Why do people keep comparing Alamy which is over 80% Editorial and over 80% Rights Managed, with a microsite that only has Royalty Free and No Editorial Images, as already said they supply to different markets and do not compete in any big way with each other.

So do your research and upload different images to both models and you then have different RF and RM portfolios on different websites, instead of the same portfolio competing against your own images at different price points on only microstock websites.

David 

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My most recent example is of a photo of mine with a child in a restaurant. Of course, eating - that's what the search terms were about, as well. Among the results in the first page there was also a photo of a statue of a mythological creature, full of wrong keywords. It's clear the author made the wrong copy / paste. Will I report him? No. Why? Because his photo didn't affect my sale, people looking for "eating" will not buy his photo - it's his loss, not mine.
And I don't think it's nice, btw.

This is a business so 'business rules' and not 'being nice' should be what you base your actions on, as you say it did not affected this sale, but the question you need to answer is what about the next?

Just another perspective, Lets say another image of yours is a perfect match to a search term, and is returned in a search where it is positioned as the first image on 'Page 6', our buyer only looks at '5 pages' and lightboxes a couple of images to re-visit, within the first five pages there are 5-10 images of 'mythological creatures' that do not fit the keywords, now you have lost a potential sale, our buyer is not happy with the search results, and the keyword spammer is not aware that the bad keywording has damaged our buyers experience.

A few cents difference in price point will not attact and keep our buyer, but a good search engine with relevent quality images returned will, the sites that will retain our buyer will be the ones that offer our buyer the best experience, so if there is an image that breaks the keywording rules then it is not a bad thing if you report the image, as it could strengthen the position of the site with this and other buyers.

If there is a business case for reporting an image then you should not feel bad about doing it, and keyword spamming is a good enough reason as it could affects both the website owners and your revenue.

David    

Don't post anonymously to forums .  Otherwise, unless you have something to say, no reason to create a blog.

Or like me just like to express your opinion to anyone that will listen, a blog is only of use if you can market and attract readers, just because you have something to say it does not mean it will be read.

The bounce rates where readers land on your blog and leave is often very high unless you have something the reader is interested in and you can grab thier attention in a split second, there are a few articles on Bounce Rates this one also shows how microstock images are used in blogs.

Buyers stumbling on a photographers blog by chance and making a purchase is not a real scenario, so you need to decide what and who a blog is for, is it to raise your profile among your peers, to showcase your tutorials, stories and images to other Artists, or are your blogs and images on a niche subject that will bring you traffic, and the content exclusive enough to attract a buyer that might find your website in a search.

David
  

Quote from: Adeptris on September 06, 2009, 16:23

Both have two people so should require two releases.

It doesn't matter how many people contains an image, only recognizable faces, tattoo or any person-specific sign(s) do matter.

It is site specific but it is not that simple anyone can have a look at these examples in this IS Article which I think is a well balanced guide, I would agree that DT rejecting an image with two models and two releases is just strange.

David

Both have two people so should require two releases.

An image of a handshake requires a model release for each hand, a Silhouette even requires a release.

If I can say that is my hand or silhouette in that image and you did not ask me to sign a release I might be able to make a claim, if I would win or not is not what the release is about, the release is to protect the agency and the buyer, and there is no point them taking any risk with the over supply of released images. 

David 

I am using IE.8 Version:8.0.6001.18702 upgraded automatically by the MS updates, and I get the following message.

Your browser is unsupported
Mostphotos no longer supports Internet Explorer 6. Please upgrade your browser to a later version.

My registry entries match the information above so why I an getting the message is confusing, and how can I upgrade from the current version IE 8.

Also this is a bad move as where I am contracting they are not allowed to upgrade their browsers to IE.8 or install other browsers like FireFox, they have a lot of older legacy software so do not allow users just to upgrade browsers and control the updates.

Enough is enough. Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 was released in late 2001. For its time, it was a decent browser, but in 2009, it is still in use by a significant portion of the web population, and its time is now up.

So in 2009 it is still in use by a significant portion of the web population, and they can 'upgrade' or go elsewhere to buy images, why would anyone not support a browser with a significant number of users is beyond belief, and I wonder which option they will choose as many users do not know how or cannot just upgrade thier personal PC or company workstation?


David  

There is the BIG question, are photo purchasers looking outside of their subscriptions? And if they are, how often do they drift away from Microstock?

I keep reading about how people will still pay more for images, while we see microstock sales soaring and RF Stock companies entering the arena, and sales on Alamy very slow.

Not all photo purchasers use subscription or microstock, many are tied into accounts with an agency and cannot shop around, contrary to what you may read here price point is not always the reason to purchase an image, buyers are looking for the right content and if it comes at micro prices that is a bonus as they would have likely paid a bit more.

Trends at Alamy cannot be compared to microstock, thier last quarter reported 83% editorial, 82% Rights Managed and 91% of sales were Account Sales, the pressure at Alamy is the drop in newspaper and magazine sales, most of the images sold could not be found on microstock websites.

Photoshelter has a good interface but that will not get you sales, it is only worthwhile if you can drive buyers to your website and you have the exclusive images they want, if you are not prepared to put in the work then it has no real value over other off or online storage options or cheaper website templates.

