Are you guys going to make it to the MicrostockExpo in Berlin next weekend?

Quote from: Spectral-Design.net on November 07, 2013, 05:17

Quote from: roede-orm on November 06, 2013, 18:35

I wonder what contributors expect from the Mexpo.

A good party ;-)

Ok, this one is a good reason :-)

On the more serious side - meeting people and networking (as business cliche as that sounds) and sharing and listening to ideas is one of the bigger things I get out of conferences like this. 

So who's coming to the Microstock Expo?   If you are, speak up!  I'm looking forward to meeting everyone in 'real life'

It can be a reason for rejection but often it goes through.  It is best to at least modify it a little - rotate through the most important keywords in the title / description.

set of highly detailed floral elements
group of complex flower elements
etc...

Not much different from photographers trying to get away without paying models for commercial work.

Two artists swapping services (a model needing images for their port and a photographer needing a model for their images) is different than an ad agency expecting someone to work for free.  That said, I'd still recommend always paying your models.  I feel that if you are making $$ from the images you should be paying the models $$.  For images simply to try something new or creative for a personal portfolio, perhaps a swap is more fair.

I'm getting a low framerate error for pond5 now as well.  The vids are 23.98 and stocksubmitter says pond5 has a minimum of 24fps.... but they do also accept 23.98?!

I just did a fresh install of symbiostock (first one for me) and had the same problem as you Dan.  There must be a bug.  The fix, like you say, was to create my own watermark, upload it, and point symbiostock to it's location.  Then, uploading and displaying images worked fine.

I don't understand the model release complaints.  I feel Photodune is BY FAR the easiest to deal with releases.  I don't want them to change a thing.  Most sites have to individually attaching releasign to every image (very time consuming).  At photodune you just upload the entire shoot to the Photos folder, upload all releases into the releases folder and click process and you're done.  No individual file and releases picking needed.

Quote from: Ron on October 30, 2013, 03:57

Seems the reviewers are not checking Meta data.

For which reason, I'd suggest contacting SS rather than just resubmitting, so that reviewers get a reminder.

If you resubmit it, they will quickly see that it has already been submitted before.. then see the note.. then say.. doh!

Once you learn which sites stocksubmitter works well with, you can reliably submit to those sites with the software and the rest of the sites you can manually submit.

I use stock submitter to auto submit to shutterstock, fotolia, depositphotos, canstock, 123rf (once the release issue is fixed)

The other sites I just use regular FTP

Depends on which sites you submit to.  If you only submit to sites that StockSubmitter supports auto-submit for, the time factor is negligible.  You could submit to Dreamstime, Shutterstock, Depositphotos, Fotolia, Canstock, Alamy, 123RF (hopefully again) with no extra time input.

Leaf....I like the thoughts in your initial post.  The problem is, with relation to stock, even if we submit on an exclusive basis to ONE agency (and mark said images as exclusive to that agency), that agency will then turn around and market those images through 50+ other agencies through partnership agreements.

There is an agency not listed here on the poll results who's owner has mentioned that the agency cannot survive without also distributing through other agencies (including Getty and Corbis) and would like to push for exclusive submissions.  What's the point of submitting on an exclusive basis if the that "exclusive" agent is going to submit your images non-exclusively to other agencies?

It contradicts the business model in "The 4-Hour Work Week"

I have not been paying attention to Stocksy....I don't know if they sub-distribute to other agencies....if they don't, they are one of the very few agencies out there that don't.

The issue in our case is that the market is so flooded that even the supplier cannot control it's own distribution outlets.  Heck, even Alamy is licensing images for re-distribution as is mentioned by this contributor in this thread => http://discussion.alamy.com/index.php?/topic/1283-i-do-not-like-this-one-sorry-not-ctr/

Yes, very good point.  I don't see much good in distribution deals at all actually.  At least not for the photographer.  If I want my images on site X Y and Z I can put them there myself and collect the entire royalty.  I don't need a site to send them there for me and take half the income.  I'm almost certain some images go around in circles and get distributed 3 (or more) times so essentially nothing is left for the photographer.    It also seems in our best interest to have less competing sites instead of more.  It isn't good with a monopoly either, but 5-6 sites should be enough.  If there was only that many sites we could pick and choose which site to upload to.  When distribution happens, 50-100 sites can have a lot of images (the same images) and the ones who can't compete with clever UI and search end up competing on price.  Price goes down, and the photographers royalties (through distribution deals) gets very very small.