Although this is a serious investment to some people $295.00 - for the "store version" and 300.00+ plus for the hosting version (start your own microstock agency) if you want the look and all the features of a regular microstock site check out http://www.ktools.net/ 

edit> ohh duhh Photohome lists this in his link - should have looked at it first - excellent article.

One thing to consider when developing your own site is does it provide a means to set up a secured private login area for specific clients to view, select, and buy downloads and or prints of a photo shoot -

I would highly recommend going the joomla route though to start, - there are plugins for slideshow-pro which now integrates with facebook, newsletter engines based on php list and literally thousands of other plugins - including, SEO optimization plugins that address - to some degree -  Pauliewalnuts valid point about individual image pages not being indexed - by making urls seo friendly, and allowing you complete control over the individual dynamic page meta-data information.  Combine that with a google analytics page, and a site-map and that issue seems to get resolved.


If you have never made a serious stab at a website before installing joomla can be a challenge - but in the short term its inmho a lesser challenge then trying to create one from scratch. - and now with the tons of templates available for the latest version by many companies who also are clients to the ms industry, you can quickly find a workable look and feel for your site without spending the time learning how to create your own snazzy template.  just look at the demo site for this one company http://www.joomlart.com/blogcategory/club_portfolio.html  there's some impressive design going on that has in my experience been easy to personalize.

I did find their website via the email - and browsed around.

lol I thought your blog post might have been exaggerating, - I didn't think you could get all that for that price.  thanks for the comments - its tempting...

Hi Hatman

Just to add a bit of reality to this before it veers off on a course of complete exaggeration and inflated speculation...

whole batches were not rejected from these photographers.. In the case of LisaFX, 8 images have been rejected since the Feb 25th announcement - a number of them for overexposure. 128 images were approved. This is a 4.6 percent rejection ratio.

In the case of Lev, 6 images were rejected in error. We have since contacted him after being made aware of the issue. That was our fault.

Hmmm.... that looks and sounds like a 15 word limit to me.

Ley me see if I've got this straight - this agency is rejecting whole batches of stuff from Lisafx and Lev Dolgachov who are two of the most successful stock photographers in the world. 

They appear to have few customers and yet preach the 'holier than thou' stuff as if they are something of a leader in the industry.

Sounds to me as though someone has escaped from the cuckoo's nest.

Quote from: Artmyth on February 26, 2008, 17:36

Actually  currently the database does not impose an alphabetical  order to keywords, they appear on the site in the same order you enter them  whether read during upload or manually entered. And there are no plans or needs to change it so it is alphabetical

Artmyth, you're right, I was making the confusion. 

When looking at some images yesterday, I saw a different edition form for keywords - has it been there for a while? I was surprised, because I always clicked on the file edit link and not at the keywords edit link, so it looked new to me, and it needs inspector's agreement.

I saw in a couple of images (unfortunately I forgot which ones) that had duplicate keywords in the first ones, because of the splitting of composed keywords.  As an example (though this was not actually the case), if I have "isolated on white" and "white background", the form shows "isolated, on, white, white, background", therefore it's "wasting" one of the precious 15 keywords with the two "white".

Does the search tool differentiate singular and plurals?

Regards,
Adelaide

Hi Adelaide, Yes the keyword Edit Tool has been there for quite a long time, at first guess almost a year now.  We have a few dedicated photographers and buyers who often suggest additions and catch unrelated keywords.

In regards to your specific questions about the search, at this point I cant answer specifically becuase  Ducan is currently testing the new search and  it is a work in progress as we discuss this.  I will forward your questions to him, so he can take them into consideration in his development.

But CanStockPhoto keeps keywords alphabetically, how would they trim keywords in existing images?  15 is better than FT's 7, but it still few in many cases, especially as CanStockPhoto also does not take composed keywords, so as in a previous example "Rio de Janeiro, Copacabana Beach" become 5 keywords. 

Regards,
Adelaide

Actually  currently the database does not impose an alphabetical  order to keywords, they appear on the site in the same order you enter them  whether read during upload or manually entered. And there are no plans or needs to change it so it is alphabetical

Good point about the phrases, I've let Duncan know about your concern and it will be considered.

Hi folks, I'm a hellper dude on Canstock and would like to address some of the relevant questions that have been asked about our big changes.

So if you submit your first two images, and one fails, you can't submit anymore?  Sounds peculiar.

Once you get below the 50%, how do you get it back up to start submitting again?

Good question Seren, actually when a new member joins they start with an 86% acceptance ratio, and after their first 20 images thier personal ratio kicks in based on those initial 20 reviews.  LOL it would be pecurilar indeed if it were based on two images lol.

Duncan,

2 questions:

Does  this new site support "subscriptions"? If so does this mean that we might be seeing 8 - 10 cent proceeds?

What if our portfolios are already on that site?

Thx

Hi anonymous, this question has been answered by Duncan in more detail on the CanStockPhoto forum, however, in short this new 3rd party program does not involve subscription sales models, just per image sales.

I suspect that the chances of your portfolio being on the other site are very slim, but may I request you ask this question directly to Duncan on the forums, on CanStockPhoto?

I believe FlemishDreams has asked about the order of keywords on the CanStockPhoto forum and Duncan is making sure the ordering is such that it is suitable to accommodate the many and varied requirements for keywords that are placed on photographers who submit to multiple sites.

and on another note: It perhaps would be best to ask questions directly on the CanStockPhoto forum about this, to avoid confusion and missed replies,   as Duncan posted on the forum:

quote:
I think it is important that people relax a little and see how it turns out. For someone like yourself who already has very high quality images, I think the impact will be quite nominal. I would expect your images to do better, as they would not have to compete as hard for viewership against lower quality images. The people that will be mostly impacted are the ones that are doing this as a hobby or as a way to learn photography. There are a whole lot of photographers that you never hear about or see, but are uploading quite frequently that fit into that category. We�re not raising the bar, we�re raising the floor. Make sense? :endquote

Hope this clears up some of the questions and misconceptions about the forthcoming positive changes.

cheers