Quote from: janniswerner on February 15, 2012, 17:10

Yeah sorry - I had not realized that this wasn't on the news in England. It sure is in Central and Eastern Europe...

I kinda meant though that the rejection itself is hilarious. The question format. I almost fell over laughing and totally wanted to explain it for the poor chap. 

The character limit is indeed ridiculous for editorial captions. Their rules for place/time (twice!) alone makes them take up half of it.

Ok, I see what you're saying. I agree. It would be nice, if there was a question about an image, editorial or not, if they could throw it back into pending and send the question to you to answer before making a decision. If the rejection isn't based on a technical issue but a question as to subject matter it seems stupid to simply reject it.

I've had a few of these personal rejection notes. It basically means the image will be accepted, so long as when you re-upload you add the requested info. in the caption and quote the original rejection reason in the comment to reviewer.

someone said here that we shouldn�t join small/new agencies, what shall we join??

Microstockers Anonymous

Stockmarketer, the paradox here is that the ones that are really everywhere and feeding lowest price agencies are the ones with the biggest portfolios and the ones that will benefit more from this RC system.

The result is that 123RF gives an increase to the big portfolios that are helping the most competing agencies. And cuts the small ones that may o may not be contributing to this race and wanted only to upload to fair agencies.

Great point. It's just too funny isn't it, when looking at it like that. The term shooting oneself in the foot comes to mind with this.

@Ploink The big contributors pretty much don't ever leave sites. They would stay with or without any bonuses, or with or without any cuts.

Now - after all that is said.  I also feel it is time for a reworking of the voting system so people can vote more accurately and a nice history is also shown.

Any developments on this Leaf? MSG is the most popular microstock forum, but for me the the poll on the right is the thorn on MSG's side. People probably do rig the poll, I don't see how earnings on iStock can show as high as they do after the countless reports of huge drops in sales with both non-exclusive and exclusives, for at least a year. Yet it always has a poll level of 6 something, it never drops to 5.

Finally, it is NO coincidence that 123rf got ideas about reducing commissions once they saw themselves in the Top Tier. I mean it was so soon after getting in to the Top Tier on MSG, that they announced that they will be reducing commissions for newbies, they have since announced that they will reduce the commissions for almost everyone, including me. 123rf like the other sites are here almost everyday and they see the poll too and they know how much the contributors think it is gospel. The poll on the right helps to give agencies like 123rf a window for exercising their arrogance and as a consequence we can lose money from this.

http://www.microstockgroup.com/shutterstock-com/old-sales-vs-new-sales-now-at-ss-what-do-you-think/

Wow that is cool. I always thought that featured artists were those that never made any waves, so this surprises me. Great to see Hugo featured, his work is great.

Thank you for your comments on my work at Kingston Lacy. It is an area that I know particularly well and have shot numerous times.

Just managed to have a batch of them approved on Getty as RM.

That's great, but being with Getty is not necessarily a mark of excellence though imo. I've often visited their site in recent years and there is a lot of average looking shots there, a lot of really poor shots too. Go to Getty, take off the Editorial filter and type landscape, then type landscape in Dreamstime. Micro often wins, Getty knows that microstock is extremely competitive, they even bought a microstock company not so long back.

Your shots are nice, but nice is the most appropriate adjective for them. They don't blow me away and many other ports do and they are the ones which get lots of sales in microstock. And yes u have to be thick skinned in this forum as well as in the industry in general. I would never ask for an appraisal in a forum and expect only good things said about it. If that were the case I'd be in the wrong forum. 

I am making wooden spearguns and I am trying to sell them on eBay.... 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/160725989232?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

After a lot dust in my nose, shooting photos is easier 100 times more... 

Does 'buyer protection' cover injuries? 

With 34 images online I would learn to speak Norwegian and Maori, take part in courses of snowkiting, knitting, programming and welding. I would travel a lot.
After coming back home two or three years later I would check if I have my first 0.25.

That gave me such a good laugh.

Unusual month for me on DT as there was significant growth (with no Els). I made almost as much in January as I made in the entire last quarter of 2011. I think it's a lucky blip though rather than an upward trend.

it only makes sense thinking of $$$

The poll on my blog is still open regarding the ratio in money terms, only 34 votes so far, but for many of those who've already taken part it seems that OD revenue makes up a large part of total revenue.

This is the link to the poll if you want to see it or take part. Poll

Quote from: traveler1116 on January 24, 2012, 13:20

What about contributors that used to submit to 123RF but have gone exclusive with iStock?  I had over 1000 images accepted and over 1000 sales, if I were to return to 123RF would I get the lower rates?

Um I would think your out of luck there.  Being exclusive at Istock wasn't really supporting 123rf.
Maybe they might have a deal in the future for ex Istock exclusives to drop the crown but Istock seems to have a plan of their own to achieve that.

That was very well put. 

I used to always get downloads from new uploads, now hardly at all and it's been like that for quite a few months, if not a year already. My new stuff is at least as good as my old stuff but they just don't sell. I have no complaints though, because my earnings on ss have increased a lot since whatever they did with the search, so if ss prefer that buyers look at older images that's fine with me, not so good for people starting now I guess.

They did have a bug for quite a while (not sure if it still exists), where new files would disappear from ports of contributors for a while. I think often the images disappeared only from ports but were still visible in search, although many say they went missing from search too. The bug was/is a serious one as it was around for quite a while, and you can imagine how many emails ss would be getting on a daily basis from contributors about this. Maybe the search (whatever they did with it) was partly changed to favour older images because of the bug as only new images were disappearing for ports (AFAIK).