A lot of ghost sales! I spent a half hour looking for button to skedule a payout. Does one exist? I couldn't even find where my paypal input is.

Smells bad...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tkM6Zfr47o

In the past few days I've seen a spike in istock earnings, but the "recent downloads" do not change much or at all in sync with the earnings. They are like ghost earnings or something.

How do I know where the money is coming from? It occurred to me I might have a secret admirer at their headquarters.

The bottom is when an agency or one posing as an agency asks you to pay them per image or per month to sell your images on an experimental and speculative platform and asks you still  to promote yourself and them.

Silly or even shocking it is being done. Even more silly  or shocking is that people get involved with it.

Thank you very  much for the explanation, and great job.

Thank you for the fast reply.

I might be confused - if micros don't use categories why submit with them?

Or by "submitting categories" do you mean "submit category-A to micro-A, category-B to micro-B"?

Great software btw. Very classy.

What is this about categories?  You can put categories in metada?

Quote from: Robin@Symbiostock on February 14, 2016, 02:04
I really don't know what they hell they are doing.

<snip random confused talk>

everyone in prominent positions seems pretty nuts nowadays.

Very true.

I need some help here.

I was hoping to find an image of a corporate looking guy sitting in front of a webcam with a backdrop behind him. From the waste up he has on professional attire, from the waste down he is in his underwear with hairy legs. The shot is taken at an angle so as to show that behind his professional backdrop is a disheveled home.

Does it exist?

Quote from: Copidosoma on February 03, 2016, 14:16
License to print money practically.

I know right?

Every now and then a new agency comes around. Then its gone...

It is so easy - host pixels, sell pixels. So how could they possibly close their doors when image sites have the potential to at  worst sit idle indefinitely? Billions of people on the internet...you'd think success was a birthright to any new image site. Why do they fail? 

These replies are great. Although the question is hypothetical it really offers a lens into reality: Even if we take away the human limitations and endow the image creator with top-notch talent it is still extremely unlikely anyone will get rich doing it.

I'd love to hear some more answers possibly crunching numbers and sales patterns. There are quite a few "can I make money doing this!??" threads but has anyone really done some real decent research? Most numbers and demographics we do not have access too.

I'd love to see more numbers, especially from those who have lived the game.

Has any contributor ever become a millionair selling images? Is it possible for anyone to do it?

Even outside of reality, perhaps in the area of the hypothetical, how could one do it? What would it take?

Whenever I upload to shutterstock I feel like some images are getting lost in a black hole.

If I 'time' it wrong and process some images while others have yet to show up, do images get lost in the process? In my case, its as though they never show up for editing.

Vectors are never successful either unless I use the browser.

Its for a project I am doing. I wanted to know if anyone uses them. I've seen mention of such a workflow among people and agencies.

Do any of you ever have corresponding text or csv files with your images as an alternative to metadata? If so, is there a standard practice in how they correspond?

Forever I've been keywording via fotolia's browser interface.

I'd like to go through fotolia and do a huge sweep of images and fix their keyword hierarchy. I came across this app:

https://blog.fotolia.com/us/2014/01/30/ask-the-expert-fotolia-keywording-tools/

Is this correct for the purpose? Or is this for people who take iphone pics? Does it apply to the same system the same as the browser interface?

Quote from: sharpshot on January 25, 2016, 22:53
I would be more interested in a faster way to remove my images from istock

That made me laugh.

But I couldn't have uploaded to istock without deep meta at least somewhat simplifying things, and any other improvements to the process would be welcome.

I did get my interest, so I read on:



A snippet from the article:

QuoteThe beauty of this system is, that it will be free for the creator!

note the exclamation point

I can think of quite a few common spam 'projects' in microstockgroup disused as 'helpful tools' in the recent year that carry the same spirit. The article is written from a testimonial / interview perspective which is also a common marketing strategy right along side the 'story' approach, often used in selling 'helpful' products or systems to increasingly needful users in dying markets.

Think the increasing level of spammy 'community' and 'free!' but up-gradable products being tossed at the microstockers is probably a symptom of an industry really seeing its final days, at least in terms of dignity, sort of like a town with a dying economy that sees an increase in the sell your gold! or get a loan on your paycheck! stores. note the exclamation point

I think in some cases the novelty and toys they offer is a nice distraction from the grim reality that is surfacing.

What we need is the first 'fake viagara' of microstock to help your sales 'get it up' and plenty more testimonials and interviews.

I really don't pay attention to this stuff and maybe I should.

Someone dumb it down for me please.

I get a lot of these 38 cent downloads (I think shutterstock should mint a 38 cent coin) and occasionally I get $2+ sales on others (possibly a guy paying for an image he found via a google search?) and still others from people who want to pay a lot of money for uses I never really looked into. I just say "Hey, cool". I think there's a lot of guys like me which is why the micros can do this $$$$.

How does this impact little me? Do I still get a monthly payout?

Lately they've been penalizing trolls in MSG

a few have mentioned the issue, so its not just you

Social media is ineffective for a person up to a certain threshold of fame/relevance. Other marketing methods are becoming outdated as technology and society changes. Even blogging is becoming pointless. SEO, which I used to bank on, is mostly useless now for selling images -- only picture quality matters.

Point is  your skill is now your only marketing agent. Social media is a waste of time unless for fun.

I'm  a little burned out on the open-sourced hucksters filtering into the industry, but I'll check it out.

I'm curious how keywording is for  other people. I create images in large amounts and keywording is a very mentally taxing process for me because my brain does not handle redundancy well. In fact, some of my errors / rejections are result of a mind that keeps forcing itself into auto-pilot during submission process. This goes double for Istock's disambiguation system.

What is the experience like for you? Similar? Different? How do you approach keywording not only for effective sales but also (if you are like me) to avoid the mental fatigue it brings?