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Messages - spike
Pages: 1 ... 19 20 21 22 23 [24] 25 26
576
« on: November 12, 2013, 16:54 »
I used microstock analytics, found it overall better and cheaper than stock performer
577
« on: November 11, 2013, 10:34 »
Had one sale for $70 today <3
578
« on: November 07, 2013, 14:41 »
Only 7 days into this month, but it's already doing better than fotolia and dreamstime, so let's not talk about bigstock (totally dead for me) and the rest.  This is with photos by themselves, if I add video, then it's doing even better. But let's stick to photos. However, this is my first month with my full portfolio there, so I'm not sure if it's representative. Higher royalty and prices (which you can set as you wish) means that one sale at p5 is worth a couple of sales somewhere else (for me). They have a really simple upload procedure (batching, no categories), so try it out. It might be a waste of your time, and it can be worthwhile. I like where it's headed for my content.
579
« on: November 04, 2013, 05:50 »
Given that the data is submitted I wonder why not post the complete raw data anonymized. Even if that means in a format which needs to be processed to be useful. I am sure we could quickly come up with spreadsheets to make sense of it. Then we could see how many people voted and how much they were actually earning at each site.
It seems to me that at the moment the data is made less useful by the way in which it is converted into rankings which are difficult to make sense of.
Agreed. What does the current 82.7 for shutterstock mean? Not the percentage of earnings, obviously, since the sum is not 100. It should either be clear what the ranking means, or just feed the raw data in an anonymous fashion.
580
« on: November 01, 2013, 05:07 »
BME (+34%), but I've been uploading like crazy for the last two months, so nothing unexpected here.
After more than a year of not uploading to iStock, this month they accounted for only 0.9% of my earnings. That's funny. I don't understand the poll results, how is iStock still so high, did you guys just continue uploading there or what?
I'm thinking of uploading there again, as it seems that I'm missing out.
I've also refreshed my portfolios on P5 (86% of my total portfolio) and Alamy (11%), but haven't had any sales on either of those sites. Hope they pick up.
581
« on: October 31, 2013, 15:28 »
same here but why should I care when they have earned me this month only 5% of what SS have 
1% for me.
582
« on: October 22, 2013, 17:44 »
(but this not so big)
I like the last one. But I also agree: the typeface should be changed.
583
« on: September 17, 2013, 17:08 »
It used to be around 8-10 DLs per weekday. But as mentioned, the page is broken.
Be happy you haven't had anything in the Top 50. It's a cures more than anything else. Something hits the Top 50 and you've got a dozen copycats reproducing your image. It kills off sales fast.
I really hope they never fix that feature. Or if they do, give us a way to opt out of it.
Thanks, I was wondering about the scale of those images, I assumed it would be much higher, like 25+ per day. And thanks for the additional insight.
584
« on: September 16, 2013, 23:53 »
Hey guys, I guess some of you had their images "featured" in the top 50 images of the week. What I'm wondering is, how many dl's per day does that actually mean? My bestseller image has been downloaded around a 1000 times in around 450 days and I am wondering what is the scale here. How many times does an image has to be downloaded in a week in order for it to be in the top 50 of that week.
585
« on: September 08, 2013, 11:35 »
Stopped uploading to iS before D-Day. Earnings are less than DT and 123RF.
586
« on: August 23, 2013, 12:36 »
Just upload everything as fast as possible. The sooner it is out there on Shutterstock, the sooner it can get some sales. Don't worry about stuff like 'should I upload a few every day or not?' because in the end, it doesn't matter at all.
If anything, uploading large batches would make you prominently featured at that moment.
I wouldn't agree. In my experience, timing is everything. I have uploaded 2 variations of the same photo (both accepted, duh) on two separate occasions. One of them brought 8x more cash than the second one. And they are practically the same, the only difference was timing.
If you're "lucky", a lot of buyers will search for the thing you uploaded and if the timing's right, you will easily get into the top result for that search query. And from there on it's smooth sailing. If you upload something and nobody searches for it and it isn't downloaded, someone else's photo of the same thing will be new and have the cycle that yours was "supposed" to have.
That's why I find it the best to upload similar shots (for example from the same shoot) on various occasions, to give your photos more chance to get into the positive spiral.
Since you can't predict sales, or how and when others upload more than you, it's a waste of time trying to calculate this into your uploading workflow.
There is no calculating there. Precisely because you can't predict sales or other uploads, it's smarter to distribute photos from your sessions across different upload batches. This works for me, your approach works for you, that's cool, I'm just sharing my experience, not trying to convince you my method is better. I think it is, but it's up to personal choice.
587
« on: August 22, 2013, 12:14 »
Just upload everything as fast as possible. The sooner it is out there on Shutterstock, the sooner it can get some sales. Don't worry about stuff like 'should I upload a few every day or not?' because in the end, it doesn't matter at all.
If anything, uploading large batches would make you prominently featured at that moment.
I wouldn't agree. In my experience, timing is everything. I have uploaded 2 variations of the same photo (both accepted, duh) on two separate occasions. One of them brought 8x more cash than the second one. And they are practically the same, the only difference was timing. If you're "lucky", a lot of buyers will search for the thing you uploaded and if the timing's right, you will easily get into the top result for that search query. And from there on it's smooth sailing. If you upload something and nobody searches for it and it isn't downloaded, someone else's photo of the same thing will be new and have the cycle that yours was "supposed" to have. That's why I find it the best to upload similar shots (for example from the same shoot) on various occasions, to give your photos more chance to get into the positive spiral.
