Hello;

I have recently sold EL on dreamstime.  I have suddenly discovered that the photo is being reproduced and sold on EBAY.  Here is a link... http://cgi.ebay.de/LIGHTHOUSE-Bild-H-60x90-sehr-athmosphaerisches-Design_W0QQitemZ170134958044QQihZ007QQcategoryZ19782QQcmdZViewItem
The photo itself seems to be the merchendise (print).  Is this all within the EL framework?  Thanks.

I know that many people here submit stuff on alamy on RM basis.  I had a batch of images there that I have decided to try on RF basis.  Had a sale.  At the lowest res.... it was 65 dollars!!!

nope.... slowest month this year for me.  However, last months I had most downloads but lowest earnings this year.  I think more people are buying smaller sizes.

I do some upsizing.  When I crop an image, I want to preserve original resolution, so I define the crop area in the same proportion as the original and then just use the bicubic smoother option.  To be honest with you, it was never a problem... A sharp, hi-res  image upsized with bicubic smoother option is difficult to spot.  Alamy seems to think this too.

Quote from: Freezingpictures on April 13, 2007, 11:01
Ok, that means I can not take part in it..

Hmmmm.... I think that you can download Photoshop, including the latest version of elements, as a free trial from Adobe.  It works fine for 30 days.  I tried out Lightbox like that and also some of the macromedia products.  Give it a shot.

Cool idea, and I have the book (although I did not find it all that iteresting). 

Quote from: litifeta on April 12, 2007, 03:18
and another thing that really gets on my neves:

There is this clear message that we are a sponge on their business.

I for one, and I know many others, continue to promote their site to designers all over my town. I even met with all of the Government designers and introduced them to the site and did a power point demo since most of them buy stock photos from CDs at local book shops.

Did I want a commission? NO! Did any of these buyers actually buy my photos? NO!

You have so many things that get on your nerves than why bother submitting with them?  I have seen your other thread where you have made clearly racist remarks (something about dishonest Gypsies).  If you feel strongly that DT marginalizes your Western Business values, why do you so desperately want to contrbute to their business?  They are not the best moneymaking site for me; nor do I agree with all their review decisions; however, they do run a good company that makes money for a lot of people (including people on this forum).

I agree as well; it seems time consuming but if you only have an image with 15, you can easily double your keyword count.

So strange. last summer I had weekly downloads with 30 images on fotolia.  I had no downloads for the last two weeks and I have almost 300 files there now.  I had an EL sale last month, but overall it's been pathetic.  I ll give it another month, but if it continues like this I will not submit to fotolia anymore.

I don't submit to Bigstock anymore.  In the beginning, they had a trouble with their ftp server, so suddenly I had about 50 double uploads waiting in the que.  I erased them prior to inspection, but bigstock counted these as rejections, lowering my upload limit and acceptance rate.  When I contacted them about the problem, I have received no reply.  So, it's not worth the hassle for me.

I think in general it is not a good strategy to send a portofolio link of another stock website (RM or RF).  Perhaps, you should considering selecting 10 images and keeping them aside as your portofolio.  If I were you, I would resubmit individual images for their inspection.  Personally, I don't feel bad about selling RF stuff on different sites, but when someone puts out 500 bucks for usage rights, you could see why it would be a problem if they suddenly find their image in istock's dollar bin.  I wish you all the luck; I would try to contact them and resubmit a different portofolio.  Although, I never had a sale there and I am not quite sure, at this point, if its worth the hassle.

Quote from: Photoguy on April 03, 2007, 13:48
I just got my application rejected from MyLoupe, because I'm a micropayment contributor!! even though I found the same images at MyLoupe & Shutterstock from a high profile successful Photographer.

I made the mistake of giving my Shutterstock portfolio link as an example of my work. I should have just uploaded some example shots direct to their website.

This is the rejection email:

Thank you for your interest in myLoupe.  Your work has merit.  However myLoupe
does not use the micropayment pricing model and there is a fundamental
incompatibility between our pricing and micropayment pricing used where your
work is now represented. We could not in good conscience ask our clients pay
hundreds of dollars for images that might be obtained elsewhere for only a few
dollars.





We wish you success in your endeavors.



Sincere Regards,

                  Brian



I  then found in under two minutes, the same photo on MyLoupe & Shutterstock 

A big oops!!!  Yeah, but the email they've send you seems like a template, so I don't think you are the first one.  On the other hand, quite a few photographers do both, microstock (RF) and RM.  I think that their fear is that you would upload your shutterstock stuff on their website and sell it as RM.  Alamy addresses this concern by asking contributors not to do that.... I would not send them a rude email, but one that outlines the lack of logic in their response.  They question your integrity prior to having any negative experiences with you. I am sure that more than 90 percent of the MyLoupe contributors also do microstock.

