Yeah, there's a program to help with that. It costs a fair bit, though, and I can't remember the name just now.

I think you mean Lightroom Timelapse:
http://lrtimelapse.com/
I installed the demo but haven't tested it yet.

I used to have some back pains years ago, not very dramatic but still quite unpleasant. I don't have them anymore and I sit 8 hours at my day job and then several hours in the evening at home. I think doing some rather simple yoga exercises everyday fixed my back to some extent. Swimming is also great for the back but I don't have enough time. I recently bought an elliptical trainer (cross-trainer) for the home and I run for half an hour everyday. I think my back will benefit from it as well although the main goal is to lose weight.

yes you can, if they earn double than i would myself because they have for instance a much higher ranking at fotolia, while my individual account is still bronze, plus higher rankings in searches...etc...

Is there any evidence for a better best match position? You would need to upload a set of identical images both through the distributor and directly and then check which files rank higher.
Contributor ranking may not be such an important factor at all. Download numbers divided by online time should be more important. As a matter of fact, high contributor ranking may have the opposite effect if the site has to pay higher royalty rates.
As far as I remember this is the case at FT. Some time ago emeralds (or whatever they are called) complained here that their sales at FT had tanked. At that time I had to smile, because I had only a small port of old images there and the emeralds were not doing so much better than me as they should have. This might have changed of course, I just don't follow that site. The point is, such a site as FT benefits when lower rank contributors are promoted.

1. No offical information displayed: Who are you? What is your VAT number? Where is your company registered? Do you give official invoices? Hiding behind a nice website was possible 10 years ago. Today its a nogo. Looks like the domain is registered to Randy McKown.
2. Nice concept.
3. You might consider changing your name.

+ 1.000.000.000

notice that some of the items (beer and cigarettes for istance) are almost 10x times more than in nearby countries

Cigarettes are a stupidity tax. You have to pay it only if you are stupid.
Smart people don't pay this tax.

Quote from: Realist on November 12, 2014, 13:13

I'll repeat, if the garbage sites went out of business or were forced to raise their prices/royalties, video producers would gain the most. If you don't help the garbage sites grow their collections, they would have to do something positive for the contributors. That is elementary.

I see you're once again contributing to CC.  I bet many would classify CC as a "garbage" site.
But I suspect that you, like me, get sales occasionally and are hoping they grow to something bigger.  But by your logic, CC should just go under.

They pay me around � 20 per sale. The royalty rate is now 40% (used to be 50%), which of course is not the best, but still relatively good.
What's important, they don't seem to participate in the race to the bottom.
I understand they had financial problems and I didn't want to invest time in them before my overdue royalties were paid.

I don't mind that they sell much less than P5 or SS, as long as they don't try to kill the market. Not every site can be the market leader. If they sell less, that's fine if they are fair.

If one of the market leaders sells HD clips for $79 then this price must be pretty close to the sweet spot for the market.
People who are "testing" price levels of $40 or 50$ for top-quality HD clips or $90 for 4K, are simply morons.
When they become a more serious issue for SS, SS will adjust their prices and everybody will lose. SS will likely remain one of the market leaders. Maybe the recent Bigstock thing has some purpose.

And I disagree with the statement, "1 video sold on a garbage site means one video NOT sold on a good site."  I think many customers only tend to frequent one or two agencies.  Just because a customer bought a clip on CC, doesn't mean they would have found that same clip of mine on P5.

That is not the point. The point is that e.g. SS may be forced to adjust their prices/royalties in order to stay competitive and then you'll lose big time. Don't do anything to undercut the market leaders, because when they'll 'undercut' you it will be game over.

I'll repeat, if the garbage sites went out of business or were forced to raise their prices/royalties, video producers would gain the most. If you don't help the garbage sites grow their collections, they would have to do something positive for the contributors. That is elementary.

I started again to throw clips ClipCanvas' and DepositPhoto's way in the hopes I can expand my income base.

