work for all of us, and reducing sales when salable images are rejected
My simple[!] solution is to err on the side of accepting MORE images, not less, and let the buyers decide. These days theres no real costs for storing all these images. The problem instead is in generating relevant results for searches one fairly easy algorithm would be to limit the number of images from any photographer displayed in a search result, but mark those shown with a comment more images from this photographer]
steve
4158
« on: January 05, 2010, 16:57 »
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
4159
« on: December 27, 2009, 01:47 »
right, rpi makes less sense if you have a lot of similar images and/or a very large portfolio in which there's a flat distribution of sales [ie, a wide variation in number of sales] when you take the average of a set like this, it's like calculating the average net worth of everyone in a bar after bill gates walks in
if you concentrate on a small number of images, rpi might tell you something, but if you deal in high volume, then actual sales will make more sense in tracking -- i dont particularly care whether 1 image brings in all the income, or a dozen bring in small amoutns, it's the total that matters.
you can also reduce the running avg time to 6 mo or even 3, which will highlight emerging trends or special situations. eg, my monthly graph was like yours - ups & downs with an upward trend, but a 4 month running average shows a steady climb until sep 2008, then a sharp drop and very slight increase as the recession hit, then back to the earlier slope starting about 3 mnths ago
steve
4160
« on: December 24, 2009, 14:35 »
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
4161
« on: December 24, 2009, 14:25 »
my sales at 123 have stagnated this year, while others are mostly up - they're usually below 5th place, and even 3dstudios has beat them several months
i'm getting particularly annoed at the horrible reviewing - just had a 63 image lot totally rejected - all for "poor lighting" -- i mostly ignore rejections, but this job szeems sloppy and lazy - these images, as usual have been acceptable to many other sites, so the idea that ALL 63 have 'poor lighting' would be laughable if it were'nt so in your face insulting
steve
4162
« on: October 31, 2009, 13:08 »
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
4163
« on: October 31, 2009, 12:55 »
It was said that being a donator would help in search results - in the main collection...
Ok, I get it now. They're offering higher search ranking in exchange for images. Hey why not just accept cash?
actually, not too bad a deal -- let your rejects and non-sellers go in the free pile while your good stuff gets higher search visibility i agree, of course, that the default should be NOT free, with any donations being voluntary steve
4164
« on: October 22, 2009, 15:38 »
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
4165
« on: October 21, 2009, 14:40 »
The solution we came up with for payments was two fold:
1) Automatic payment when your account gets to 100.00 (nothing new here)
2) You can request a payment at any time for a fee of 5% of the payout with a minimum charge of 30 cents. This covers our transaction costs and gives us a little incentive to give you your money and not hold onto it.
While we like our solution we don't think it's ideal. We're partially limited by current micropayment services and fees. The good news is that both Paypal and Amazon have been updating their products and have some very cool new features we're looking at implementing. One of those features is advanced payment splitting. I.e. If a photo is sold on ClusterShot for 100.00 the payment can be split automatically at the payment provider end - $12.00 would be sent to us directly and $88.00 to you. We're investigating and will let you know what we find out.
the payment split sounds ideal - and there's really NO reason all agecies couldnt do it, since it involves 0 work on their end - it even saves them the expense of sending out individual payments, reports, etc - paypal gives reports to sellers directly failing that, in the compouter games industry, my contracts always had BOTH a minumum payent and a maximum time - eg, guarenteeing payments of whatever amount every quarter or annually - i do nt know of any ms agency that does this steve
4166
« on: October 19, 2009, 19:10 »
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....
4167
« on: October 18, 2009, 14:27 »
sales are up dramatically at FT - already 2x BME and no El's - so i decided to submit a few more -- i'd stopped last spring after getting silly rejections. had a decent response in acceptance, s sent some more and gt silliest rejection i've ever seen -- "no model release" for a picture of a MOUNTAIN - blue sky, barren landscape
s
4168
« on: October 14, 2009, 14:06 »
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!
4169
« on: October 14, 2009, 14:04 »
I am looking for a place to have color slides and b&w negatives professionally scanned. I'm looking for the highest resolution (4,000 ppi). I have found a few places on-line (White Glove, ScanCafe) but most require you to mail them in (some to India) which makes me nervous. Has anyone had a particularly good experience (or bad experience) with any of the scanning services.
I would really appreciate a recommendation based on your experience.
Thanks!
i've used scancafe for a coupla years now, scaning about 2000 slides and would recommend them highly i use the 'professional services at 4000 dpi with manual crrections - i really like the fact that you can review all images online & only pay for the ones you want. some caveats - the scans tend to eliminate colors on some sunset , golden lighting, etc, but at the price, it's a reasonable tradeoff. also, the scans tend to be grainy - which is proably a function of the slides themselves however, i've had no trouble getting these scanned images accepted, usally reducing the image to 4000MP, sometimes using noise reduction steve
4170
« on: September 30, 2009, 14:22 »
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
4171
« on: September 30, 2009, 14:10 »
"Not only is it almost impossible for even the best, most established photographers to make even a basic living now, but I hear from young, talented, aspiring photography graduates who just can't get into an industry that has been so badly damaged by the over-use of amateur material at rock bottom prices."
Waaaaahhhhhh....
what's the difference between young, talented, aspiring photography graduates and an amateur? why should one group feel entitled to success because they have a diploma? sunds lmuch like the complaints of IT pros when micros stasrted to replace mainframes at larger companies in the end, the pc revolution exploded the possibilities for both jobs and apps as millons of people started using computers similar in the photography biz - in the 90's the film pros vehemently protested digital stock at any price, but the $50-$100 per image model for digital downloads didnt destroy the industry - it opened it to a larger group of buyers. the buyers for MS are not the same as the ones 15-20 yrs ago -- images are becoming commodities, and photographers need to adjust their attitude and workflow. the chances for an indivdual to make a six figure career from images may be less, but the total income from photography has only increased with the emergence of digital photography. s
4172
« on: September 27, 2009, 14:16 »
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
4173
« on: September 27, 2009, 14:02 »
...., but I've seen in the last four or five years that the sites that thrive the most are the ones that are "picky" with their collections.
I hope they look into this because I really like them and I've had more sales there in my first month than on 123RF and BigStock and they promise a lot if they can correct these situations.
sorta contradictory there... but i realize 3d's only been here a short time -- but in first 2 month they've outperformed some of my pickier agencies -- 123, IS and FT steve
4174
« on: September 27, 2009, 13:57 »
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
4175
« on: September 27, 2009, 13:55 »
given the overall state of the world economy, and how that affects the primary USERS of microstock, i think just staying even is a reasonable achievement
steve
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