Quote from: qwerty on July 18, 2009, 00:13I agree it seems to be too variable, one batch almost all accepted then a whole batch rejected for not suitable for stock. Seems a bit like a lucky dip to me.

I had exactly the same experience. The worst was that they accepted my borderline shots and they rejected my good sellers at other sites. I don't think it's their policy, I just think their reviewers are uneducated as to what the site really wants. I will just withhold uploads now till they streamlined their reviewers team.

Quote from: puravida on July 19, 2009, 15:00it's ridiculous that FT even allows XL to sell for 36 cts.

That's still 1 cent more than Dreamstime. 

Quote from: Perseus on July 19, 2009, 14:44Incidentally, has anyone seen a change to the no views on newest images?

None yet on my most recent batch that was approved 3 days ago, but 3 views on a single editorial image approved on 06/27/2009 and some (2+2+1) views on a batch approved 06/26/2009. I'm not sure whether it's not my own views. Did they filter out Google traffic and self-views?

I had a look at downloads, uploaded on 07/01/2009, but the search term was n/a so the buyer found them by visual search, not by keywords. He downloaded a bunch of that model, and he found the first one by the keyword female on a picture approved on 01/05/2009.
I have this little theory that images will only be found by conventional (keyword) search after half a year online, and if you sell something more recent, it's by visual search only. This thanks to the feature more of this model and more like this.

In view of this, holding your uploads at DT is a bad strategy since a picture can only get older when it's online. Just my 2 cents.

What watermark? 

Yes those were great tips and it doesn't harm to repeat them now and then.
1 - The spine thing you find out inevitably yourself working with beginning models that stand like the pillars of wisdom feeling pretty, then look at the shots. Working with dancers and actors helps.
2 - Hands, very true.
3 - The square thumb has been brought up a couple of years ago by Yuri Arcurs as the most optimal thumb to catch attention and it's a very good reason to switch to a high MP cam with some room to crop.
4 - The clean background is often neglected and looking at your most recent pics at DT it's quite obvious. I also noticed (even before on the presentation) you almost always avoid overwhites. Some schools of thought tell us that overwhites sells better for models. Your idea?

Quote from: zymmetrical on July 18, 2009, 23:26we grow up in Canada learning about Flander's Fields, hopefully your government is not going overboard and forgetting what the expected standard of freedom is..

In taxes, love and war, all is allowed. The only freedom that counts is the state's one to mingle in people's business and tax them till they almost drop. The US will soon experience what a socialist system means with Yeshecan. Subsidizing cars that can't hold the road and ship them to China is just a start. You can't beat the system but you can stay out of Facebook and Tweet. And tweak your radar a little higher please. 

Quote from: zymmetrical on July 18, 2009, 10:10We are this >< close to ceasing Twitter usage. Not for anything with the aspects of how the service works, but for the recent terrible sysadmin examples

Security might be one thing, information overload is another. Twitter is overload breaking loose. In your first Techcrunch item, it is mentioned that RSS is the enemy. Of course it is. RSS is a better "tweet" with vital info filtered. My top Firefox bar has about 30 feeds of channels I care for: BBC,CNN,Arcurs,Mstk diaries,papers,slashdot, etc...

As to Facebook, I stay far away from it. Yesterday it was in the local media that the taxman of my (W European) country uses Facebook extensively to match your advertised lifestyle to your filed income form. No thanks. Flying under the radar makes you fly further and cheaper.

Quote from: LisaAnderson on July 18, 2009, 21:43It sounded like you were being snarky about it but maybe that's just how it seemed rather than how you meant it. I use my actual name in posts too.

I'm sorry if it sounded snarky but it wasn't intended like that. I was just so amazed that you brought the anonymity issue up in a rather off-topic way in this discussion. As I said before, it's very easy to contact a member here by a private message, that's how forums work. In that case, you are also sure it's the person you were dealing with, while an email, certainly a buffer email on yahoo, gmail or hotmail, might not be the same person. It's also much faster and more direct to send a private message on the forum.

Quote from: LisaAnderson on July 18, 2009, 21:43I have never and still don't understand all the secrecy in forums--not just here--and the paranoia about email addresses. I believe most people are good natured and wiling to help others if given half a chance. Sure, now and then you get burned, but I personally have had much more good than bad in my life so it's working for me.

The net is not always a nice place. As to this forum, it's frequently visited by site managers and reviewers, and taking clear stances can be adverse for business. Microstock is a crowd phenomenon. A site like Shutterstock for instance has 200,000 contributors. Relations between contributors and the site inevitably can't be as cordial and personal as on a 3D-modeling artists site were the artists are highly skilled and few. So probably, the kind of relation is totally different.

