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

So the system is actually more open and fair than it has been in the past - but if you don't spam keywords you have nothing to worry about - being flagged has no impact whatsoever on a contributor unless he/she is spamming. If you are not spamming, you have not been harmed in any way. 
p
  spam and confirmation bias are highly subjective which is why i dont think this system is a good use of time.  the lion - cat example is excellent, and part of a broader category.  in these discussions, many seem to think there's only 1 way t search and 1 type of searcher - but buyers are going to differ in their knwledge, needs and searching ability, so we have to be ready for all f them -- when i post a orang or gorilla picture, i use 'monkey' as a tag - scientifically incorrect, but check out how often you hear it while taking thse pix in the first lace!

a lot of the confusion could be eliminared if sites used the description in the search [some do, most dont].  then specific info lke panthera, lcatin details, etc can still be found, and the tags can be reserved for more exact keywords. 

i incude detailed location & sci names w all my images - but on many sites no one will find my peru pix unless i include 'peru' in the tags too.  somene viewing a market scene might object to using Peru [one reviewer actually removed images claiming location was irrelevant for stock!] and flag the image, wasting a revieweer & my time.  yet someone who needs market scenes for a blog/article on peru wouldnt want images from bolivia

essetially the keyword system has to cover a wide range of ssearches and each site has to determine whether they want to control type I or type II errors - you can't easily do both -- so do you have as system that fails by returning some images that are not relevant?  or fails by NOT returning some images that ARE relevant?

most buyers are looking for a solution to a design problem - they need specific types of images and don't really care who the photographer is.  so the best approach for most of us is to spend our tme shooting and submitting and let the agencies do the marketing.  quality is necessary for success, but volume will probably determine your longevity

s

i not only pay for my mortgage, but pay for several tax deductible foreign trips each year mostly from MS earnings. 

too much of the discussion here seems t assume an either-or zero sum situation; even if all the participants in this forum withdrew all their portfolios from subscriptions, the world wouldnt even notice.  instead, this is a huge field, and 'dancing among the elephants' is a profitable niche to aim for.

similarly, many seem to assume that by contributing to a subscription site you're hurting sales elsewhere - but that assumes buyers search by photographer, AND that they search multiple sites. 

finally, too many focus on the big $ that images sell for on some sites, ignoring the number of users that would/could never consider those prices.  'different horses,  different courses' -- it's up to the individual to analyze their portfoo and decide where it will perform best.

steve

i didnt notice it on FT, but i did on 123 - last month almost all sales were subscription -- i had about the same number of DLs as i have for the past 6 months, but only 60% of the income.

s

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See, I'm not so sure about that anymore.. is anyone really submitting to stock sites using images taken using a compact camera still? It seems like a DSLR is a basic requirement now (It wasn't always)..

it's still possible -- i just bought a sony hx1 - partly for video ability, partly for the 20x zoom combined with the low light capabilities [it takes 6 images and averages them, producing sharper images than a dslr]  and have seen no difference in acceptasnce rates for those shots and my dslr ones

i also use a lumix oint & shoot for ski trips, etc, and these are good sellers.

since i'm submitting 4MP images, the biggest differnence is the dslr gives me more latitude in cropping and reducing than the smaller cameras d

steve

Quote from: cascoly on August 26, 2009, 13:24

http://www.redbubble.com/people/cascoly/art/everything/tags/autumn

has some shots from banff and glacier, among other NPs -- when you're ready to go, i'd be happy to suggest some places t visit

steve

 
Hey, that moose....  he didnt look too much like he was walking.... rather looked kind of ticked... LOL
Aint nothing worse than a moose that's ticked off during runting season.  Had too many run-ins with them up in Maine and NH... ha ha ha ha....
 

the moose was probably confused - i was standing about 10-15 ft away in our condo doorway!  we'd just returned moose-less from a morning game drive into the tetons NP. luckliy i had slipped a blank CF card into my camera while i was DLing from the used one - 'cause we looked up and there was this moose walking across our backyard.     but he just wandered off like an extra from Northern Exposure

s

http://www.redbubble.com/people/cascoly/art/everything/tags/autumn

has some shots from banff and glacier, among other NPs -- when you're ready to go, i'd be happy to suggest some places t visit

steve

i dont bother to post to ft anymore, and BigStock has gotten almost as bad with these sorts of rejects -- dt is more realistic.

i dont try t figure it out-- if i upload to an agency, i send them all of each batch, and they can accept it or not

steve

why would reducing artist % be the only way to compete? leveling the playing field doesnt require paying the lowest royalties - there are other ways to trim - less overhead, smaller profits for owners & shareholders [who may be passive investors], streamlined web prcessing, better marketing, established loyal customers from other ventures, etc

sites like 3d, yay, cut etc have very liveral acceptance policies - that may backfire in the longrun, but it means their current costs are lower than sites with more reviewers

steve