Hi,

I got a message thru Instagram seeing if I wanted to join stockphoto.com with a free monetary bonus on signing up. Has scam written all over it.

But going to the site and not clicking link seems to show its legit. Anyone have experience of this?

Just wondering if anyone has come across this site before?

https://www.barewalls.com/prints-artist/filedimage_3.html

Just found nearly 2000 of my images on there. Presume they are connected to a stock agency and one would get paid if they sold a large print?

Hi,

We are in the process of launching our new website we have been working on for about 6 months. Its a collaboration between an old friend of mine and myself, based around travel photography advice. Really aimed at helping people to maximize their time at a location for getting great photos. Lots of locations, advice, travel info etc. Places to eat we liked etc etc. I will feature articles about microstock too and my findings pros/cons etc after 4 years of doing stock.

Its a 50/50 mix of paid and free so plenty for people to see easily.

https://photobasecamp.com/

Would love some feedback on what people think of the idea.

Enjoy!

Chris

For a couple of months I literally have not had one editorial image approved due to wrong caption and facts etc. Ive been uploading for 4 years so I know how to do this and what type of image can be accepted. Or maybe I dont now haha. Anyone else having lots of issues getting editorial content approved?

Hi

Anyone having issues getting payments from ImageBrief. I signed up to Premium, got a sale about 4 months ago. Heard nothing except for receipts of my monthly payments I make. I've emailed twice and get no reply. Very concerning

Chris

Hi,

As I approached 3 years in stock, I thought I would share my general experience. Interested to see how compares with others. Interested in how images decline in sales over time and 3 years a picture might be forming.

The first year I had a slow start and then a rapid rise off maybe 500 or so images submitted into what is now 12 libraries. All the major ones. Shutterstock is 60% of sales and iStock is 20%. With the numbers of images I still have to edit I really should drop all other libraries and concentrate on uploading more content!

I am now at 1100 odd images uploaded. In the last year I have uploaded far less, mainly due to scanning family slides for past few months. Sales have flatlined at around US$700 a month. Its a nice bonus at this amount and pays for all camera gear, internet, phones, TV etc. Basically the family is seeing some proper benefit now. Though obviously its not enough to do much else with.

My concern that even though im uploading less, I would expect to see increasing sales. They are ever so slightly on average, maybe US$20 a month. I am starting to see perhaps the decline over time of sales for most images. My best sellers still sell as much as ever but ones that sold occasionally now dont sell. I really feel 50 images are 95% of earnings. Some newer images have become good sellers which is good but way too many havent sold at all. If I had a big effort I feel I could go further and I will. But no doubt rate of increase has decreased.

My bet is that most people peak at about amount im doing. They then either stay same as this is their second job, or go to the next level and do proper stock shoots etc. Most my stock is tacked onto family holidays and revolve around travel etc.

How are others finding over a few years?

Chris

Hi All,

So I just clocked my first year and I thought id post my experiences up which might help others. Ive had lots of help on here including reading Steheap's excellent book on my kindle. Ive been shooting images for 8 or so years all over the world thanks to my day job. Im also pretty competitive so I always aimed as high as I could. Getting up for sunrise and doing sunsets is the norm for me on vacation. Family or not. It wasn't until I read this book that I realised potential of selling images that really were just on Facebook as a portfolio and on my site (www.filedimage.com) doing nothing. So after a monster roadtrip across the US with my young family, I decided to give this a go. A really good go. SO I set about signing up to the big libraries with a portfolio. Had trouble with Alamy and Shutterstock at first but fine with about another 5. I have since added BigStock, Veer and Photodune to varying successes. So as to not to wabble Ill do some dotpoint findings:

-I have between 400 and 800 files online. Fotolia the worst and DepositPhotos the best. iStock and Shutterstock hovering around 600 mark.

-I was uploading around 100 images a month at the start which is back to about 50, but shooting more so not concerned. I aim for an image a day minimum and upload in batches of 5-10 in a similar topic for easy metadating.

-Overall sales has risen gradually and I $400-$600 a month. Nov was high at $965. My first month was $1.03, then $14.75, then $145 etc etc

-Shutterstock is the booming library. About 50% of overall income comes from them. iStock is maybe 15% and Photodune another $15%. Alamy kicking on now to at perhaps 10%. All other libraries make up 10%.

