Fotolia has changed the default settings when uploading new images.  All images in my last batch were marked as exclusive (which they aren't) and put in their Free section if rejected (which I never do).  This has never happened to me before, so I'm pretty sure you now have to check or uncheck different boxes during upload.  Ugh.

Well, they've now decided to close their entire non-exclusive collection.  I received the following email today:

Dear Contributor

reef by Pocketstock contributor notice to terminate your member account.

Following on from our decision to stop accepting new uploads to reef we have made the final
decision to close reef, our non-exclusive content collection and concentrate our efforts on
RooM, our exclusive content offering.

As you are a supplier to reef we will be closing your account and paying off any outstanding
balance on your account, if you have any, in due course.

We will require transfer details from you for us to pay any outstanding balance so please
supply these to [email protected] at your earliest convenience. Failure to do so in
accordance with the terms of your supplier agreement will mean you waive the right to any
outstanding sum owed.

If your content makes any sales from now until close, you will still get notified and paid as usual.

We expect closure of your account to take place first thing 29th November 2013, which is the
date we have scheduled for full closure of reef.

You need do nothing as all of your content will be destroyed when your account is closed, in
the meantime please do not try to upload any more content to reef as it will not be accepted, as
per our most recent email.

We are sorry to see reef close, but we feel we must put our resources into content where we
have a better opportunity to control pricing.

We wish you well with your photography and hope you will all have a successful future.[/i] Best wishes

reef creative

My biggest issue with Veer is their controlled vocabulary (CV).  I don't have any objections with the concept of a CV if it's done right (iStock's model is fine).  Veer, however, doesn't allow the contributor to control the CV in any way.  They take your keywords, change them to what they think they should be, and do not allow any editing after an image has been accepted.  I can't tell you how many times I've had trouble finding my images on Veer because they have changed my keywords.  This is what I attribute my low Veer earning to most.  I personally don't think buyers are able to find my images the way they do on my other sites.

Is anyone uploading to Clipcentric?  I received an email from them today asking me to become a contributor.  Very different business model...based on the number of seconds an image or video ends up being used in a purchaser's project.  Anyone have any experience with them?

I am on over a dozen sites using paypal on all of them and this is the first one EVER to charge a fee for paypal.  Very disappointing.  Can anyone see what the charge will be?  I can't find it in the contract.

I know that Spreadshirt allows for anyone to put someone else's design or product in their store...it's one of their big features. You can even bring up a list of all your products and it shows how many stores each product can be found it. I wasn't aware that you could do it on Zazzle, though.  Are you saying that they purchase your stock image via Microstock, and then upload it onto their products? Or are they actually taking the products you've built with your images/artwork and somehow placing it in their store?

Just received this email from Pocketstock.  Kind of glad I haven't been making any sales there....

---------------------------------


Dear Contributor

As you know we have always been reluctant to get into price wars – we tried Packages for a while, but felt it wrong to sell images at such low prices, so we got out pretty quickly.

There are so many competitors who are prepared to sell an image for whatever price they can get, to enable them to compete, we feel the market has become too saturated with price competition.

We have, because of this, decided as of today that we will no longer be accepting any new Non-Exclusive content from any supplier. Currently we are making a staggering 91% of our sales through Exclusive content, so it makes logical sense for us to look at ways of expanding this area.

We will continue to represent any Non-Exclusive content we have, but will not be adding to it, because of the cost implications and lack of large-scale sales in this area. We hope you all understand.

As all our contributors distribute through multiple channels, you all have plenty of places for your content, so we are sure this change will not be a big blow to any of you.

We never got into this space to compete on price, but with many others, in our view, selling content at unsustainable prices, selling Non-Exclusive content is not an area we see as our very long-term focus.

Many of our competitors do very well of course – we are not blaming them for anything, but can we complete with those that have many more images and sell content cheaper than us? It's very difficult.

Can we compete representing and selling more Exclusive content? We have a better chance, that's for sure.

This new policy will come into immediate effect. Any Non-Exclusive content uploaded from now on will be returned. As said, it will have no effect on the content we already represent.