Also, there is just one or two leading 3D sites, while there are many microstock sites. Most microstocks have a much better attitude towards their contributors than others, so this forum about microstock is also about testing the good sites against the not so good ones, concerning attitude and sales. Once again, anonymity can help to be more clear and honest in this. If it's used to degrade a site, the community will correct that soon in a very clear and frank way.

Finally, this forum reflects on Google. Some people here have different lives and areas of interest. Some people might have a high profile in some other area, like for instance politics. Google can be your enemy if some creep start to combine info on Google.

Quote from: lephotography on July 18, 2009, 04:49Why prep for a lengthy video that you would actually teach someone something useful?

Yuri has a couple of very useful videos about how to handle a model, especially how to freeze, and also how to catch different types of smiles.

Quote from: madelaide on July 18, 2009, 03:30My subs had always been marginal - 15-20%, 30% on worst months.  But now...

Open this subject on the Dreamstime forum now. They are all sleeping in Bucharest. By 9am CET the topic gets filled up, then it will be gone mysteriously around 10am CET.  
Thanks to the Lord for the microstock group.  

No joke, Dreamstime will have noticed this trend too. They are not Fotolia and actually they take care of their contributor's worries. I guess it's a seasonal phenomenon of buyers finishing off their subscription packages before going on holiday. If it is becoming permanent, I'm sure Dreamstime will do something about it.

Quote from: madelaide on July 18, 2009, 03:18I still don't understand what this is for. 

A complete waste of time. News feeds on established sites are great. I think the kind of people that worship Twitter are the ones that dump the forum of YAY full with help no sales while they don't have time left to shoot stock. Today I canceled my Facebook. (when I came online after 3 months a few chatboxes popped up with hey wazzup?). Twitter will be next.

Quote from: madelaide on July 15, 2009, 22:23Midstock and Gold do not have to be exclusive (I read that twice already, I don't know where you guys are reading that from).  They can not be in microstock sites - that's the real requirement.

No one with more than one braincell would put pictures exclusive at FP. If we are talking about microstock only, yes FP requires exclusivity for its higher priced images. I joined FP because I could price all my maximum sizes 10$. Now, looking at my port, I see them for grabs at "0.25$ subscription" and I only get 50%, not 70%. That was not the deal I joined with.

As a consequence, FP ceased to exist and it became just another new microstock. They suddenly are competing with the established large sites, which is hopeless. I stopped uploading last March, mainly for the collapse of sales. It's on hold for now, but my finger was hovering around the cancel account trigger for a while. Now they are playing the price competition game too, they'd rather come up with some decent volume sales in the fall, so I'll just wait and see till end of 2009.

Quote from: madelaide on July 17, 2009, 22:38
80% of my sales at DT this month are subs.  I never had anything like that before.   

You too? My RPD has been cut in half in July compared to June by the staggering amount of subs, at maximum size of course. I thought it was only me since the subject "subscriptions" is totally taboo on the DT forums.

In July, my RPD at DT was the same as at ShutterStock. I hope this is a seasonal phenomenon by buyers that want to finish their subscription package before going on holiday. Almost no on demand and no ELs at Shutterstock too in July.

If it stays like that after summer holidays, I will have to rethink my size upload policy. Shutterstock gets my downsized versions, and DT my full sizes.

Quote from: Adeptris on July 17, 2009, 17:31sadly the local government planning and regulations, and the business rates (local taxes) in the UK would not make such a large project viable!

Do you mean local taxes are on square meter and they account for a lot?

Quote from: lephotography on July 17, 2009, 05:08
I am totally missing the point to his video besides it showing how big his studio is.

That's the whole point with men, show and brag about how big it is. And as we all know, Yuri is a superman 

Quote from: lephotography on July 17, 2009, 05:15http://www.crestock.com/profile/boss.aspx
Here is the executive manager of Crestock's portfolio. it looks like he has cleaned up his own portfolio. He used to have some really BAD shots in it but I see they are gone.

If the really BAD shots are gone, what you call this?


It would even be rejected at YAY, the garbage bin of microstock. Is the guy married to Judge Ross perhaps?

Quote from: Phil on July 17, 2009, 08:02considering how many times they have been told what people think of them and what people think are the problems, I am sure they are aware of the attitude towards them. As they never do anything about it, they obviously just dont care:)

Why all the fuzz then about them? If they choose to commit suicide, don't stop them. Jump! Jump! 

I just had a large batch of 70 reviewed. I had great hopes since all my 10 application photos were accepted without any problem. The result is that 35 were rejected as "non suitable for stock". I am not finicky about rejections at all, if the shot is technically borderline, if it falls beyond the type of collection the site wants to build, or if it's borderline commercial.

