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Messages - bobbigmac

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51
PicNiche Toolbar / Re: I love picNiche, but it's really slow
« on: March 07, 2012, 08:47 »
Not really, it's slow because the agency I get the data from has a slow API.

I have reimplemented the site in PHP (it's currently in .net) and added a caching feature (so each new query only runs once a week) which has increased it's speed a LOT for most searches, but I can't put it live yet because I need to finish porting the database over from MS-SQL to MySQL... It's a monster though because I have a lot of data to remodel :/

For now, will have to stick with it being slow, but I am working on it :)
Bob

52
In my experience, direct-selling on such a platform is a big waste of time (search engines aren't keen on sites which don't go anywhere, and a lot of the seo-verbage is already soaked up by the agencies), though there is something to be gained from using it as a platform to generate some relevant 'link juice' to your agency portfolios. Though be mindful that generating traffic (especially if your images are in a competitive topic) is time-heavy... a couple of hours a month probably won't cut it.

Extra tip... Try to work in a blog relevant to the kinds of people who buy your specific images, post regularly (twice a week or more) and get a lot of comments out. Building links is hard and takes time :)

53
Newbie Discussion / Re: Windows 7/IPTC Question
« on: January 23, 2012, 12:21 »
Just thought I'd mention a general warning about Windows 7 and metadata... it b0rks stuff sometimes. Avoid it if you can. Try Lightroom or something with a bit more meat on it's bones than the inbuilt MS tools :)

54
I keep my 'working' portfolio (i.e. anything I want to distribute now or in future) on picWorkflow (jpegs, raws, eps for my illustrations, etc) on picWorkflow (my site), though I also backup pretty much my entire system (including every image I've ever produced at all stages and all my docs and the like) to Crashplan.com (have about 200gig backed up there, though it's just disaster recovery) and only costs a few bucks a month.

55
General Photography Discussion / Re: resaving jpegs
« on: January 18, 2012, 09:01 »
It also depends very much on the software used to re-save the image... Photoshop 'correctly' chunks it's JPEGs so won't recompress unmodified chunks, but something like Microsoft Photo or any other terribly lazy piece of software will do a much worse job. It used to be a huge issue since the algorithms were quite complex but as hardware has gotten faster (over the last 10 years or so) it's become less of an issue.
It's still worth considering though as some agencies still run old image-processing software so it's always worth sending them highest possible quality you can so it does artifact when they resize it.

56
No, the reason being I haven't yet come across a company who's sales pitch isn't full of basic grammar mistakes, if they can't even get that right why would I entrust them to keyword my images.

My sales pitch isn't full of grammatical errors, and all pw keyworders are fluent english speakers (mostly native too) :)

57
General Stock Discussion / Re: Stats on Microstock
« on: January 05, 2012, 11:47 »
The search-placement issue has been discussed many times on microstockgroup and was demonstrated perfectly in Rahul's post on the Lookstat blog so I won't get into it (as it's a waste of everyone's time). It's a fact that if you produce images that convert views into sales, you will get more impressions... (this seems to be a universal truth of online-sales of pretty-much anything) the top contributors DO produce images which sell... ergo... top contributors get more impressions. Don't waste your own time or energy believing otherwise.

Edit: I don't refer specifically to iStock, all big agencies do this, some of the through negotiation, some through performance. In iStock's case, the only thing I know which they don't flex on is upload limits (even Yuri has the normal limit), afaik everything else would be up for discussion with the right portfolio (though with the current market-pressures you'd have to take them an awesome footage portfolio to get much give at the moment)

58
General Stock Discussion / Re: Stats on Microstock
« on: January 05, 2012, 11:28 »
Eavesdrop at a conference... People talk... be the wall with ears ;)
j/k, mostly :)

It's most-often not a 'formal' collaboration, but negotiating with agencies is common-place and photographers know that distributing their work together (as a network) is a great way to demand higher prices. Monkey business run just such a network for at least a handful of the top-20.
Along with the top 100-or-so photographers clearly visible in iStock's search results (just look at page 1/2 of any search). Their results are clearly split between top contributors and partner/sponsor programmes at almost any agency (iStock is leading the way here of course, but the same can be seen at any agency with funds to spend on their search algorithm).

