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Messages - Anyka
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676
« on: December 23, 2011, 10:18 »
Merry Christmas, in every part of the world, and in every time zone!
677
« on: December 20, 2011, 07:47 »
I plan to stop working for my company/boss on Friday 13th January and do fulltime photography. To start with : 90% stockphotography and 10% commission work, and see how it develops. Seems to me that Friday 13th is an excellent choice for such a risky step in my carreer 
678
« on: December 14, 2011, 12:08 »
Even if we would all agree that icholakov did something wrong, and violated the rules, it is not necessary for Shutterstock to treat him without respect. He is not a criminal, and even if he was he should be treated with respect by SS, which means : answer his questions, in writing, by phone, anyway, but just answer the questions he sent 6 months ago.
679
« on: December 07, 2011, 12:21 »
If I could afford it, I would hire people to do my cleaning, cooking, ironing, some one to give me a good massage, drive and park my car ... but NOT some one to keyword or submit my images. 
680
« on: December 01, 2011, 13:01 »
I had a BME by 2,4%, my last BME dated from November 2010, so I'm pretty happy today. Istock made me less than 50% of November 2010, and this loss was covered by SS, DT and FT. SS had a BME in downloads, not in sales because of lack of EL's (September 3x as many EL's). FT, DS, 123rf, GLO and Canstock all had BME's - yes it was an incredible month! Rodeo, Cutcaster were disappointing. Alamy did well, but YTD Alamy is down a lot. Am I the only one who's doing well at Fotolia 
681
« on: November 29, 2011, 15:33 »
64% - now I'm depressed.
Not because it's a low %, but while clicking through the unsold stuff, I saw many images that I like very much or that sell very well on other sites.
682
« on: November 20, 2011, 14:41 »
I just cleaned up my own portfolio there - I would have preferred it if Shutterstock would have done the hard work for me  Which subjects dit they remove? We might learn something here and keep away from those subjects.
683
« on: November 18, 2011, 17:00 »
I'd go for a washing machine shot, the hand with the strawberries, one sewing machine scene, the red pepper, the twin crocodiles. I added the red pepper to your list because I think it has a pure white background (you better check this). Your people shots against a white background are risky because the background is never 100% white. If you manage to whiten them without getting into trouble with the edges, SS might accept them. I like "man thinking", but only with good isolation against white. SS really does not like "almost white".
684
« on: November 07, 2011, 16:04 »
There has been a bug on the earnings page for about a month now. I had a difference of about 15 dollars between my "earning history" and my "summary". Support told me this was the result of a "rounding bug" and they reassured me that all earnings would be paid to me for 100%. But after one month, my summary was still 15 dollars down.
Today it went to Zero, just like you guys.
685
« on: November 03, 2011, 12:16 »
With 8 hours difference, I guess I'll hear the news tomorrow ...
686
« on: November 01, 2011, 02:33 »
October was not bad at all. What's a good October? It should be better than September + better than last year's October.
Overall I was 4% up compared to September and 3% up from last year's October. So it's "up", but not much.
The "guilty" sites are Istockphoto, Alamy and Rodeo, all others went up enough to cover these losses. Big cheer for 123rf, Dreamstime and Fotolia, with more than 25% of growth compared to last year's October.
Last year's November was a BME, so it'll be quite a challenge to beat that!
687
« on: October 25, 2011, 23:46 »
Thanks for the feedback. I didn't know that about Alamy, but there's no hurry, I'm just cleaning up, I'm not going to sell the deleted images elsewhere.
I do have the link between SS and BS, but I'm sure that deleting them on SS will not have any effect on BS, so I'll have to collect all photo numbers from CC/BS/GLO and send e-mails. Lucky me it's only about 2% of my portfolio ...
688
« on: October 25, 2011, 14:41 »
This September and October, I have been cleaning up my portfolio on all sites. I just finished Shutterstock, Istockphoto, Dreamstime, Fotolia and 123rf and I'm working on Canstockphoto now. Alamy is next. However, I can't find a way to delete images on Bigstockphoto, Cutcaster and Graphic Leftovers ... and probably also on Rodeo (not sure, it's all Finnish  ). Before I send e-mails to these three sites with a list of the image numbers I want to remove, I'm just checking here : Did I miss anything? Does any one know a way to do this delete job by myself on BS/CC/GLO ? (though I know from another time that GLO is very fast and helpful with requests like that). And to the managers of these sites : why can't we delete or disable our images on your sites? In most cases, "spring cleaning" is a very welcome thing, and microstock sites should be happy with contributors willing to do some cleaning ...
689
« on: October 13, 2011, 15:06 »
I have the quadras and I find myself using them not only outside, but also together with my Elinchrom studio strobes. They're fast and reliable. I recently added the ringflash to the quadra set.
690
« on: October 08, 2011, 03:33 »
I am a Lightburner user, and this morning I noticed that I cannot upload to 123rf through Lightburner. LB has no problems with Shutterstock however.
