Quote from: gemmy12 on March 20, 2012, 02:49
meanwhile i see a constant rise in sale in IS for last few months though adding far lesser files.

I have the exact opposite issue. I used to make payout every month at IStock, haven't seen that in a year. My sales decline constantly there. My Shutterstock sales are taking off like crazy now.

Whereas it is my theory that 1) the Shutterstock backup is caused by everyone jumping ship at IS and flooding the SS queues, and 2) they have not hired new reviewers, that's why there's a backup.

Cowboy up there, cupcake, and handle the long review time.

I make a lot more on Zazzle than I do on all of my microstocks combined, except Shutterstock. Ranking: Zazzle, Shutterstock, All Other Microstocks and PODs. Forget CafePress, their interface is so clunky and the last time I was there, you had to resize artwork for each different product... Losers!

Zazzle and Shutterstock are my bread-n-butter. 

Stacey

Quote from: Till on February 18, 2012, 01:08
I was wondering if there are any criterias that have to be met, in order to earn money by referring photographers.
Could I open an account and earn money with referrals only, without ever uploading a picture myself?

Nope. You have to be an approved submitter to get referral commissions.

Quote from: Herg on January 01, 2012, 10:24
Some of my images that have been refused are on the basis of lighting or WB. Am I allowed to re-submit without being suspended ? I am reluctant because there is no option of writing a note to the reviewer.

I've heard of people getting warnings after 3 resubmissions of the same image, be careful.

Sometimes it takes a while for the thumbnails to generate, even if they are properly loaded.  Patience, my dear.

Oh and congratulations on being accepted to Shutterstock!

I haven't seen an app for any of the other sites... however, have you seen this?  Microstock Report, reports earnings on most sites! Very useful!

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.nebogames.microstockreport&hl=en

Now we need an Android app too!

Quote from: helix7 on June 07, 2011, 20:33
Very impressive, Stacey. I can't say I've given zazzle a fair chance, but the $1.24 that's sitting in my account doesn't exactly motivate me much. Good to see you've made it work for you.

Thanks!  I think your style is suited to Zazzle very much... now you just have to select which of your stuff, and create new stuff, that appeals to consumers (its a totally different market than microstock), and once you have a pulse on that, your sales take off.

Quote from: Anita Potter on June 07, 2011, 20:20
I've only ever sold one thing through Zazzle a coffee mug over a year ago.  Like most of us it's trying to find the time to make things and get them up on the store.

Anita judging from your ports, I think if you put your mind to it (and time), you could be making an income comparable to your microstock income and then some, with Zazzle.  I think your style lends itself very well to the application.  The people buying stuff for themselves are looking for cute, different, artistic artwork that sets them apart from their friends, and helps them make a statement about themselves. Just think about what designs of yours could be put to that use, I'm sure you have lots of them already... and the funny thing is, once you get a bead on that, new ideas start jumping into your head like crazy!  Because its a different market than what we draw for microstock, its more wide, diverse, creative, so your brain will go nuts thinking of things to "Zazzle" (it's a verb now, too).

Ha ha yeah, not like I want the competition, but good luck guys because I know you could be some stiff competition for me. I introduced Kirsty Pargeter to Zazzle and now she has a beautiful store, I'm sure she is going to blow us all away with her amazing work... but we're good too!  Zazzle advertises all over the place so I can imagine we are getting some real grassroots exposure to the consumers of the world and I think we're just beginning to see the great results.

Good luck guys!

Stacey

I have two Zazzle stores, one is for photography and one is for illustration... the photography store is growing mold on it (not sure Zazzle is marketing for wall art too much), and my illustration store is producing more money each month than my #1 microstock site (actually I have two, iStock and Shutterstock run neck-and-neck every month), and more than all the others combined... it's ramping up quickly but so is my product count. Zazzle is SO much more creative than microstock because you don't have people telling you what they do and don't subjectively 'like,' the buyers tell me what they like and what they don't. I love that.  As I sit here and make products, I get sales that keep me motivated... $11 commission off ONE iPad case, and they are selling very well!

Zazzle does market us... when a product goes up, it gets cataloged by Google and listed immediately on all search engines... and I market myself through Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, my own blog, whatever I can put out there. I'd rather be making products than marketing so I don't spend much time on it... however I get hundreds of views a day on my stuff so apparently their marketing is working!  I did a search on "diamond bling monogram" (my new design series) and everything that came up on page 1 on Google was MINE.  Pretty impressive.  Okay, yeah, that's a bit of a narrow search but not out of the realm of possibility, and I have sold more of those "diamond bling" items than anything else so far, so it must be working.  My illustration store is http://www.zazzle.com/suwanneeredhead and my photography store is http://www.zazzle.com/staceylynnpayne (thanks for looking and sorry if I wasn't supposed to put this here).

Love this thread, great ideas, guys!

Stacey

Quote from: click_click on May 17, 2011, 16:08
Got it now.

I wonder though why the illustration category is still available when editing pending files... 

It's available for rasters... when you upload a vector, it already knows its an illustration and it chooses itself, and gets "grayed out."  As for a raster, it has no way of knowing whether its an illustration or not, so you're supposed to mark it.

THAT's NOT a clear answer!  Let's continue to bombard them with WHEN WILL YOU PAY US inquiries!

