Quote from: litifeta on March 19, 2008, 03:11
check out these amazing shots

http://www.ashesandsnow.com

Grain and too much noise. Rejected!!! ;P

Sorry, just kidding But please imagine, how our reviewers examinate this piece of art.

Quote from: andresr on March 19, 2008, 08:55
buyers don't have time to waste and go around just trying to save $1.

I don't think so. I'm sure that you have at least many examples as me that $1 is very often huge money for our buyers. They are ready to write long emails and phone in the middle of the night because of it   And the difference between prices of the same photo may be much bigger. For example: the same photo on IS (XL) - 15 credits, on DT - 4 credits.

It is a very probable event. I also did it myself but not with SS. On DT the same photos can be almost 4 times cheaper then on IS.

I have much  better sale this month compared to others without specific rank change (overall 22, 7 days 17). I haven't upload much this month.

Quote from: Waldo4 on February 16, 2008, 13:49
recompile of it and reimplementation is honestly 15 minutes worth of work

I understand that you have the same problem as I. I think that the code even don't need to be recompiled. It is real time interpreted server side. One way or another the bug is  probably easy to fix.

Quote from: Waldo4 on February 16, 2008, 13:49
Why such long descriptions? I keep running into the minimum size, they are always short and to the point and describe the photo.

I think it's normal - just simple description what is on the photo. For example: "Group of teenagers standing withs hand up and shouting.  Whole bodies visable. Wide angle view. Isolated on white in studio." (124 characters).

Maybe you can help me with this. After lunching V2 version of Fotolia I've the problem with their ICPT script. I've informed the stuff twice about the problem: they instructed me to use different FTP client (they recommended FileZilla which I'm using all the time).

The problem is that after FTP uploading script reads data from "description" and place it in the "title".

I upload photos to about 10 other agencies and have no problem with this except Fotolia. I use standard software for ICPT edition: Adobe Bridge.
It is so frustrating when I have to cut each description to make it shorther (64 characters) and generally making it ridicolus. The truth is I have no time to look for each uploaded photo on my computer, check what is the correct "title" and paste it to form.

Have you the same problem? If not: what software do you use?
Thanks!

Quote from: leaf on February 09, 2008, 17:42
Go to dreamstime for example, look at your portfolio and order then by sales.   You will easily see which images have sales and which don't.

Thanks Leaf. The problem is (in my case) that I contribute with all the agencies longer then 1 year.  When I open my portfolio on Dreamstime I can only see whole the sales, since April 2005.

Quote from: iofoto on February 09, 2008, 16:20
Another critical metric is not the average number of downloads per image, but our "sell-through" rate. That's the number of images licensed one or more times divided by the total number on the site.

Thanks Ron!
Could you tell us please how to get this important ratio? I have no idea how to check which photos have sold during last year and which have not.
Thanks!

I've seen this question many times (and also didn't know the answer). Here's a very interesting part of pre-published chapter of Jeff Howe's book I've just found:

[...]In 2000 Bruce Livingstone was running a small graphic design and Web hosting firm in Calgary. Bruce is an avid photographer himself, and over the years had developed an extensive network of photographers and designers. Early in the year he took 2,000 of his images and put them online. Anyone could download his photos in exchange for giving him an email. Livingstone's friends decided they wanted to share their images with the public too. That June the budding community instituted a credit system: A user could download one image for every image of theirs that had been downloaded by someone else.

It was a classic example of the gift economy, the non-monetary exchange that grew up alongside the World Wide Web. Money, it has become clear, isn't the only, or even the most important incentive driving the explosive creative output that one finds on the Internet. People contribute for the simple joy of participation, or to learn something, or even for enhanced status within a community of like-minded creators. On iStock, everyone took something and gave something in turn. Everyone profited, but no one made—or spent—a dime. Soon friends of friends heard about Bruce's nifty idea, and started uploading their images too. Then around 2002 a wider public got wind of iStock, and the site began to hit critical mass. Soon Livingstone was paying $10,000 a month for the bandwidth to support it. He could have taken advertising to cover the cost of hosting, but felt it violated the spirit of the site. "The focus was on the community, and good design. Advertising would have cluttered the site," says Livingstone.

Instead he started charging a quarter for each image, and opened the system up to the public. Traffic to the site, now christened iStockPhoto, started increasing exponentially. Livingstone raised the prices to $1 per image. "I thought it might become a sideline business." It quickly became much more than that. The emergence of the Internet, digital cameras and user-friendly photo editing software combined to undermine the boom in stock photography. Suddenly anyone, it seemed, could take a half-decent picture.

You'll find all the text here: http://crowdsourcing.typepad.com/cs/2008/01/chapter-two-the.html

Anybody (Steve) knows how it looks from buyer's point of view? I've just opt-out this option. I analized which photos and sizes I sell this way and decided to opt-out.
StockXpert is one of my best seller but because of credits sell, not the subscription. That's really fair that there're subscription opt-out option.
But I'm curious how 'opt-outed' photos looks like from buyer's POV? Are they see them in their search results but have no option to buy them or they don't see ones at all?
It obvious that first solution would show them what they're loosing (for example all Yuri's business photos) and maybe tempt to buy credits. But maybe StockXpert choose different politicy and don't want to make them knowing and unsatified.
Thanks!

I've a little useful tip for DSLR users. Probably you have the same problem as I - dust and dirt on the sensor. I shoot most of my photos at clean studio but it is impossible to keep my 5D's sensor clean. Because of electrostatics all small pieces clinging to the sensor each time I change the lenses.
I've used "SpeckGRABBER" but it is very expensive set and use up very fast. It is necesary to clean sensor every 2-3 sessions or spending tons of time at photoshop removing swarms of the black dots.
I found a very cheap and easy tool to clean the sensor. It's regular straw. I cut it at an angle and use it like goose-quill (look at the photo below). It is a very precision tool and because single-use always clean.