I use Filezilla because in StotskSubmitter free plan

I believe that the StockSubmitter plans restrict the number of submissions, not the number of uploads. So if you have a plan for 33 submissions a month, you can still use the system to upload 100 images, say, but it will only submit 33 of them. You can still visit the sites to do the submission manually. But that would not solve your Alamy problem - it is the submission process that marks the supertags and so you need to have enough submissions in your account to be able to do that.

Steve

I use Stock Submitter. You sort the keywords into some sort of priority order (just the first 8 or 10), which you need to do anyway for Adobe. Then, when it uploads and later submits to Alamy after the QC check, the App automatically marks the first 10 keywords as being supertags.

I wrote about it on my blog when I first found the feature:
https://www.backyardsilver.com/2017/02/stock-submitter-istock-esp-new-alamy-supertags/

Steve

I am not seeing any down trend in my earnings. Those rise with each image I upload. Present is always better than past for me

That's great! And thanks for your kind comments!

Steve

That is true - I do earn reasonable amounts from Zoonar. However, I think it is because of historical things to be honest. Back in the past, uploading to Alamy was a real pain in the neck. You had to work on each image in their system to separate out some important keywords from the rest and although individual sales were good when they occurred, they were not happening very frequently. As a result, I tried different ways to get my images on Alamy - mainly using "agents" to get them there. Zoonar was interesting because they took all my uploads and submitted them to Alamy and, presumably, worked through the uploading and submission issues and got them for sale. I have several thousand images on Alamy now that are under the Zoonar agency and those represent most of my earnings from Zoonar. I do get some from AGE and DDP from time to time, but most are from Alamy.

Then, of course, Alamy changed their ways and made uploading easier, especially if you use apps like Stock Submitter. It is now a no brainer for me to submit all my images to Alamy via that, and get their priority keywords automatically selected. I still upload to Zoonar because it is so easy, but I no longer use them to submit to Alamy - just the smaller sites that I would never get to in the normal way.

So be careful with your expectations - and sorry if I have misled you in any way. I've probably talked about the above in one blog post in the past, but maybe not made it as clear as I could.

Steve

Sorry!  By all means shoot for yourself and your enjoyment but even when you are doing that, try to think about the story you could illustrate. You have some pictures of long grass in a London park - maybe there could be a story in the future (after Brexit when the country is really poor...) about how park maintenance is cut back in some major London parks - so how could you illustrate that? More focus on the long grass, unkempt look - that sort of thing. So you have moved from taking an artistic picture of the grass to one where you deliberately think of how the picture could be used and take some like that.

Steve

Here is some good news then!


I added some agency specific charts to my blog last night to see if all agencies were behaving the same. Thank goodness one of them was different! The intense variability in the past few months is partly because this is a monthly chart (the other was a quarterly average) and also that I uploaded a lot of files in the past 2 months that will be depressing the results a bit.

https://www.backyardsilver.com/2019/01/earnings-per-ounce-of-effort/

Steve

I've written a few blog posts about StockSubmitter, starting with this one:
https://www.backyardsilver.com/2016/12/stocksubmitter-elegant-replacement-stockuploader/

The easy answer is, yes it does, but it is worth reading about the other things you can do as well. I swear by it!

Steve

I'll probably get kicked for introducing more photographers to this crowded market, but I have reduced the price of both my ebook, Getting Started in Stock and the bundle including Alex's Brutally Honest guide to stock photography between now and 31 December. The price that shows on my website has been reduced by 25%.

So if you didn't get the present you would have liked for Christmas, here is the perfect solution...

You will find it here: https://www.backyardsilver.com/stock_photography_ebook/

Steve

Matt

I'm sure quite a number of us use Lightroom to process and keyword our images before uploading to Adobe stock and its great that many enhancements have come along over the months. But the one glaring issue is that keywords are always sorted into alphabetic order in Lightroom and then Adobe Stock states clearly that the most important keywords must be first.

Are there any plans to fix that in Lightroom and offer a feature to sort keywords by priority order?

Steve

They are not really all the same - there are two darker green ones that slipped in there. These are all 9500 pixel files so they must just be created in photoshop I guess.

Steve

Interesting thought. How do you find the VCG stock agency site? Do they have one of their own, or is it under the old names? They bought Corbis, didnt they?

Anyone submit direct to VCG (assuming you can)?

Steve

He has certainly traveled to many different parts of the world and got the light just right! He is selling all their products, postcards, clocks, mugs etc.

None of my images as far as I can see

Steve

Well, my record of 18 months with a higher earning than the same month in the previous year was lost this month. At least the pressure is off! But still a pretty reasonable month all told:


Full details as always at my blog: https://www.backyardsilver.com/2018/12/stock-photography-earnings-in-november-2018/

Steve