But my problem with Veer's rejections is the total inconsistency. I tried to compare the rejected vs the accepted and there is no line to draw. I would have preferred if they had rejected the technically borderline ones, low sellers at other sites, or certain types of content consistently. Then it would have been clear what they want.

Now, it's not. They reject - and accept - isolated studio business shots, they reject - and accept - lifestyle and in situation, they reject - and accept landscapes and nature. It just makes no sense to see what they accept and reject from the same shoot, except they rejected good sellers at other sites (included iStock) and consistently accepted the boring or technically borderline ones.

My conclusion is that they employed Atilla and his entire family as reviewers, and/or that the reviewers are totally uneducated or clueless right now. Hopefully that will get better later. That will teach me a lesson: don't upload large batches, just small and varied ones of 10. If you fall on Atilla, at least the rest of a particular shoot isn't ruined.

For the moment, I'll just stop uploading. Their workflow is very slow if you want to do it seriously (going through the suggested keywords) - it took me a full day to upload and submit 100 photos. iStock's workflow is much faster, and at least I feel comfortable with iStock's rejects. Veer's acceptance and rejects are erratic for the moment. So better put that time in iStock for the moment again.

Without ShutterStock it's pointless. All we got by it was that stupid captcha when logging in at ShutterStock. I personally don't care for Fotolia since for some reason my port doesn't fly there, and I stopped uploading long ago. That leaves iStock and Dreamstime. But both offer a good statistics tool to check on the site itself.

Considering there was no news at all from Lookstat in a long time, I got worried and changed my passwords on the 3 microstocks supported, and I also changed my email to nonsense on Lookstat.

It was a great idea but I guess the microstocks don't like to spare resources on being compared to each other. But it's our stats and it's none of their business if someone comes up with a desktop application that logs in to the microstocks from our own PC and harvests the stats.

Quote from: LisaAnderson on July 14, 2009, 01:02Thanks for answering my question about why so many of you hide your email addresses.

1. Where is yours?
2. All forums, included this one, have private messaging that goes faster and is more secure. An email can be from anybody, even a competitor in disguise.

Quote from: LisaAnderson on July 14, 2009, 01:02Perhaps you should consider using yahoo and hotmail email addresses to protect your personal email address from more spam, and also to help keep your various enterprises/personas separate.

We all do that for many years, but thanks for reminding us.

Quote from: LisaAnderson on July 14, 2009, 01:02Although our company has been around 14 years, we haven't been in stock that long--we started with 3D models--but our sales increase each month so there is no need for us to abuse our Members.

What is your company name and website?
www.the3dstudio.com by any chance?

Pardon me, but what is Crestock? 

Quote from: Perseus on July 14, 2009, 16:43This is a snapshot (Image Deleted).

"Erupting volcanoes are a very well covered subject in our data base or the subject of your image is too specific. We are looking for images that exceed the technical quality and creativity of the images already online. Please take a few minutes to browse through the best selling images online (on this subject) and go deeper, play, have a more creative, more personal approach to it, like extinguishing the volcano, girls with headset playing on top in the lava, the volcano top covered with a hardhat or handholding businessmen dancing around the base cheering and waving fire extinguishers."

Quote from: basti on July 13, 2009, 09:06If copy of PS costs in US much less then in east Europe while US avergae income is 5-10x higher... oh well, what a surprise!

Abobe price comparison between the US and a country in Western Europe (all prices converted to Euro):

Product	US	EU
CS4 web premium buy	1154	2055
CS4 web premium upgrade	407	725
CS4 master collection buy	1697	3387
CS4 master collection upgrade	610	1209

Don't try to buy online in the US: your IP will be rejected since all major corporations are bound by a EU regulation that sales from within the EU should be diverted so they can be taxed an additional 21% VAT. Educational prices are much lower, but still 250 euro. Yet every college student I know seems  to have CS4 on his PC. Nuff said.

If PS wouldn't be "shared" in huge volumes, everybody would use GIMP.
If Windows wouldn't be bootlegged massively (or preinstalled), everybody would use Linux. The search for one legal copy of PS amongst individuals (not companies) between Vienna and Vladivostok is harder than the quest for the Holy Grail.

I'm regularly looking at freebies at Microstock and I used to stockpile them for later use. I never looked who made the shot, I just harvest. A few times I couldn't find what I wanted, I bought it at Dreamstime by a fresh search, but never (unless by coincidence perhaps) in the portfolio of the Mother Theresas that are so naive to give away their shots for free on Microstock.  

Of course it doesn't help.

Whatever, but the hair is always a terrible mess and a timewaster.