By supporting stupid sites such as Deposit you are undercutting yourself and actually killing "your income base."
The market leader lets you set your prices and pays the best royalties. I will never understand contributors who have a problem with that and want to destroy that.

If Deposit, Envato, 123, DT went out of the video business, all contributors would benefit from it. These sites are NOT video producers' friends.

I agree with you on #1 and even on #3 to a degree.  But you're off on #2.  "Everything gets downloaded as long as it is seen by buyers?"  Yes, to be downloaded it must be seen... but if something is seen, that doesn't mean it will be downloaded.

Well, I exaggerated. What I mean is that the position in the search results influences your income. And this position doesn't always depend on your skills as a photographer. There are many factors. Even the time of the image appearing online may influence its earnings.

I'd contend the higher your RPI, the more you know what customers want and are delivering to those needs.  We can gripe that SS' search seems crazy, but face it, they live or die by search... if customers can't easily find what they want, they won't be back.  SS knows this, so their main mission is to serve the most relevant results to a customer's search requests.  By definition, they're serving up the stuff that the customer will most want to buy. 

This is true for ODs and  SODs. With subscribers SS earns more if they download fewer files (as long as they don't cancel their subscriptions of course).

A high RPI -- in relation to the masses -- is absolutely a sign that you're doing things right.

I wouldn't say that. Your total income minus your total expenses is what really counts.
RPI is vanity, profit is sanity. (Although I wish it was the other way around)

What about videos? Do you mean revenue per FILE or strictly per image?
For my purposes I calculate them together, I can't be bothered to deduct video sales.

Also, as I wrote in another thread an exclusive jumping ship should not expect the same results as people who have been slowly feeding the beast and achieved high positions in Most Popular sorts. The reasons are: competing with your own files and it is much more difficult to reach the first page when over 300.000 files are being added every week.

EDIT: I see now that you mean photos only, so I'll pass.

All these RPI comparisons are completely useless for the OP.
I assume an IS-exclusive dropping exclusivity would want to upload their portfolio in a reasonably short period of time. It would make sense. And this is the problem. Their files would compete with one another. The download numbers would be divided by all the images of one subject and as a result none of the images would take off. Most of the images would be soon burried in the endless gazillions of SS images.

The trick at SS is getting to the first page, preferably to the top of the first page. Yes, it's true for most agencies, but not to the same extent as at SS.

It's much easier to achieve good results at SS when you slowly feed them and don't compete with your own images. See if one image of a subject takes off. If yes, then don't compete with it, let it accumulate download numbers and establish itself high in the search results.

If you upload hundreds or thousands images in a short period of time that is one great way to fail at SS.

IMHO the last good moment to join SS was around 2011 or 2012.
My RPI used to be around $1, now it is lower.

It used to be fairly easy to reach the first page, now it's no longer the case with over 300.000 images added every week.
Do the OP a favor and don't compare established ports with portfolios of newcomers to SS, no matter how good they are.

Some very interesting posts and points here, but unfortunately this kind of conversation doesn't lead anywhere.
"Achieving $10,000/month" implies there is some sort of stability where there is none. Bestselllers die or are killed by search engine changes.

Does portfolio size matter if you want to grow your earnings? Well, yes it does, but more important is how many files you have on the first pages of most popular sorts, the demand for those searches where you rank high and the overall search ranking of the rest of your portfolio. People with large portfolios tend to shoot the same subjects, the same genres over and over again and therefore their files compete with one another.

I have a pretty good RPI at SS but it used to be much better. Nowadays it is much more difficult to reach the top of the first page of most popular. My bestseller was No. 1 of a very popular search for about 2 years and was killed with a flick of a switch.

I still upload to SS from time to time, but only cheap images that don't have much value to me + videos. I think it is time to move on and find greener pastures. The rapid growth of the SS collection makes it ...unsustainable. I learned a lot at SS and I like them but I don't see there much potential for growth in the current model and pricing scheme.

My best new work goes to Stocksy and other places where I see much better growth potential. I will continue to upload low-value stuff to SS and continue to look for new ways to earn money with my cameras.