691
« on: October 04, 2011, 10:57 »
I finally reached silver today and I hope they won't throw me back into white level.
Congratulations! Hope your shiny silver will keep shining for a long time!
692
« on: October 04, 2011, 00:11 »
What Yuri can do, might be possible for us too, but only if we work together. I wonder if it had any effect if we all wrote to Istock/Thinkstock with only 1 simple request : raise the subscription price at Thinkstock with X %. That would benefit us, Thinkstock, and the whole microstock industry in one go. (if they listened, like Fotolia did this time).
693
« on: October 02, 2011, 02:02 »
Very nice September, but not as spectacular as last August : SS : 35% of sales - 46 % up since Sept.'10 and BME FT : 24% of sales - 26 % up since Sept.'10 DST : 14% of sales - 47 % up since Sept.'10 IS : 12% of sales, -36,7 % down since Sept.'10 123rf : 6% of sales - 56 % up since Sept.'10 RODEO : 3% of sales, -58 % down since Sept.'10 BST : 2% of sales - -22 % down since Sept.'10 CAN : 2% of sales - 270 % up since Sept.'10 (1 EL) GLO : 1% of sales - 325 % up since Sept.'10 (1 EL) Total : 15% growth in dollars since Sept.'10 (5% in euros) So Shutterstock covered the entire loss of Istock sales, and DST/FT took care of the growth. This was the first time that I had a BME (for SS) in September! My usual BME months are March and October/November, so I'm very curious what SS will do this month! As usual, a large part of the profit got lost in the euro conversion - I should really do more shopping in dollars Fotolia is still my n 2, and still growing. Until now (in this thread), I can only see the same situation for Leaf. How are the other European contributors doing at Fotolia ?
694
« on: September 27, 2011, 15:09 »
Interesting,
The top earner on Istock sold the best of all.
I have the same top earner on SS + FT + DST, and it made more money on Fotolia than on Shutterstock/DST.
And this top earner on the 3 sites was never accepted at Istockphoto (and I tried 3 times!).
696
« on: September 06, 2011, 23:56 »
I'm not really in denial, I realise how an important marketing tool Facebook can be, but that does not mean I like it, or that I like spending time on Facebook for marketing purposes. Outsourcing however I would not do, except for the technical part maybe, like designing a fan page. The updating with fresh news every week has to be done by the photographer.
697
« on: September 04, 2011, 03:10 »
'shoot what you like,'
Not necessarily.
It works with alamy and they seem to sell photos that are rejected by the big microstock sites. I love having the freedom to not have to think if a photo will get accepted before taking it. That was really influencing me.
Actually, you're both right. As long as you're not fulltime stockphotographer, you can really shoot what you like. If it does not sell, well that's bad luck. But if stock photography is your only income, I'm sure Sean is right to say that you often have to shoot what sells, even if you don't really like it. It's just that even as a fulltime photographer, I prefer to diversify and NOT depend on stock photography only.
698
« on: September 02, 2011, 14:58 »
I absolutely agree that stock photography is our n1 choice as a photography job : shoot what you like, and forget about marketing. But right now, I am considering to drop my day-job by the end of this year and become a fulltime photographer.
Would it be wise to go for 100% stock photography? I think not. Isn't diversification the best defense against the downward spiral of our commissions? And I'm not only talking about shooting events and portraits, but also about product shoots, pet portraits, food shots, teaching photoshop ... anything except weddings (that's the last thing I will do!).
I've been reading a lot about marketing lately, and cold calling potential customers is now almost entirely replaced by e-marketing on facebook, twitter and blogs.
So during the first year(s) of my fulltime photography, I will slowly start diversifying, and only speed it up if/when my stock income goes down.
Makes sense?
699
« on: August 16, 2011, 13:42 »
Can you believe this? I just turned emerald 1 week ago, after crawling up very slowly to 25000 downloads. So 1 week ago I went from 33 to 34 cents for subscriptions ... ha ha ha, now I'm back to 33 cents! (with a larger loss for the XL subs).
Oh well, they did allow me to celebrate for 1 week ...
Congrats on going Emerald, for what it's worth.
Looks like you haven't decided to double your prices? Did you know that's an option? Just wondering if it's something you considered... and if you did, what your thoughts are.
Thanks for the congrats! Yes I know about the option of doubling my prices, and I already doubled them for 10 or 15 images. I think in the end I'll only do it for unique photos, and not for the ones where a customer gets 100.000 hits after typing his keyword(s)
700
« on: August 16, 2011, 11:49 »
I bought two Einsteins two months ago, because of what I read about their capability to freeze motion. The second shoot, one of them exploded with a big bang. I mailed P. Buff and had to return the defective strobe. Without 1 question, it was replaced 2 weeks later. I'm glad you guys keep saying they're reliable - makes me believe the explosion was just bad luck and not a typical Einstein-problem!
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