There are many little packages out there, I found this one ASP and if you want to display and use a contact page for sales you might look at this free PHP one, if you have bigger bucks and want a full stock site then there is this one, you have to look at the on-going costs of services like PhotoShelter.

David        

You know what! I think 3dstudio might be downloading your(the people of this forum) images so you can come here and talk about the sales. It would have been money spent on advertising for them  

I hope the sales continue for you guys but I wouldn't bet my money on it just yet.

That's a bit cynical, but if we take you suggestion as a general practice for new start-ups why would The3Dstudio scrap the payment level, it is a lot better than some other new start-ups where Artists have uploaded and reporting sales with a few cents and suggesting they may reach payout in 18 months, at least we know that some artists will be paid at the end of the month.

I have also had a sale this month of a cake called a Belguim Bun a $8.00 sale of which $4.80 is my cut, so in 5 Weeks and 3 Days, I now have 8 Sales with a total commission of $43.20, and as there is no lower payout level for PayPal, if we do not get another sale myself, m@m and the others here that have sales will get a payout at the month end, a much better feeeling than the frustration when you have revenue from sales, have not reached the payout level and are fearfull that a site that has sold your assets might not be trading by year end.

The3dStudio, 30% commission, 20% affiliate Sales, 5% refferals, and 'Sales', no brainer for me  

From my 14 refferals 11 are now active contributors and I hope they all sell many images

Once again, advertising it here will only help the site. You should expect a decrease in your earnings as the contributor base grows.

I have had this comment directed at me a couple of times as I am pro-active in supporting The3DStudio, it is a chicken and egg situation, they have some customers but limited assets of the type we supply, if we help supply the assets then the demand may grow, the difference for me is that they do not need to build a library of 300,000 images quickly and then go out and try to attract customers, so an initial boost then a more organic growth of suppliers and customers will likely suit them better, will we wind up with some of that egg on our faces only time will tell, but it looks less of a risk that some other ventures.  

David

If it on sale on a microsite then it is microstock, the microstock model does not mean sub-standard or low quality, but quality, lower prices and higher volume.

What is a product worth, as much as a buyer will pay or as little as a supplier will accept, in this example it is the latter.

David 

Hi Stockastic,
As you rightly say forums have been about in one form or another for many years, are they really about free speech or a place for gathering information or to debate, they have often had an organisation behind them as a reason for their existence and been policed with severe consequences, for the earliest �public� forums this could even mean death when someone spoke out.

Offending content is usually deleted. Sometimes if the topic is considered the source of the problem, it is locked; often a poster may request a topic expected to draw problems to be locked as well, although the moderators decide whether to grant it. In a locked thread, members cannot post anymore. In cases where the topic is considered a breach of rules it � with all of its posts � may be deleted.

There are very few unregulated internet forums and going against the written or un-written rules or objectives of the forum owners can lead to different types of censure.  

Forums owned by website are for the benefit of the website owners and not the contributors, if you created a bit of software you might have a forum for building your user base or community, announcements of new versions and fixes, general discussions and reporting bugs, but any negative feedback could be costly to your business so how would you deal with it as a company other than moderation including deleting topics that harm you business.

Forums are part of building an online business but cannot be allowed to broadcast any negative comments that might hurt trade, even if they are true.

David  

The above sounds reasonable, but whenever something like this has been proposed in the istock forums it is the customers who object. 

Apparently a lot of them are still not using the lightbox functionality.  Seems that when they download a comp and come back a few days later to purchase the image they want to be able to find it in roughly the same place it was before.

It would be a matter of education, if you like it add it to a lightbox, buyers can not have it both ways, any agency that has done a 'What the buyers want' survey have said, 'buyers are fed up with the same old microstock style images', 'buyers want different styles', 'buyers want more diversity', Ya-De-Ya Ya-De-Ya.

The image they think are not there might be, but the search engine and the buyers search habits mean that they never see the images that are there.

I did do some analysis of the search statistics from Alamy, these were only from buyers, and there were searches where the buyers had looked at 10 to 20 pages with 120 thumbnail images a page, but I averaged it over six months of data and the average search was 1.2 pages, and on average they zoomed and took a closer look at only 1 in 100 images, which means that the images presented were not really what the buyer was after, how much of this was regular searches returning familiar images.

Like any store that sell product that you are likely to 'buy once' you have to rotate the products on display to catch the eye and make the sales, by randomizing the searches it would give more artists a chance of a sale, and buyers a better look at what is in the collection without have to move through loads of pages.

The search for 'Christmas Tree' on iStock which returned 7559 results, lets remove all the other weighting and look at keyword relevence and placement and randomize them, there are images in the 7559 that will have low placement of relevent keywords, and these will still be at the back of the randomized search, but the images where the keywords are relevent and placed high would be the in the front of the search, and each search would give a good mix of thumbnails.   

If not anything else give buyers a randomize or 'go to page' #x option.

David   

Hey, it's early and I never was good at math. If it's $15 per month that's not bad. I'm showing $.15 x 1000 = $150. What am I doing wrong?

Disaster recovery is something I've just started looking into. My original plan was taking an external drive offsite to do weekly backups.

Yeah $150, it was midday here and the caffine was wearing off already 

David