Hope AYCS continues their good run of listening to the contributors on this one, and makes those needed changes. Then I'll be on board for sure

Ha, just check my SS account this morning, and you wouldn't believe it.... a $16.80 Single & Other download! Woo! Seems you just need to complain in this forum and the sales start rolling... 

Yeah, just needs those couple of tweaks like you have both said.

Also, it needs a spell check! "itmes" and "plillow" at a quick glance!

Hi Marius,

Thanks for such a quick reply, that does clear things up a bit.

Much appreciated

Quote

Sales are infrequent at the moment

How infrequent are they?  I uploaded 1 image but it took time and I don't see the point in wasting time for little money.  The upload procedure wasn't straightforward, if they made it easy, like some of the other small sites have done, I might consider uploading my portfolio.

I'm also not convinced that a site can thrive with such a high commission.  FP cut theirs eventually, Zymmetrical closed and I can't think of any others that have done well paying over 70% commission.

Really? The upload for me seemed as straightforward as it gets. I just FTP'd, and the rest happened automatically. Perhaps Jen or Ian at their end was assisting with my upload. If so, a quick email would get them helping you I am sure. They do need to fix their categories, as they are automatically assigned assuming you have a keyword that fits one of their categories, but it's too narrow at the moment. Eg: Animal wouldn't be recognised in the category "Animals".

I also have the same reservation about the high commission and the long term viability of it. I mentioned it to Ian (from Superhug) and he seems to think it wont be a problem. In the short term at least I am happy to give it a go.

As for how infrequent, I would put it at about AYCS or so. Seems maybe 1 a month for me at a guess (too early to tell exactly) but I notice a few other guys who have sold 4 or so images in a month or two it seems. As with Photodune, it seems their market is more geared toward computer/internet concepts so the guys with those seem to have made a few sales in a short space of time.

I guess in a way that kind of is my strategy cthoman, but perhaps from a slightly different slant.

I am not comparing Superhug with the likes of IS, SS, DT as they aren't likely to compete in the same range as them for years, if ever.

In my thinking (not saying it's right, it's just my thinking) I guess I am comparing more to Depositphotos (large = 4 credits) , 123rf (large = 5 credits), PhotoDune (7 credits XL) and the list goes on. I would rather someone buy my similarly priced image from Superhug (which gives me $5.10) than from these and many other libraries which will give me far, far less.

So I consider the pricing to be the same, not undercutting really. As for volume, well again I can't compare them with SS or the like, or each image would have to sell for a couple of hundred dollars per sale to make up for the lack in volume on Superhug!

Hope that makes sense!

Thanks THC, looks like you've put a lot of work into your sites. Looks great!  Funny, last night when I was putting in my rare 10 minutes trying to update my site a bit it was very fast, like "instant" fast.  Maybe the hosting traffic is a big part of the slowness.

I do admit that I have been resizing and saving at 120 dpi (72 looks so fuzzy) - so, I will definitely experiment with the "save for web". 

Hey pixart, yeah you will see a HUGE improvement using Save For Web versus just trying to optimize yourself using the standard Save dialog. It just takes a little getting used to, seeing the trade off between file size and clarity and determining what you can get away with.

Not just at Depositphotos (pixmac another as an example), they seem to have a terribly weird algorithm for determining the 'Most Popular' files to be displayed at the bottom of a contributors Profile page.

eg: http://depositphotos.com/user-1288156/Timothy-Hester.html

None of the files displayed are my highest selling. In fact I would bet they are just randomly generated, as they change each time I view it and they are never correct.

Why not ACTUALLY show our most popular? What's the reasoning behind this?

Big slide backwards in last month or so for Fotolia. Anyone noticed the same? Perhaps just yet another search results change which has affected me badly, but bumped up others.

DT started very strong this month, then died totally. No sales since the 4th! Terrible. Hope they fix the search results, as its killing my sales.

Thanks for the feedback guys, much appreciated.

Yep, came in over the space of about 2 days for me.

Better than last months. This month looking like a BME for me at iStock by far (only small part of my port is with them). Not sure why, but will gladly take it!