59
General Stock Discussion / Re: Stats on Microstock
« on: January 05, 2012, 11:12 »
Hey all :) Glad to see my post leading to some discussion... now to clarify on some of the questions you guys (and girls) have raised:

Shutterstock show a smaller market-share (by unique users) than they would if it showed market-share (by revenue) because of their strong subscription-base (for obvious reasons).
Defining and detecting a unique-user is pretty complicated (it's a whole big web-analytics thing) since everyone measures it differently and in many cases it can be gamed (a couple of agencies gained 1% on their market-share in that chart because they've gamed their usage stats, or have better social-media-integration than others). It's a small enough margin though that it didn't need to be factored in for the sake of an infographic where 1% on a pie is pretty meaningless.

The iStock numbers are pretty accurate (give-or-take a bit of wiggle-room)... some details in this video of my StockInRussia presentation (~606 photographers make 80% of iStock's revenue iirc):
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3A1C4EDD72DB3DA6
iStock has just over 37,000 contributor accounts with at least 1 image for sale (getting excel to chart that many datapoints was a challenge I can tell you ;)).

~19 million images (~ = approx, in this case a ballpark of around 16-22m) uploaded (not accepted) is based on how many images I KNOW were uploaded to each of the 40+ agencies on picWorkflow, extrapolated for the rough market-share and number of agencies (and micro-priced individual collections) I know of across the industry, then reduced to account (this is the least certain part) for the number of duplicates (also gathered from picWorkflow data). It's not 'hard fact' (hence the section is fact'oids', not facts ;)), but it's a pretty close estimate.
Don't forget, on the scale of the web, 19 million is not that much... flickr was getting 1 million per day in 2006, and facebook gets 200 million per day now. There are a LOT of photos on the web, and a LOT of photo-selling sites. I know fb/flickr don't equate to stock but as an indicator of how many people are capable of producing images it's good to know a comparison since at such large scales numbers like this don't make much sense :)

I also 'discovered' that many of the biggest contributors to iStock already do collaborate with each-other, or negotiate better terms. I'm not important enough to know for a fact what those terms are, but preferential search-placement is certainly on their radar. The iStock search-engine know who produces images which convert views-to-sales, and reward them.

The list of search terms are not from iStock (no microstock agencies currently make their actual search volumes available, despite my constant and ongoing requests)... the search terms are gathered from my own microstock search apps, addons, feeds, plugins, widgets and various other services/proxies I run. My dataset is skewed towards these split (so it doesn't make 100%) demographics:
~90% technically-capable users (at least enough to install an addon/plugin or run a blog/website)
~90% individuals or freelance/self-employed
~40% free-users (want free images, I'm working on the upsell)
~10% spam-users (kids looking for naughty pictures)
The searches are accurate for all of my received searches, it's close to agency data, but not 100% what they would see since I have very low corporate-reach (mainly means I see a drop in business or news related terms, I also have a low-side people search-list but that's improving).

As MikLav said, I am referring specifically to growth when I say "outpace the growth", not volume. Volume on stills will probably always outsell footage, though total revenue for footage will probably beat stills within 3 years.

60
Microstock Services / Re: Hiring a full time keyworder slave ?
« on: January 02, 2012, 11:04 »
PicNiche, very very interesting...

but ... by the way, what you mean in your site for "keywording is CROWD SOURCED" ??
are they working in your office or what ?


