can you use the filezilla server for regular ftp as well?  I didn't really get the difference between filezilla ftp and filezilla server.

The FTP server is different software that runs remotely on the server machine, and it accepts the commands from the FTP client on your local PC. The commands have a certain syntax and functionality (a protocol) that needs to be implemented by both the server and the client of course. That protocol is standardized (File Transfer Protocol) and it's even older than the HTTP protocol that gave us the web. SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is also older. Email is older than the web, and so is FTP 

also, I'm testing out flashFXP, I'll let you know how it goes.

I just installed FlashFXP. It works on my own site. If it works on microstock sites, I'll have to find out on my next upload. But I'm going to do a small experiment on Mostphotos since it won't bother anybody there.

What I did find though, is that SmartFTP (as you mentioned) and FlashFXP both do FXP transfers.

Since they added FXP recently to the Filezilla server, it can be in the pipeline for the Filezilla client too. We will just have to wait. A feature I really miss is handling shortcuts. I keep my main folder shooting-oriented (year-country-studio) and when uploading mixes, I still have to make a temporal copy of the images in a separate folder. It would be far more efficient to have upload batch folders existing just out of shortcuts. I tried it but Filezilla uploads the shortcut itself, not the file the shortcut points at. Maybe I missed it...

I haven't heard the eagle head

More like an owl... Ah, the goold old Rorschach test. What you see is what you are.

Lastly, of course what is the asking price for the proporty?

That's why they invented private messaging 

Flemish, you seem to be caught up on the fact that they have quantity.
The point is no one wants stupid business shots anymore.  And thats all these RM guys have in humongous quantities.

Well of course, I made some assumptions that are questionable. I was just reacting to Slocke's reply that keeping people out was per se a good thing. Formally (mathematically) it's not but content (variety, newness etc...) can change the picture.

Over the coming months, we will add more functionality to help centralize MRF management, categorization and all the little things that currently force us to visit each site separately, along with keywording tools (including translation so we can approach international markets), and reporting.

Reporting: lookstat.com is a year ahead.
Management & tracking: prostockmaster.com is years ahead.
Categorizing/submitting on site: it needs HTML parsing since no site offers APIs to do that. Dreamstime hates third-party bots doing parsing, as they showed by adding a captcha just to block Prostockmaster from HTML upload. It consumes too much resources at the detriment of the buyers speed.

What it will lead to is that Dreamstime will also add captcha on the submission page (for every image that is), causing extra work for all uploaders that don't use isyndica.

On Dreamstime, it's against the TOS for bots to access the site. Any contributor giving out his password to a third party that will crawl the site could be considered as an accomplice.

"Additionally, we do not allow the use of automated software or other crawling techniques for searching our web site and/or retrieve Images or related information."

A fairy queen  passed by me a while ago and whispered this in my ear:

Any sysadmin would probably hate bots trying to behave like human users - every site can have it's resources sucked up and it's a pattern of usage (or expected peak pattern of usage)  that determines the safeguards to be taken, whether it's a small business or Myspace - when you have scripts thinking they are peoples, it messes up the agenda. I for one have no illusions why an agency would actively block robo-microstockers from accessing the websites in human areas,  via automated methods: extra resources being consumed potentially at the expense of customers.

The clerk sitting at the counter is very easily able to tell you how much you've sold, but it's not really going to be a good use of resources to come up to them asking again every 10 minutes "so did I sell, huh huh?" - especially if the main purpose of the inquiry was solely to compare which golden cow gave the most milk that day.

seems that Q1 should be the lowest.

You're right. The Q values are totally mixed up. I don't know whether it's generated by the site or Leaf mislabeled the measures.

The way I'm reading those results is that the top earner made $120,000 and the bottom made $10.  Kudo's to the bottom guy for being honest by the way.  That is a huge spread between top and bottom.  I understand that the average of everyone was around 10K but where were the bulk of the annual incomes?

Yes the distribution will be very skewed and not Gaussian, so you can't rely on standard deviations and means as they are a parametrical statistics descriptive measures. The best nonparametric description (ic of non-normal, non-Gaussian [like skewed or bimodal]) distributions are the quartiles.

For instance, Q2 (Q stands for quartile)is the median: the value below and above which are half of the cases. In a distribution skewed to the left (many people with small incomes, few with high) the median will be lower than the mean but give a more realistic description. (Remember the statistician that drowned crossing a river with a mean depth of 2 feet).