We wish you all well and thank you for your ongoing support

reef creative

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Just got off the phone with them.  I did eventually work out the login problem, but currently the upload process is not working so you can't upload any new designs at present.  He's hoping to have it fixed in 3-5 days.

Has anyone else had trouble logging into their account since they upgraded their site?  I get an internal error every time I try to log on. 

If you are asking how to add a newly accepted image from the catalog to one of your sets, you just drag and drop it (from the catalog manager section). Keep in mind that it takes a few hours for a newly accepted image to show up in your catalog.

While browsing MP today I noticed that many of the images being returned in the search results now show a block box on the thumbnail showing if that image is part of a series.  Does anyone know how to create a series on MostPhotos?  I've search all over and can't find it.  It is different than putting images in an album.  Any help would be appreaciated.

Yeah...I just tried and got "Disc Full - Please upload later".  It has happened to me before. I think they are understaffed.  It should be fixed in a day or two.

Be warned...your files need to be in CMYK and not RGB, which requires the full suite of Photoshop.  I use Elements and am unable to create files using CMYK, which I only learned after registering with ABC.

This most recent batch ranged from textures and backgrounds to architecture to signs to palm trees and Caribbean islands.  I could understand some being rejected due to overstocked images, but it just doesn't make sense to all of a sudden start rejecting entire batches of images with different themes.  It seems like the same thing has happened to modvis, so maybe they have changed direction and are agressively trying to scale down their acceptances.  That is their right, of course, but a little communication with the contributors would have been nice.

Has anyone else noticed a change in their acceptance ratio at Deposit?  I was at 83% before this week, with most of my batches accepted at over 90%.  This week I uploaded 67 images and 100% were rejected with the reason "This image is not suitable for commercial use".  These were no different than any of the other images that I have submitted to them over the last 3 years.  Has something changed over there?  I sent them a support ticket, but I was wondering if this has happened to anyone else.

Is anyone else having trouble uploading to GL today?  My FTP is saying the disc is full, try again later.  And their own upload tool on the site doesn't seem to work either.

I noticed that some contributors in earlier posts listed their total number of image views for GL Stock.  Can anyone tell me where you can find this number on the GL site? I know that you can look at an individual image and see the number of views for that particular image, but I haven't seen any numbers for total views of my entire portfolio.  Any help would be appreciated.

How does a contributor get an image into one of the Galleries?  Is it only at their discretion, or can you email and recommend one of your images for a particular gallery? Or is it like their Collection, and you have to be invited? 

I received the same email and took them up on it.  Have had about 300 images accepted so far.  Fairly slow review times, and no sales yet.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to modify, add or delete keywords at Veer after an image is accepted.  I think it is intentional, because they are very aware that many contributors do not like their controlled vocabulary.

That did it.  Thanks Dirkr!

Does anyone know how to see your total sales to date on Fotolia?  When I use the Statistics page and set it to credits earned, it tells me that it can only show up to 731 points, and that does not allow for me to see all sales since I signed up with them.  Is there another way to see this figure?

Crestock on Masterfile.com:  http://www.masterfile.com/info/corporate/press/release_20100702.html

I see you guys mention that some of your images have been bought by the same buyer on IStock.  How are you identifying the buyer?  I don't see any identifying information when I look up a specific purchase, other than the name of the partner site if that is where the sale originated.

I have images on over 15 Microstock agencies and I ran an experiment the other day.  I searched for a random sampling of my images on each site to ensure that my images were coming up on the respective searches accurately.  Everyone of my 16 sites came up with flying colors EXCEPT Veer.  Due to their own internal system of modifying the keywords that are uploaded with the images, I was unable to locate over 50% of my images on the first few tries.  And since they do not allow editing to the keywords post review process, you can not control the keywords to your own images.  I am sure this contributes to my low sales on Veer, as I don't think my images are coming up in searches the way they should.  When you add this to the many other faults of Veer, including the LONGEST revieiw times by far of any other site out there, it's a wonder they are still alive and kicking.  The fact that they are owned by Corbis amazes me, as you would think they would be cutting edge and not at the bottom of the pile.  And I see from older posts here that they don't even bother to monitor and respond to feedback on this site any longer.  I guess it's time to reconsider uploading there.