.56 for me.

Congrats! I'm still waiting for my first one.

Thanks!

congrats...i have only been in this game for 4 months but still waiting for my first EL at SS.  I got one on Fotalia, but that was only 7 bucks.

Thanks!  SS just upped their prices so my second EL got me $28!

The point:  I shoot what I want which is primarily landscape & nature, and I get paid to do it  and I am still doing what I enjoyed doing when I shot my first 35mm picture  47 years ago.

I'm a lot like you in the sense that I shoot what I like and upload it.  If people buy it, great.  If not, oh well.  I am not really into photographing people.  But I love hiking and nature.

from consensus, i am taking it that fotolia is a slow starter.

i am new but i have been with fotolia the longest (one month.. woo hoo  ),
 the other sites i just uploaded a handful and got my acceptances, got me my first sale within a couple of day of publication, but none with my portfolio at fotolia after a month.

as for SS, i feel it can also be depending on what your images are too.
maybe it works for the others, and it may not work for me.
i quit SS after my first reject. i do not want to wait a month to resubmit.
also, i feel my images were not SS potentials , as they like images quite unlike the ones i make.

i like to think that we have 6 or 9 different sites to sell our images,
and SS is not the only one.

numero uno "does not impress me much" .
apologies to Shania Twain for stealing her quote... but i love her more , now that she's single... 

I wouldn't totally write off SS as they are the biggest earner.  I was fortunate to get accepted on my first try and I got sales right away.
None of the other sites have shown to be as good of earners for me and most of the other sites have such high rejection rates (except 123RF)

Fotolia was a slow starter for me but now things are running steady there.

Congrats and wish you many more sales!

Thanks!  SS was my first site and it is doing really well.  I have gotten on with all of the other Big 6 (except SX who doesn't want the kind of pictures I take) and also BigStock.  Fotolia and DT have finally started going for me so I will include them in my focus of getting more pictures on. 

Quote from: paulacobleigh on May 22, 2008, 16:36

I have been uploading onto Fotolia for about a month now and I finally got my first sale(s).  Yay!  I was just about to forget about the other sites and just focus on SS since that was the only one that I was making any money on. 

Wow congrat, I'm not upload on SS. Many people said there is no future on SS, is that right?

I'm not sure why they would say there is no future on SS.  I got d/l's right away with them and as I get more pictures in my gallery, my sales are increasing.  I love their site.

Congrats! 

I have been uploading onto Fotolia for about a month now and I finally got my first sale(s).  Yay!  I was just about to forget about the other sites and just focus on SS since that was the only one that I was making any money on. 

All,

A heads up to everyone it appears that "Attila the Reviewer" has surfaced at BigStockPhoto (BigStock). It has been seven days since my last approval (1) and 29 rejections since then. Hell ... even God rested on the 7th day.

Mark

I noticed you didn't get very many supporters on your comment.  I have been on SS for a couple of months now and have been doing pretty good.  I decided a couple of weeks ago to try the other top sites and I have to say I was quite surprised at the amount of rejection I got on pictures that had been accepted by SS and are selling well.  Out of the 10 pictures I submitted, the rejected all but one.  Quite a few were rejected due to "blurry image", which I disagree with.  From a new person's perspective, I'd say that Attila the Reviewer has taken a full time position as BigStock.

Quote

Key words would be a good thing to keep in my spreadsheet since I'm constantly having to look them up on SS to see what I've used.

It saves time if you embed keywords/title into the photos. It is called IPTC, most sites can read it from the image, and you don't have to enter them every time

I use my stock spreadsheet only for German keywords for images that I upload to German midstock sites. I don't want to have a mess with two languages in my Bridge keyword tree.

How do you embed keywords into the photo?

I also use the spreadsheet method for tracking. I have columns for file name, description and keywords, and a couple of columns for each agency the file is uploaded to. Coding is as simple as Pending, Active, Rejected and Black (for those that have yet to have anything done to them). I also break-up my images into broad categories to give me some summary info on the type of images that are working.

I've recently modified my sheets to give me some overall totals so I can see where there are more photos still to add (as cascoly when agencies come and go).

I don't file my images in stock specific folders but everything is labelled by date and that date info is stored in my spreadsheets so I can find them.

Currently I'm not tracking my sales figures in any effective way because I'm not selling that much Perhaps when the sales come rolling in it will be more worthwhile.

Well, after I posted my question, I started working on my spreadsheet.  Right now I'm working from a bank of 179 images that were accepted to SS.  I like the idea of using colors instead of just putting and A for accepted, etc.  That way I can use the space to type file sales if I want to try that...although that seems very time consuming.

Quote

Well, I don't think I'll be offering any exclusive files so I won't have to worry about that.  Perhaps I could keep a spreadsheet with the file name and then list which sites accepted or rejected the shot.
Another question....pictures that were rejected by SS....should I submit them to the other sites just in case they accept them?

It depends why they were rejected. If both SS and IS reject a pic, it probably isn't a great stock photo. But sometimes SS reject photos that are easily accepted elsewhere. In my case it was some night city shots, SS said "poor lighting or incorrect WB", LOL  , they were accepted everywhere else. Some people will say that SS is particularly sensitive about noise, although I haven't had a noise rejection yet (joined in March).
On the other hand, SS seem to like some photos which IS says are "overfiltered" 

One of the things I've experienced with SS is rejection for focus when I'm using a shallow DOF.  For instance, I took a picture of a rattlesnake that focused on the head and the parts of the body that were closer or farther away were blurry....but it's a great pic.
I have all my rejects from SS categorized by why they were rejected.  The only thing that I find annoying or frustrating is DT allows you to upload based on your approval rating so it makes me leary to upload stuff that has been rejected by other sites.