i just tested all of them & they worked fine -- which didnt work for you?

....
Personally I have a problem with the "too many of this" rejection - who is to say that your pic is not much better than some of the stale crap that is already in there? As in flowers, landscapes etc. There's always room for something good to give fresh inventory to the buyers..

any decent reviewer has already taken that into account when they make the rekection -- the full rejection should really say "we have an overabundance of this type and your submission doesnt add anything to our collection"   

btw, this type of rection is probably the most common one i get at dt and ft

s

Personally I haven't found that sales fall if I don't constantly upload. I've gone for months with just a few (2-4) new images per month uploaded and seen a consistent growth in sales there.

Like most here I've noticed a quick spike in new image sales within hours or days of uploading, but the main sales trend has been up regardless of new work.

The most frustrating thing about SS is the lack of good tools to track my images. It is impossible to see my portfolio there with meaningful numbers by each image. Why they can't give us tools similar to IS's "downloads per month" by image is beyond me. I've emailed support with their meaningless answers referring to their "Stats" button with its nearly worthless information.

totally agree with the latter points - SS is one of the worst to get meaningful dl stats, and they account for such a large % of total dl that it doesnt make much sense to track the other sites closely if it cant be done on SS

i' in same poisition as you - i was in peru all of aug, with no contact , and my ss sales have been steady over jul - aug - sep.  i suspect one reason is that my portfolio is heavily weighted with images with long halflives - few of the top 20 sellers i have on SS were uploaded this year -- so i sell at perhaps 10% of the RPI of others, but my portfolio will stay fresh longer

i'm working right now on a blog covering this subject - briefly, it's similar to other replies here -- using a excel worksheet for simplicity and ease of use is much preferable to a database system [even though i'm a db consultant by training]  in this case a db is overkill

Before jumping in take some time to analyze what you need to do

My needs:
   Unique number for any image
   Fast sorting by date, topic, etc
   Ability to analyze images accepted � rating & sorts
      Used  to decide what to edit, submit to other sites, those w ltd upls


My excel sheet looks like this:
[set of col for each  ms]  [image id] [desc] [keywords]

this lets you get away from the need to store all images and move them among different folders.  i caption & kw in this sheet, then add IPTC info from there - this means you can quickly paste info from similar images later.


this solution leaves out one big area - tracking sales.  there's no simple way to automate this, as many MS sites dont make the info easily avaialble for download, and even those that do use their own numbering system and eliminate the name you used. 

 update 10/7:  the blog mentioned above is at http://photoinfos.blogspot.com/2008/10/building-microstock-submission-tracking.html

when starting submit to all the big 6 and get your portfolios established - each site has a different sell pattern, and for an individual it ca change from mnt to month -- SS is always my top earner, but 2nd 3rd & 4th change from month to month

steve

also available:

http://buydigpix.com/

make an offer

Quote from: Marburg on July 03, 2008, 15:10

This could become really tangled as I know each country has it's own laws.  So, how does all this work via internet where the website the photos may be uploaded to are in one country and the owner is in another?  And since the internet is worldwide....?lots and lots to think about. 

My guess (and it's only a guess) is that the country of origin is what matters.  If photos were taken in UK the laws described by Adeptris would prevail. And I think many countries follow the 70-year or similar rules (I think it's 75 here in Brazil, not quite sure). 

Therefore images taken in the 19th century would likely be treated as public domain.  I believe this is why you have so many poster stores/sites selling copies of famous paintings.  No descendant of Renoir can claim rights over his works.

Regards,
Adelaide

those copies are risky --

 the museum or other owner of the renoir COULD sue -- and they do -- posters in museum stores, books, etc are licensed from the owners.

re the deceased in images - they may not be a copyright issue, but the separtae issue of model releases still applies -- you'd have to have a release from the heirs. 

steve   

I am considering building a site to promote my potfolios and try to refer stock buyers to MS sites.  Can everyone post their links to their sites so i can see how you all do it? Just need some good ideas to get rolling.

my portfolio is http://pix-now.com/main.php

i'll trade links with anyone else 's portfolio -- submit your site address at:

http://cascoly.com/sell-your-photography.asp

One of the factors search engines calculate is the number of relevant external pages that link to your simple.  Simple 'add your link' pages are discounted.  Here are several ways to promote your images and increase the google pagerank of your webpages.

GLOBAL SCAVENGER HUNT:
 Go to   http://pix-now.com/games/hunt/adm-addtreasure.htm
  where you can define treasures from around the world - for each item, you can include both a URL to your webpage and a URL to your image [your choice of size].

When people play the game they will see these links.  In addition, we create a physical page for each treasure, that is picked up by search engine crawlers.   the current version of the game itself is at http://cascoly.com/games/hunt/main.asp

ONLINE PUZZLES

We host the software, you provide the images - you can link to an unique page showing your image(s) as a puzzle.  YOur linking page can work like this: http://cascoly.com/games/puzzle.asp

One of the factors search engines calculate is the number of relevant external pages that link to your simple.  Simple 'add your link' pages are discounted.  Here are several ways to promote your images and increase the google pagerank of your webpages.

GLOBAL SCAVENGER HUNT:
 Go to   http://pix-now.com/games/hunt/adm-addtreasure.htm
  where you can define treasures from around the world - for each item, you can include both a URL to your webpage and a URL to your image [your choice of size].

When people play the game they will see these links.  In addition, we create a physical page for each treasure, that is picked up by search engine crawlers.   the current version of the game itself is at http://cascoly.com/games/hunt/main.asp

ONLINE PUZZLES

We host the software, you provide the images - you can link to an unique page showing your image(s) as a puzzle.  YOur linking page can work like this: http://cascoly.com/games/puzzle.asp

Quote from: Pixart on June 23, 2008, 11:39

Wouldn't RPI be the most consistant? 

I don't like that out of 10 poll.  I never answer it.

well RPI is good but it doesn't take into account how easy it is to get images online.  For me, the RPI for shutterstock and istock are about the same, but shutterstock still earns 50% of my total income and istock is only 10%... so the RPI doesn't show this difference. 

And just in case you didn't see it, there is allready a RPI poll on the bottom right of the site.

it would be handy to have a definition of how to vote on the same page as the submission form -- for newcomers, it's not clear whether you're rating income  in terms of %, change from previous month etc -- even more confusing since the other questions in the same poll DO ask you for a subjective rating of each site

 none of these can be valid without using actual sales, so these will remain just an interesting sidelight.  you cant take the average of % as this poll unless the base is  same for all.

s

 No 1 inspector can inspect 500 images in an hour. I believe your images would have been inspected by about 5-10 different inspectors, working in at the same time.

 
 Josh
The Crestock Team

they can review EIGHT images a minute?
that's AMAZING -- do they even LOOK at the 100% version or do they just make judgments based on the thumbnails?

I already feel much better after reading all the replies here

I lookad at Panoramic Images. They seem to be a Macro site, still mainly mention film in their submittion info and seem to be pretty lucrative. I only evere done 6 panoramas in my protographic career, stitching them from multiple exposures.

In Panoramic Images submittion guide they instruct to select not more than 50 of your best images and have many high level quality, technical and presentation demands.

I think I'll stick to distributing my panoramas through IS and DT.

if you stay at FT, keep trying the panoramas -- i have the same exp as others -- FT now rejects 95% where it used to be about 50% - even s other agencies stay the same

and i have a number of panoramas at FT -- some sites do require a minimum of 800 or 1000 on the narrow side, so a 6000 x 750 woud get rejected

s