About 3 years ago I uploaded about 12 images to Dreamstime as exclusive photos (I have about 1400 unexclusive images there now) just to see if it was a better way to make money.  I do not think any sold so that was the end of that experiment.

Today I get an email, kind of a scary one, from Dreamstime, that they discovered one of the exclusive images on 3 other sites.  I use about 12 sites.

I immediately removed the exclusivity from all 12 of the Dreamstime images.  And then went to each site, found the image, and deleted it.  As far as I could tell the image generated no sales anywhere.

I wrote back to Dreamstime about what I had done.   And am waiting for a response.

Do you think Dreamstime will be ok with what I have done or will they get nasty about it?

I will follow up with how they respond to my actions.

Just jointed pond5.  About a month ago uploaded and got approved about 1000 images.   I have had 4 images sell in the past 4 weeks that show up in email notifications.

But nothing shows up in the earnings area of the Pond5 site?   Is there a delay of some sort.  I emailed customer support and am waiting for an answer but the first answer provided no information.


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I spend more money on my Photo Equipment than I make in Microstock.   I do Microstock to help pay for my hobby.   In a few years I might have made enough to break even on my expenses (@$20K) but that is not my goal.   So that sounds like a hobby and not a business right?

But this year I got a 1099-Misc from a couple of the agencies.   I use  turbotax and when you get a 1099-Misc that drives you to fill out schedule C and basically the Govt wants to treat you like a business.

I would rather just total up the 1099-Misc and other non 1099-misc income from my microstock and input in the hobby income along with a cost of doing business that is about the same amount..... but that could be an audit red flag.

What do you you non-business guys do?

I had posted about a blog that I wrote about http://www.bobkeenanphoto.com/my-microstock-sales/.  I posted that I wrote this on a bunch of forums and have been getting some interesting responses.

One guy says he gets really good results downsizing the images to no more than 4mb.   He says that eliminates a lot of the noise issues still keeps the the details sharp.   He says he gets a good acceptance rate with that.


Anybody else experience this?   I always thought that customers would want the largest file they can get.  But maybe most customers can use the 4mb images and maybe that does cutdown on noise.    I may have to try this and see what happens.

They are main earner by far.  I love that.

But boy do they got hot and cold on acceptance.   I send one in this evening and got it back a few hours later.  100% Rejection!!!!    Previous submittal took over a week to review..... 100% acceptance.  I am just shaking my head.   I think my stuff got caught up in the Weekend Curse!

I got serious about photography about 5 years ago.  Messed around with it for 35 years prior.  When I got into DSLR cameras all of a sudden I am paying some serious money for this stuff.  It took me a few years to learn how to buy.   That included figuring out what I really wanted, what could I afford, where to buy it and other questions like that.  So I put a blog post together to share what I have learned.  You can read it here:

http://www.bobkeenanphoto.com/how-buy-dslr-stuff/

The short version is buy used or refurbished Canon or Nikon Cameras and Lens.  Sigma and Tamron are good as well.  Think a lot about what you want.  Read the reviews, talk to other photographers, rent one if you can.  Then buy it at your local camera shop if they are competitive.  If not use Ebay, B&H, Adorama, or Fred Miranda.  There is a lot more detail in my blog.  Let me know what you think.
--
Bob Keenan
http://www.bobkeenanphoto.com

Many of you have probably read this book already.  But if not.....

Michael Freeman's book "Photographer's Eyes" is an amazing book for the art and compositionally challenged.   I first read it about 3 years ago and have read it 3 times since.   I have also read all of his other books.  But this one really affected me.   So I wrote a short blog about it here:

http://www.bobkeenanphoto.com/book-review-michael-freemans-photographers-eye-photographers-mind/

And thought I should share this thought on this forum.  It really provided a kind of turning point in my Microstock image work.  I am not a major microstock guy....but you should have seen my stuff before I read the book.

I would highly recommend any new photographers to check out his book.

I submitted a batch of images a while ago.  It had not gone through QC yet but I had another batch to submit.  So I figured I would submit that as well.   It looks like one image in the first batch failed so they all failed and it also looks like the second batch failed as well because the first one, in the first batch did.   So what I learned is to submit a batch and wait for it to clear QC before you submit a second.

BTW the image that failed was my favorite image.   I don't print much of my stuff for personal use but my friends and family liked the image so much that they insisted I print and frame it.  That's like one out of 2000 in my portfolio.   It also has lots of copy space for commercial space.  So it was interesting for ALAMY to fail QC on this one.  Note it was also not accepted at most of the other sites that i use.    

There is just no accounting for tastes.... Its a shame that they they all all wrong and I am right on this one   ;-)

Here is the image that has gotten almost universal rejection:

I am looking to see if there is a better way to upload than what I do.  Here is my workflow.
1.  Process images on Aperture.
2.  Use Arcurs keyword site for keywording right into meta data on Aperture
3.  export 10-12 images to desktop folder.  (10-12 seems to minimize pain if I get a picky reviewer)
4.  upload using Fetch (Mac FTP program) to each site.  I upload to individually to 10 sites.  I can do about 5 at a time. More than that the upload rates get too slow.
5.  Then go into each site to put in categories and approve and submit images.

The exceptions are that I use DeepMeta for Istock and ALAMY has to be done on their http pages.

Anybody have something more efficient... or let tedious?

Thanks

I go back and forth between loving and hating this site.   Right now I love it.  I just had a photo sell for over $300 and I get 60%!!!!

The upload process is weird.  If they find one image in your batch that does not pass QC they fail all of them.  My meta imbedded keywords have to be re-distributed.  And sales are very sporadic.  The other thing is that I find following my earnings difficult to understand. ( and I do have a MBA).   It looks like you have to wait for the sale to clear before it is yours.  So there is a balance and a cleared balance.  In addition, there have been a couple of refunds so they take the commission back on those.  And they have a high threshold before payment and then as much as a month delay before payment.

But.... You gotta love the fact that 60% of the sales is yours and the higher prices for RF images.

I normally complain about the rejections I get or lack of sales or low commissions.   But I got blown away on this one.  Someone bought this for $228??   The image is ok but...... I rate my images on my computer from 1-5 stars.   Everything below 3 stars gets trashed.   This is a 3 star image the corner of an enclosed parking lot with an elevator shaft in one corner??

Its been my highest single sale since I started about 3 years ago.   So while I am not complaining.....its just hard to believe.

I just got accepted at PM and have been loading a bunch (several hundreds) of images.  But for the past few days there have been no reviews yet?  I was curious about how fast these guys are?

The upload limits are a pain in the butt.  I think that I read something about how this was a temporary solution to a problem that they were having.

But its been a few months now?