I looked at Istock today, trying to find a photo that was just accepted.  I typed in @old farmer@ in search engine.  I don't understand the concept of best match.  The relevence is all messed up.  You have photos isolated cowboy shoes, tractors, and pastures before photos of old farmers.  Hmmm.... something strange here.

4 downloads today on istock for a grand total of 86 cents!  I ll be laughing all the way to the bank.

Wow, I thought I was the only one.  I posted a similar thread on fotolia forum... and all the replies there were something like what are you talking about, fotolia is the best, the sales are at the greatest point ever.  I had more sales in September with 60 files then I do now with almost 300.  This is the only site where I do not see an increase in downloads with increase of uploaded images.  At least, I am not the only one.  Hope it will pick up soon.

I had a few sales on stockxpert in January.  But in Feb, and, so far, March it's been almost nothing.  For me, I will still upload hoping that it will pick up one day, but so far I see very little result.

I must say that my experience with istock has been better and better since I upload on a weekly basis.  I see a real increase in sales and also in acceptance rate--now if an image is rejected by istock they give me a tip 99 percent of the time as to what needs to be corrected.  DT was a dead site for me until January, then it picked up and now it's doing great.  FT, on the other hand, has been a disappointment.  I've increased my collection there there every month; however,  I don't see an increase in sales at all.  It always stays on the same level.  The reason I still upload to FT is I had five extended licenses sales there since June.  I am even considering going exclusive with istock once I reach 500 downloads...  I don't have so much time to upload to all the sites and istock has been best for me anyways.

They should have invested their time in attracting sales instead of redesining the website.  It's looks fine, but with their current marketing strategy it will not make any difference in sales.

Hello,
Does any one have initial reactions to Adobe Lightroom?  Is the workflow really different from photoshop? 

I am sure if Corbis launches microstock site, it will be in top 5 within a year.  On the other hand, I must say that RM images on Corbis' main site are not very spectacular--as a matter of fact I have seen much better works on IS.  There is also an enormous amount of keyword spamming... if you type in florida, for example, you get images of pill boxes and bicycles by page 3.  Not very promising.  You must also consider that most of the uploads to the Corbis site (at least at the initial stage) will come from collections posted somewhere else-be it IS, SS, Fotolia, etc.  So, I think they are aware of that.  So there is a good chance that they are currently buying all rights for some of the RM images that are not selling or downgrading high-priced RF images to inject something different into their site.

Hi all,
I guess I also need some help with the initial SS submission.  I was particularly suprised with the second application rejection--since all images were properly plastified in Neat Image.  Perhaps I am selecting too many landscapes... I would greatly appreciate it if you can give me some tips on which photos to submit.  I am attaching a link to my istock portofolio, since they seem to me to be the second toughest reviewers after SS.  Thanks for all your hep in advance.http://www.istockphoto.com/file_search.php?action=file&userID=1066046

After few months, my conclusion is that 123rf is rubbish.  Look at their website, even images at the front display are never updated.  It took them four weeks to review a batch of 30 images.  They accapted first 25 in a row, then rejected the last five.  I don't know why...  As far as sales go, I have images on istock that make more in a week than my entire 123rf collection in three months. 

My sentiments exactly.  I have dealing with this by re-submitting files from earlier submissions at a rate of one or two per day.  Thanks to this forum, I got three more acceptances today--just resized three no clear focal point files.  Hang in there...

Adelaide is correct.  You can actually register as a buyer and wipe out your competition using a proxy name by giving competing images poor ratings.  I confess there was a brief period (remember our ratings bonanza a couple of weeks ago) when I rated all images of people on my CN at 5 stars.  I would never give an image rating lower than this... but I would never rate an image that I did not like.  Now, I just rate stuff in the new uploads section of my CN.  At present, the entire ratings system is very flawed... I see a potential for disaster.

I would say yes.  Istock is tough on rejections that's true.  But 99 percent of the time, I resubmitted my rejections and they were approved.  Istock is also consistent, you can expect your profits to rise with the number of files you have with them (this is not always true for other sites).  And, funny enough, I am kind of glad that the limit is 15 now--this way I only spend two hours a weeks doing the bloody uploads.  I am not complaining about low quotas anymore because I would never be able to submit more than 20 images per week anyway (given their current system).  Give it a try, it kind of grows on you.  As far as the forum goes, yeah it's not perfect... But you also have to realize that a lot of admins on istock started out as contributors and if you are an exclusive this is the only market place you have for your RF work...