They checked the box marked "Property Release" when there is no way in hell they could ever have one for the Eiffel Tower!

OK, I see what you mean. I guess the person taking the picture assumed (falsely) that they had a property release... There are so many examples of images that need property releases and don't have them, I'm surprised that Alamy isn't sued into bankruptcy!

I've been at this for about 3.5 years and it was BME for IS on pure download earnings and then add a couple of referral earnings on top of that and it put me way over the top compared to any month previously. I'm getting downloads all over my portfolio. Older images that have no downloads are suddenly getting downloads. They are making it harder and harder for me not to go exclusive.

SS was one of my WME. In fact, I just sent a bunch of files for inspection there and they reject about 75% of them, some of them selling on IS already. What is going on with them?

Dreamstime is doing OK about where they have been for the past six months.

Quote from: Bateleur on February 29, 2008, 08:29
Good for Alamy!

There are loads of images with them which show they're model and/or property released, but can't possibly be.

Look at this one ... A3HHW4.

Not to quibble, but that image is permitted:

Q :     Is the publishing of a photo of the Eiffel Tower permitted?
A :    There are no restrictions on publishing a picture of the Tower by day. Photos taken at night when the lights are aglow are subjected to copyright laws, and fees for the right to publish must be paid to the SETE.

But I agree, there are so many images uploaded without the proper property release, just check out my local landmark here in Seattle, the Pike Place market. Search on that and you'll find dozens of images without property release, especially the neon sign.

People have a hard time with this at Alamy saying you should sell the same at Microstock and Alamy because you are undercutting you business. If you are a small scale, unknown photographer then it is likely they will never find you images on something like iStockphoto and Alamy. There are over 11 million(!) images on Alamy now and I have a hard enough time finding half my images on iStockphoto, much less Alamy! If you are a big time photographer like Yuri Acurs, I wouldn't try it, but for many of us little guys it's a way to make an occasional large sale. I only have one sale in a year on dinky portfolio of like 20 images and it was for $250!

Frickin ratings system... get rid of it!

Right now I'm seeing more sales in my older files than my newer ones. It's true though, if you have an image that doesn't start selling right off the mark, you can pretty much kiss it goodbye.

Quote from: Susan S. on February 26, 2008, 11:28
I'm exclusive at istock and my sales are down a bit on January but not hugely - they have been very very volatile though - some really good days, and some shockers. If I have a few more of the good days it's conceivable I could equal the January sales figures, but it's more likely I'll be down around ten per cent. I do have a small portfolio, which is therefore subject to swings. And my best seller has just dropped off the most popular files page so it's sales have tanked, and I expected a slow down   (some mean *insult removed* gave it a 4/5, knocking it out of the top fifteen ! - but it had six months of free pimping so I can't complain)

We've all be the recipient of changes in the best match search engine. I had an image that when you typed in the word "vineyard" it was on the first line of the search for like six months. Made a ton of money off it it, then some best match tweaking and 1.5 years later, maybe 3 downloads.

This is curious about the 4/5 rating. The IS zealots will tell you that ratings have no impact on best match searchs, but in your case they did. I remember having several people rate an image of mine about a year ago and it quickly zoomed to the top of the search for that object, but over time it has slowly slipped down the best match search results. So, I think there is some type of time thing to promote newer images.

Still down... not even the graphic about checking back...

I'm not exclusive there, but I might have my best month in two years there. I am seriously considering going exclusive at the next canister level, but gives me the creeps thinking about it. I've had a huge surge in sales since the beginning of the year and I'm thinking for once I am the beneficiary of some Best Match tweaking (finally!). I see what other exclusive members in my situation sell and there is no comparison, they sell far more than I do. IMHO, exclusives have a huge advantage over non-exlcusives  (unless you are someone like Yuri).

Good job! I love those little men... I'm sure it's a trade secret, but where do you get those little guys?

I'm still waiting to get some pictures of some "dirt" so I can see if they make it through the process... This is such a  crappy picture of a camera... Everyone here can pick out the model of this camera in an instant, yet they won't let you upload images of cars now...

This is why I rarely post in the IS general discussion forums. I sometimes stop in there to read what is going on like the recent Best Match search changes. I mainly stick to the other forums that are less volatile. I was apparent very early on that you can get into trouble fairly quickly if you didn't agree with the management...

I'm pretty sure that Alamy will only accept film or DSLR images. I'm pretty sure that they state that in their guidelines for acceptance...

Your friend wouldn't be the first that bought way more camera than they needed. I have many friends that have been bitten by the DSLR bug and just turn out crappy snapshots...

I've been a member of the Yahoo group since it's inception and I've been hanging out here more lately just because there does seem to be a wider variety of people in the discussion mix. Lisa is right, it seems smaller and you seem to get fewer people talking. Plus, I just like these web based discussion groups better than email based.

That's exactly what I'm seeing... images I gave up on long ago that had zero or very few downloads are now hot sellers... I'm not complaining!

Rule #7 in succeeding at Microstock photography:

"In order to truly succeed, one must take pictures of cheesy looking, business people shaking hands with a laptop" or something like that... I guess I'll never be successful!

Are they fiddling with the search engine again at IS? I'm seeing a bunch of downloads from my older images. It seems like every six months or so they have to fiddle with the search engine... maybe it's just me though...

This is crazy... I did a search on "dirt" and found quite a few, so of them quite nice. It's true that 1/2 of North America and Europe is under snow and ice right now but I plan on taking a really nice picture of "dirt" in a month or two in my garden and see how it goes. BTW, this guy has about 240 views on that image and no downloads and he's from Loftus, NSW (Australia).

I propose the following challenge. Let's all go out and take a similar crummy picture of dirt and see how many make it past the IS inspectors!

Exclusivity to an agency means they control more unique images and for some agencies like IS, there are some high powered photographers like Lise Gagne and Hidesy that attract buyers. For buyers, it means one stop shopping and the knowledge that you can get those images only at one place, albeit with many other buysers.

can you do this on istock?

20% is the base royalty for non exclusives. If you go exclusive, you can get up to 40% of royalties depending on your canister level.

Yes, with 1000 high quality images, you can make way more than $100 a month. I have about a third of that and I'm bumping up to that level every month now...

Like many I was into photography and had a nice film SLR and got  a digital P&S, then a DSLR and took like 10000 pictures and next thing I stumbled on Istockphoto and it was a kind of challenge to get in there. Got rejected in 2004, waited a year and got much better at photography and flew threw the inspection process in 2005. I really wished I was able to push it in 2004 and build a big portfolio early on. I think those early into it made a huge amount of money because there were so few contributors back then.