-$ per downlaod is easily highest with Alamy, then PhotoDune, then Canstock. Shutterstock is $0.66 and respectable.

-Not sure on Symbiostock which ive got installed. Had no success but also havent put much time lately into it. I feel like i need to remove that part of my site as its confusing for custoemrs of other parts of my business.

My concern is that my sales are skewed towards a key few images. Maybe half of my collection has sold, and half hasnt. 20 images sell very well. I have one clothing image that sells maybe 5 shots per day. Was taken as part of a corporate shoot so that extra income on that job is nice.

I am continuing to push thru and trying not to get too hung up on think conceptually for stock. I find when it comes to family holidays this ruins your photos a bit. I love moody black and white portaits of my children for example and need to shoot that for me/wife. Shooting the children with 'child on beach during summer' is not good for me. Becomes more robotic and less arty. Occasionally Ill shoot my city and think stock wise.

Ive also given up removing logos etc on city skylines. I just upload as editorial to iStock and Shutterstock now. Not sure if that's right approach or not but I hate fine editing.

That's all I can think of for now. Thanks for help everyone and ill keep on uploading!

Chris

Hi,

Thanks to this forum I fell upon this piece of software and have been testing it out over the past couple of days. I found it a little confusing at first, mainly because I wasnt expecting it to be able to upload and submit.  It is a very powerful and fully featured product. I find uploads very reliable and I dont get the image failing on uploads I was seeing previously. Im not sure I trust the categorizing enough to submit and I find the submitting hit and miss. For example I uploaded 10 images to all my libraries (10 of them). They 95% uploaded but maybe only 25% actually submitted. All randomly across libraries. one did all and the others maybe 1 or 2. The application then crashed which probably upset the submission process.

Does anyone have any tips? Im thinking Ill not submit as it causes confusion. Just let the software upload. Mind you if I work out the right hand side of the software for categorising then it might be better. Seems risky letting it submit for you though.

Chris

Hi,

I am trying to get used to stock uploader and I find it works mostly well except that maybe every 4th image is truncated and I have to delete and reupload. This happens across all libraries. Is there a way to stop this. Its costing me a lot of time to sift thru what hasnt uploaded properly and what has

Chris

Does anyone know of a way ( I have Googled lots) of having a keyword search term in an image as an image category. I was hoping that under the 'cities' preset category I could have a further option for 'Chicago, London, Rome' etc So that the menu item would look at image keywords and return a gallery of images of that city. Not keen on setting up more image categories and having to mark off for every image and city ive been in.

Chris

Hi,

Thanks to help here and lots of research I have got this far in a couple of days:

http://www.filedimage.com/photography/

Lots of formatting and cleaning up to do. Had issues with watermark for ages but happy with it now. Kinda need to get it right first time.

Some quick questions if I may?

1.) Can someone recommend a recent uploads plugin for my home page. I want a quick spiel and recent uploads below that

2.) Im thinking Ill have small pictures with direct links to image categories. Obviosuly thats manual creating a table and adding images etc.

3.) If I want to change fonts, colours and the look of the search button that is done in the CSS of the theme right?

Believe it or not I used to make webpages. No doubt Wordpress makes this simple. Its just where to find options that is not intuitive at times. Then you add plugins and it confuses it more.

Chris

Hi,

I have been shooting for perhaps 6 years now (http://www.filedimage.com/) and only recently got into selling stock seriously. In March I started and am now signed up to 10 libraries and selling 40-70 images  a week, which is maybe $30-$60 a week. I think thats OK and I need to keep pushing for it be worthwhile

I have maintained my own blog type site, semi successfully and had images on Zenfolio which is great in all aspects, including for wedding clients, but gets zero sales thru Google etc. Terrible SEO and a known issue. SymbioStock interests me but straddling to this and uploading here also seems odd. I could keep Zenfolio purely for wedding and corporate etc. Move everything else into SymbioStock. I use Wordpress already so the switch should be quick.

I see SymbioStock has nice galleries, great SEO and eay uplaod via FTP etc. Im hoping blog feature is good. One question I have is whether galleries can be locked for sale or not. Id like to use a blog generally for things I do but a few events I cant sell images from even though I want them up in a blog and online for viewing. Zenfolio has excellent galleries and im worried about losing functionality

A little bit of persuasion and I think ill start playing:) Might allow me to properly separate Zenfolio to what it does best and also to organise my site in general.

Chris