If you look at the most popular images of Arnhem, the difference is night and day.

https://www.shutterstock.com/search?search_source=base_landing_page&language=en&searchterm=arnhem&image_type=all

Those are the most popular images of Arnhem? To be honest, I think a lot of those city images on the first page look pretty ordinary. Though I guess some buyers might have a use for them.

I have a ton of new problems with MPEG Streamclip. It will not even render a video....keeps repeating the render as if it is not creating a lead out.  So it has become useless for me and I deleted it.

Uh oh, looks like I'm not alone with issues with this software. It used to be so reliable but in my case, that might be a file compatibility issue.

I uploaded my MP4 file to Shutterstock as is. Over an hour later, it was no longer pending review and discovered it in my rejected video files tab. It had the following rejection reason: "File Integrity -- File is corrupt, will not open properly or there was another technical problem wit..."

So I don't know what's going on there....whether this MP4 container is at fault or something else. I also uploaded the same video to Adobe Stock so I'll wait and see if they have any issues with it. I'll also upload some other videos to SS as MP4s and see how they fare.

Yea I'm using a Windows pc. With the MP4 files, I'm not sure what codec Sony Movie Studio uses and if it's one of the ones that the agencies accept. I could try and find out.

I didn't even realise Photoshop could work with videos. And VLC can convert video files?

That $30 software sounds like an attractive option too.

Edit: Ive just gone into Sony Movie Studio but I can't find any information on what kind of codec it uses. I assume that an MP4 is like a container and that it could contain any kind of codec inside? Correct me if I'm wrong. I notice on SS, their list list of accepted codecs is as follows:

�   PhotoJPEG
�   MotionJPEG
�   DVCPro
�   ProRes 422 / 422 HQ / 4444 .
�   H.264
�   PNG

I guess I could submit my MP4 and see what happens.

1.   Don�t shoot stock photos on your family vacation thus bring only your cell phone � your family will truly appreciate this!

This is similar to the advice I read in a book about making money from your photography. The author stated that when submitting images to publications, don't use photographs that you've taken on your holidays.

In any case, I disagree with this advice. Sorry to burst your bubble but not all photographs taken on holidays are snapshots. When I was on holiday on Kangaroo Island in South Australia in the 90s, I shot a pelican in flight over water with my Canon T70 35mm SLR and 75-300mm zoom. I made greeting cards out of the resulting image and sold them through a small art gallery (well, one of them was stolen as well.) Ive also sold a number of the cards at a market stall to tourists from passing cruise ships in addition to an 8 x 12 inch print. I also sold a framed 8 x 12 inch print of the very same image in an exhibition for $100. And recently, I sold a photo through Shutterstock that I took on a visit to Bora Bora with family (that had only been online for a couple of days.)

I used to use HJSplit with good success for joining together different segments of videos Ive downloaded from the internet. I haven't used this software for a long time and I'm not having any luck with it this time around. I have a Windows 7 pc which struggles to render long videos so I split my latest video into different segments and rendered each one seperately. I tried to use HJSplit to join them together but it wouldn't recognise the files.  I did the right thing by attaching the .001, .002, .003 extensions to the end of the file names. The files are mpeg2 / m2t by the way.

I also tried using HJSplit to join another video I downloaded from the net but that didn't work either. At least this time, it recognised the files. I selected the first file for the 'input file' but when I click on 'Start', an error message appears: "I/O error 123." Would anyone know of any other good, reliable freeware that can join video files together?

focus on quality not quantity!

Agreed. That's my approach too. I have very small ports on a bunch of different agencies and I have made sales with many of the same subjects listed above - with some images selling multiple times. Ive also won a few photography competitions and sold photographs in exhibitions with many of the same kinds of subject matter. Last photo I sold in an exhibition went for $700 though I didn't get the money on that occasion - the funds went to a charity.

I first heard about microstock (in particular iStockphoto) several years ago. I was considering joining up back then but didn't take the plunge. I just let things slide. And I really regret that now. I keep hearing how things were so much better back then from a selling point of view.

This site has become almost exclusively a subs site. The $2 subs make a difference when they happen and the increasingly rare credit sales are nice, especially when they aren't level 0 images.

Ive had one credit sale which happened to be one of my first sales on Dreamstime - in 2016. At that stage, I only had about 20 images uploaded. No credit sales since - just subs.

Looking at the stats of random Dreamstime contributors on their forums, I note that some people have done exceptionally well there. Their number of sales far exceeds their number of uploads. And in some cases, it's over 20,000 sales. Though I'm guessing that a lot of these impressive figures occurred in the distant past when things were supposedly 'better' - the glory days so to speak?

That of course depends on demand for them

Yea I was wondering that myself.

If you do a searchg  dreamtimes you can identify roughly  how many times images were downloaded by price level to give a rough idea of popularity.

Although there are no images on Dreamstime like mine, I did check the number of downloads of a few images on the first page of results using the search term 'water surface tension'. And there were not many downloads at all. Though I did come across an extract from a physics textbook online that dealt with surface tension and a number of images were used in that. Though none like mine. Still, I did find a quote in that book which gives me faith:

"The physics of surface tension has a long history and excellent books exist on this subject."

So if that's the case, there could be a potential market for my image.

The editorial option doesn't work for me. Tried different browsers too but that made no difference. Eventually, I gave up trying to submit editorial images to ESP (only submit commercial now.)

I'm interested in joining 123RF but browsing through the site, I only see information suited to buyers. So far, I can't see any info for contributors. If I join up and create an account, I guess the contributor info will then be accessable?