I know my increased rejections are caused by my camera becoming old, outdated, noisy... its not just the camera, it's the standards at the agencies that are slowly becoming higher and higher as the quality of the work begins to reflect the new cameras and techniques.  I understand that as time goes on, I have to upgrade my own materials and skills to keep up with it. It's been that way since I began in microstock 5 years ago.  Of course when I get rejections I have to stomp and scream and get angry, but that's just the red-headed Irish Leo in me.  Then I calm down and say, "okay time to buy a new camera and upgrade to PS5."

Until then I illustrate. I rarely get rejections on my illustrations.

@pet_chia, the keyword Nazi, LOL... yeah I know what you mean, but as I have been doing this for a long time, I see a pattern, there are two keyword philosophies:  One is that you just use keywords that apply to the image literally, i.e. a book, a flower, a table. The more "liberal" philosophy about keywords is to use conceptual words, ones that are more a stretch of the imagination, or ones that could speak to the potential use of the image, such as a brochure or report cover, or what not.  I think the stock agencies more appreciate the first way to do it (only use words that apply to the image itself), and some reviewers probably do not appreciate all the gazillion "potential uses" that we think of to use as keywords. Plus, there is an insane amount of keyword spamming going on, I think the worst patterns I see of that is by the people that "purchase" their keywords from a keywording service. I'm sure the reviewers are overwhelmed... as a buyer I know I am, I can rarely find just what I want from all of the junk keywords that I come across.

In other words if you get a keyword rejection, be glad its not a technical rejection that you won't be able to fix, just pare them down as much as you can and resubmit.

Quote from: borg on February 08, 2009, 14:00
I have read other topics about MICRO,MID and MACRO...

But I am confused...

I understand the difference between macro (RM) and micro(RF), but where is the difference between the MID and MACRO?

Someone called Alamy MID, and someone MACRO ...
What is the truth!??

What are Zymmetrical or Cutcaster,and can I upload same pictures on SS and Zymmetrical for example!?

MID are just that, middle-of-the-road in pricing, and some can have some really odd licensing schemes (like "novel use" licenses).  Getty and Corbis are Macro. The difference is the prices they are selling the images at, and their rights-managed versus royalty-free licenses.

You can't upload anything to Zymmetrical, it's defunct now...

Quote from: Dreamframer on August 02, 2010, 20:26
I contacted Palm Springs Walk of Stars, and they answered:

Hello Ivan,

Thank you for your inquiry. The logo of the Palm tree is trademarked with the name Palm Springs Walk of Stars.

Best regards,
Kevin

So, the star in the square is not copyrighted. So, I gotta contact all stock agencies to enable my file.

Not sure I understand how you got "not copyrighted" from that statement. His response is ambiguous at best, but I believe he was telling you that they ARE trademarked.  Perhaps you didn't copy/paste the statement where he said the "star in the square" are not copyrighted?  You may wish to clarify this with him before you contact the agencies.

I found this, just looking around as I always do, its Angelina Jolie in Moscow, by a Shutterstock contributor (not me, I wish)!

http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/celebrity_photos/celebrity_photos_july_7zeGTc67gKlGdQPxqHUjDP

Great shot, congrats to the photographer!

Quote from: madelaide on July 11, 2010, 22:42
Twelves cams... does that mean six vessels doing interventions in the well? 

That's what they're saying... it's Sunday night at 8 p.m. Pacific time (10pm at the Deepwater Horizon) and no work is being done right now... the best vid is from the Skandi ROV 1 & 2, that one seems to usually be right at the outpouring and shows them trying to get the cap stack on. Looks like at least 6 units are working, but maybe not round-the-clock!  Meanwhile thousands of gallons of oil gush into the saltwater every hour... but they can't violate Union rules and make those guys work more than 8 hours a day! 

Have you seen this, on a more serious note?  Fascinating...

http://www.wkrg.com/gulf_oil_spill/spill_cams/

That's funny... but interesting as well because that's what I tell people to do after they think they have isolated an object on white... it's a good way to find your mistakes and places you missed.  Or, of course you can slide your levels temporarily to darken up the missed spots.

Thanks for sharing, that's too cute.

Quote from: lisafx on May 26, 2010, 21:17Ivan, you are one of the nicest people I have met online and don't seem to have a mean or racist bone in your body.

Ditto. You're a peach, Ivan. 

OMG!  ROFL!!!

Stolen?! Hijacked straight from the site?

THAT IS TOO FUNNY!

Quote from: Microbius on December 20, 2009, 17:03
great, now people can stuff 10Mb more crappy silhouettes or icons into a single vector file!

LOL no doubt! It's inevitable... but I hope to also see more quality artwork that wasn't possible due to the EPS-8 limitations and the 5mb limit! I love looking at new and exciting stuff, it inspires me to get that good!

Shutterstock has announced that starting Monday, vector artists may begin to upload files saved back to EPS-10 format, and have increased the file size limit to 15 megabytes!

Do you guys have files saved on your hard drive that were too big to upload? Or wouldn't pass through because of the problems saving back to EPS-8 such as transparency and color profile problems? I'd like to hear your thoughts on it!

Quote from: KB on December 14, 2009, 17:59$0.25 continues to be an insult.

Agreed. I personally would like to avoid any reductions in commission, these micro-commissions are already insulting and demeaning to us. I guess they figure they can do it, though, because if one photographer opts out, several more are there to take his/her place.

If there's one lesson I've learned (or not learned) about microstock is, I can never predict or believe what buyers will buy. The second you think you have a money shot, think again... then you upload that one you're sure will be rejected, but you like it, and it sells 100 times in a year.

Congrats on that... simple sells, that's for sure. As long as you can get it past the reviewers who want to reject it for LCV, that is.

Stacey

+129 since my last post

37677