588
« on: March 27, 2013, 08:46 »
Hey,
sorry to be so uninformed, I got out of the stock game for now, so not sure how to deal with this. I'm not a US resident: I thought we already pay 30% US taxes to all the sales coming from US, so do I need to do anything with this 1042-S document, which I received a couple of days ago? It's from "SS SPV LLC", which I guess is BigStock, but I've already signed the W-8BEN and it has been approved, so 30% is withheld... not sure what to do with this and why they sent it. Could you kindly advise?
Thanks
589
« on: February 10, 2013, 00:12 »
So, does anyone know what to do about these 1042-S forms? :/
Mine was sent from "SS SPV LLC", which I guess is BigStock, but I've already signed the W-8BEN and it has been approved, so 30% is withheld... not sure what to do with this and why they sent it.
590
« on: February 09, 2013, 02:23 »
Hey,
sorry to be so uninformed, I got out of the stock game for now, so not sure how to deal with this. I'm not a US resident: I thought we already pay 30% US taxes to all the sales coming from US, so do I need to do anything with this 1042-S document, which I received a couple of days ago?
Thanks
591
« on: January 24, 2013, 21:41 »
In addition, if we really send out a strong message, maybe the royalty percentage would be negotiable as well, since they would lose a lot of top selling images. And those are the ones that keep the agencies afloat. 
592
« on: January 24, 2013, 21:33 »
Why has CJ6 been banned?
He's made a valid point: deleting just the non-sellers effectively doesn't do much. I also hold the opinion that if you're deleting your images, it should include your best sellers as well. Can this "issue" be discussed in a constructive way, without anyone being banned (maybe a new topic)? It sounds reasonable and logical because of that 20/80 distribution [20% of your photos make up 80% of your income (however, some say it's more like 10/80)] - if I delete or deactivate the bottom 50% of my portfolio, it'll only affect 5% of my earnings. Sure - the total number of photos available to iStock will be smaller, but only the non-selling files will be gone. We're actually curating the collective portfolio and making it more appealing to the buyers, right?
I firmly believe that every action should carry a meaning. And we need a strong action to carry a strong meaning. Is this really a strong action?
593
« on: August 18, 2012, 15:36 »
Android version?
A lot more people have various android phones than iphones, I'd guess...
594
« on: August 11, 2012, 11:12 »
Has anyone tried it? http://www.octopusmicrostock.com/The creators state the following: Octopus is designed to assist microstock contributors in the process of managing uploading and submitting their content to chosen stock agencies. It is a service for those who look for maximum efficiency. From the description, it seems to be something like picworkflow, but with auto-processing so that one doesn't need to visit the stock agency's website and with added MR support. Minus the keywording and retouching. However, i haven't found anyone using it and there isn't a dedicated topic about it here, so if anyone is using it, can you please share your thoughts and experiences? Cheers
595
« on: July 27, 2012, 18:31 »
This propably doesn't apply to the original question, but... :
I propably retouch 90% less than I did five years ago. Especially when I'm shooting a series of images, I rather tinker with my lights and props for 10 more minutes in the beginning than retouch 12 hours. I'm not kidding.
It's almost always a stupid thing to think "I will fix it in Photoshop" instead of fixing the problem right away.
Of course I make some images that are heavily photoshopped, but I still try to shoot the raw material in a way that will make it as easy as possible to make the final image in Photoshop.
That's fine, but I'm not talking about the type of stuff that you can solve with lights and props. Cclapper, thanks, I'll try uploading those to Alamy.
596
« on: July 27, 2012, 12:20 »
Does anyone know what kind of images and for what use are licensed for sensitive use?
597
« on: July 27, 2012, 10:20 »
I might suggest improving your photography skills so you don't have to "heavily retouch." I'm not saying that to be mean or be a smarta$$, I just remember when I first started out, I couldn't shoot isolated objects correctly. I had to do clipping paths in PS to get it. In the early days, that worked out OK. As time went on and standards at the agencies improved, I had to learn how to do it with lighting. It really cut down on post-production. Same with any object or subject and any lighting.
Ranting is good! Resubmitting is bad. 
Lol. I do beauty and fashion retouching which takes a while if you want it to be done correctly, so it has nothing to do with my photography, but thanks for the comment.
598
« on: July 27, 2012, 06:23 »
Same here.
My AR is around 80%, the last batch od 20 images - all 20 rejected. Lol.
599
« on: July 26, 2012, 10:51 »
Can't understand why some try to game the system for loose change. Big waste of time.
Well, I guess one can't understand this if he's playing a numbers game. I'm pretty selective about my work and upload 50 images a month on average. The photos I reffered to were taken during one day and then heavily retouched during the next two weeks. That's why it doesn't feel like it's fair for luck to have such a big role. If I was uploading 500 images each month with no post-production, I wouldn't care if some of my images got approved or how well are they were doing. If they're not doing well, there's 450 of other that maybe will. It feels bad because there's no ROI and my eyes were almost bleeding those two weeks when I was retouching.  Anyway, thanks for the resposnes, I guess I won't be uploading them again. This was more of a rant, methinks.
600
« on: July 26, 2012, 08:52 »
If you make this a habit of removing and resubmitting "old" stuff I'm sure SS will eventually warn you or terminate your account. You're trying to play the system IMO and SS most likely won't like that.
There is a difference between the submission of an illustration and isolated shots of a pretty girl.
Do a search for the main keywords of the two images and let us know with how many other images you are competing respectively. I can imagine that you have no downloads on the people pictures because you throw them into a large ocean of other pretty girls...
Yeah; but... The two illustrations are almost identical. Doesn't that prove the point that luck is such a huge factor in determining the lifetime sales of a file? Not the only one (I don't want to be misunderstood; great images will always sell pretty good if they don't get burried in the "newest" search order), but a really big one.
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