Q1 is the value (here income) were 1/4 of the cases are lower, and 3/4 are higher, also called percentile25. Q3 is the value where 3/4 of the cases are lower, percentile75. Percentile50 is of course the median.

So for a realistic central tendency of the incomes, just look at percentile25/Q2/median, and for a "bulk" or spread measure, look at the interquartile range Q3-Q1 which gives the limits between where half of the incomes are.

Sorry to offend when I'm too exhaustive.

I'm surprised to see Shutterstock with the most RPI. I thought Istock would be first. Maybe subs are working after all, but only on SS

Not so sure about that. My RPI went up drastically on SS after On Demand and Extended took off, and that's quite recent.

I have some good contacts across editors and some printing agencies so I do sell directly to customers. Right now Im working on my website (not public yet) with gallery because its getting abit too complicated to send them pics via email all the time.

I'm currently playing with Coppermine (the only Open Software gallery that supports keyword-based search) to add a cart and remove all the rating and blabla stuff. Just a thematic keyword-driven gallery with PayPal direct sales and stock-relevant info added. An example is here. An example of a page with sales opportunity is here but don't judge the code any further since I'm still coding it. I had a look at smugmug and photoshelter but they're all so restrictive and charge per megabyte. Even ktools stopped selling its code (a bargain for 300$) but only offers hosting now, at a hefty fee. I have some contacts that are interested in my miniproject but the last I want to do is start another stock site. It's just a code package you have to install on your site and feed yourself.

Btw. I understand Im too specialised so the microstock isnt the best to sell my main-stream pics, Im now trying to keep nature/travel shots separate from the stuff presented at micro.

Yes you're right. Landscape/nature/places don't really fly at microstock, unless there is a concept, usable in advertisement behind it. And then, it's just peanuts. The girl with headset is easier and cheaper to shoot in studio than a unique nature shot. It's kind of amazing that Ellen Boughns in her interview with Lund sees a future too for web-driven direct sales in niche markets.

I didn't know you could schedule Filezilla! How do you do that?

The easiest way is to put all your sites in the site manager: fill in FTP url, name, pass. For SS and BigStock, also put the "number of simultaneous connections" to 1 (Transfer Settings tab).

At the left pane (Local site) open the folder you want to upload from on your disk. Select the files you want to upload by CTRL-click or SHIFT-click if they are in a contiguous row, just like in the windows file manager.

Open site 1 in your site manager and click "Connect", then wait till in your right pane (Remote site) the folder on the remote site comes alive. Drag the files from the left to the right pane. Transfer starts for site 1.

The bottom pane has three tabs: Queued files, Failed transfers, Successful transfers. Your uploads will show in the Queued files where you can monitor Site to upload to, local file name/folder, and transfer progress bar.

Now open site 2 in your site manager and "Connect". It will ask whether to break the current connection, and answer "yes". This is the part where most people get fooled since they think it will interrupt the ongoing queue. That's not true, the queued transfers will just go on. So once on the right panel the remote folder for site 2 goes live, drag and drop the batch from the left pane again there. This queues the transfer as you can see in the bottom pane.

Now go back to site manager and connect to site 3. You will be asked again to break the current connection, so answer "yes". When site 3 goes live in the right pane, drag the local files from the left pane there again. Etc...

Do this for all your sites that have FTP. At the end, you will see all files in progress plus the queued ones in the bottom pane. You're set now. Take a walk, take a bath, go shopping, or minimize filezilla and go on with whatever you're doing on your PC.

When all is finished, the bottom pane with Queued files will be empty. If some transfers failed, click the Failed transfers tab, and there you will see a list of the failed ones. You can easily reschedule them by selecting them all, Right-click and choose "reschedule" or whatever from the context menu that popped up.
To make sure, you can also check the Successful transfers tab to verify what was uploaded where.

How just to schedule and not really upload now? Instead of dragging the files to the left pane, Right-click on the files and choose "Add files to queue" in the context menu that pops up. You will see that the scheduled files are added to the bottom pane with Queued files, along with the site to which they are queued to, but they don't start yet. If later you want to delete one of more files from the queue, just select them there and press Delete.

Ah, and right clicking on the queued files gives you also the choice what to do after all uploads are done: play a sound, close Filezilla, shut down the PC (in case you start before going to bed), reboot, etc...

FYI: You already have enough sales to go exclusive.

He should go faster than September. Exclusivity on iStock is the way to go for all new photographers. Promoveatur at amoveatur.