Quote from: cascoly on October 30, 2008, 13:17

how do you match your image in db with the various names MS agencies store it by? you must have multiple names for each image that you enter when items are accepted? 

This is one of the manual thing i've to do: match each site's ID (not name) together for a given photo. But it has to be done once for newly uploaded photos only which is acceptable.

that's the bottleneck for me -- i submit a total 1000-3000 images a month to 6-10 agencies.  even with only 50% acceptance that would be 2000 images to find in the db and add a agency id.   if you can do a steady 5 updates a minute, you're still looking at 10 hrs or more a month for this task.

how many total images do you submit each month?

Yes, I do track individual sales.

I've developed an almost fully automated PHP script to retrieve all data from all microstock sites I contribute to and then store each and every download in a MySQL database.

I'm thus able to produce cool statistics and graphics, which is just... cool and not that useful I would say 

It's indeed not necessary to track individual sales to know what is important to know and having such detailed info do not give any really useful information.

In my case, I do it because I can and liked to do it (I am a software engineer in the "real" life  ), but I would not recommand anybody to spend too much time with such detailed statistics.

yep, that's the only way to even consider tracking indiv sales!

how do you match your image in db with the various names MS agencies store it by? you must have multiple names for each image that you enter when items are accepted? 

this has been an ongoing annoyance where most MS agencioes ignore the name the seller gives and only report their number -- it would be much easier for all involved if they just kept the original name in a separate field.  [eg, trying to find which 5 of 6 images were accepted from a series - you can create a unique title name, but then you're taking more time to add IPTC data, etc]

s

I have a spreadsheet.  One tab for each style.  Sites in columns, images in lines, and I include the edition done for future reference.  On the cross cells I fill in the sales (that is, how many times image 11 sold in site B).  These cells are colored (green for accepted images, yellow for pending, red for rejected, white for not submitted).  Totals for colums and lines.

I don't keep stats of each image's performance month by month.

how many sites do you work with? and do they all sell att the same price?  if not, how do you compare $ sales across sites?  also, how do you harvest the dl stats?  do you have a process to do it for each site or do you log on and do it manually?

Quote from: Kngkyle on October 25, 2008, 14:59

...I have been on Istock for 12 months and this isn't one of the usual ups and downs for me.

I have heard statements similar to this and it is beginning to make me wonder if some of the microstock sites have it built into their system to give high sales for the first year (to encourage new contributors), but then remove that increase after the first year.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

IS is the only site of my top six that HASN'T shown a steady increase since last year. - i've doubled my total portfolio and my income has increased by 70%;  on SS i've tripled my portfolio and doubled sales. on IS i've only added 20% to my port and sales are about the same

so, constant uploading does seem to be needed, but the hassle of doing so on IS doesnt seem to be worth the effort

anyone have experience with selling on redbubble.com? 

http://cascoly.redbubble.com/

it's easy to set up to sell images as cards, prints, calendars, etc, and their tools for a website subdomain, or calendars

http://www.redbubble.com/people/cascoly/calendars/1932308-2-mountains-majesty

the big question of course is whether anything will sell

i agree completely, and another point is that even IF a designer COUD create the same thing, the real question is whether they would even think of it!  the originality of the design is what will sell it.

similarly, with photos, even though designers COULD do the tweeking, how many are going to see the same crop you do, especially when they're only simming thru thumbnails.   eg, an image of elephants at  a water hole, and a cropped version of same image that zooms in on the head.  best, of course, if you take both shots in camera, but it's often not possible.

i got an email from someone in the Federal Republic of America asking my assistance in redistributing $700 Billion....

... and for keeping track of things I'm uploading etc, good old single cash books as I like to keep an idea of what sells in case I'm every visited by the tax man. I really ought to write a piece of software that would keep track of everything, but alas, time...

why not just use a spreadsheet [or even Word or other text doc]?  then just print out day by day for your paper trail

s

Has anybody else experienced problems uploading to mp lately?  I've got a whole load in my FTP queue but they aren't going anywhere.

they've had an intermittent problem -- about a week ago i had 50 images ftp'd and their import would take 1, then die; if i refreshed, it would take another 1.  i reported this and they said it was a known problem -- it was fixed the next day and i havent had  any trouble with ftp since.

re-inspecting all images (on todays criteria) older than 18 months would be best solution.

only if you assume reviews are consistent -- if an old image is rejected on second review it could just be the reviewer

ideally no image should be rejected by a single reviewer - it should have at least 1 additional review.  in any other situation this would be a no brainer, but when an agency is dealing with thousands of images a day they just cant afford it.

  this is a type ii errorhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_I_and_type_II_errors

it's better overall to accept that there will be false negative [rejecting good images] rather than accepting type i errors [which is what sites like most, cut, yay et al do by accepting just about anything]

it's possible to keep both types of error low, but it's much more expensive and only used where it's critical.  we see examples of this every day, but often the choice between the 2 types isnt acknowledged -- eg, death penalty laws, rules of engagement re civilian casualties.  for a much less important case like selecting pretty pictures, it's no surprise how the agencies react

they';re usually pretty reasonable -- a business day or so. 

i've had similar problems with 'cascoly' being 'already used' -- in one case it had kept a signup from several YEARS ago.  try to sign in with the name you want and ask for the password to be sent -- you may find out you'd forgotten you'd signed up.

i put up with their ridiculous submission process when they actually sold images for me, but once their sales dropped so did my submissions -- maybe that's linked, but i'd rather spend more time uploading to sites like SS DT and 123 that actually eaRN some $$

steve

i' ve had decent results on DT & SS, but no sales on [surprise] most, cutcast or YAY.  bigstock just started accepting editorials.

i do a lot of markets, protests and parades, more general editorial than newsworthy immediate interest

steve