By crowd-sourced, I mean the picWorkflow keyworders are 'normal' people just like the rest of us here (home-workers)... all of them are either experienced in keywording their own 1000+ image microstock portfolio (and use pw to earn a bit more on the side) or have keyworded for some of the biggest microstock photographers around. Some details on how the system maintains quality, processing time, and tips for better keywords etc here :)

61
General Stock Discussion / Re: Model/Property Release Workflow?
« on: January 01, 2012, 12:27 »
Thanks Rob!! :D I'll see how I can work all that in :)

Bob

62
Yaymicro / Re: Has anyone had any sales?
« on: December 30, 2011, 17:37 »
I have a pretty low quality portfolio there, and have only seen about 6 sales...
That said, I do see steady referral income (buyers and contributors) on a daily basis, so they may not be selling my images, but they are selling someones :)

63
General Stock Discussion / Model/Property Release Workflow?
« on: December 30, 2011, 17:22 »
Hey all :)

I'm adding Model Release management to picWorkflow very soon, but since I've never shot with models so never had need for releases, I was hoping you guys would be kind enough to run me through your model release workflows, concerns and considerations?

I'm already approaching some agencies about how to streamline the release-management process between picWorkflow and them, and making it easier for photographers to organise. I'm also looking at some technical resolutions to 'lock-in' releases with images to make it an even better long-term solution, though there are some legal concerns there atm.

I really need to know everything you have to think about releases, but specifically, would be great to also hear your thougts on these questions:

  • What format(s) do you prefer to keep releases in, and what format do you upload them as?
  • Do all agencies accept all generic releases, or do some agencies have specific requirements? Which ones? and how do you manage those differences?
  • What data/fields do agencies need to know about each models/property?
  • Do you produce seperate releases for each shoot? (I vaguely remember iStock introduced a requirement for something to do with this in '09)
  • Do you track image-volume/acceptance-rates/rpi/other on shoots/models/locations? If not, would that be helpful to you?
  • Do you find much results from 'More Images from this Model' in some agencies?
  • A couple of agencies have added MR-via-FTP... anyone using this yet? (If so, do you prefer a 1MR-Entire batch import, or would some kind of filenaming (like with .eps) be more suitable?)
  • Anything else? :)

Thanks!! :)
Bob

64
Microstock Services / Re: Recomendations to outsource keywording
« on: December 30, 2011, 17:10 »
You can check out http://www.picworkflow.com for keywording.

http://www.jaincotech.com does editing and keywording, or just keywording if you want
http://www.keyindiagraphics.com does editing and keywording as well and have a 15% discount for microstockgroup members (discount code: MStockGroup)


picWorkflow (my site) also does captioning, storage and distribution (submission, retouching, and a bunch of other stuff coming soon too).

Bob

65
Microstock Services / Re: Hiring a full time keyworder slave ?
« on: December 30, 2011, 17:08 »
Another vote here for dropping the 'slave' term... Good keyworders are worth their weight in gold. There really is a difference between an image with crappy keywords and an image with awesome (relevant, accurate and clear) ones.

Leaf already mentioned my keywording service on picWorkflow... it's the most cost-effective solution around for the price-sensitive among us (myself included). You choose how many keywords you want and a per-keyword rate, the keyworders then add the most relevant keywords till they hit your limit. Payment is between 0.5 cents and 2 cents per keyword. The best keyworders in the system generally work for or above 0.9c/k, which would give you 25 excellent keywords for 22.5 cents per image (and upto 50% of that cost back for free distribution), though some tips on getting the most out of the keywording service can be found here. (We do captioning too)

Well, I'm done pimping :) Please keep in mind that keyworders (even cheap india/phillipines-based ones) are people too, and if you want quality work, you're going to have to pay a bit more than peanuts :)

66
PicNiche Toolbar / Re: some little problems
« on: December 30, 2011, 11:17 »
From reports I've been getting the FT poller works fine for 'most' people (I server-side (soft)updated it when fotolia revamped their site) but clicking the button does nothing because I haven't done a 'hard-update' since they changed the site so the button 'thinks' it is logged out of FT even when it's not.

I'll check the DP one on the Get More list, it's not been updated since it was first added so may need a tweak (I don't really maintain the ones on the Get More list at the mo because it's so time-heavy).

The 123rf thing is still a known issue too, and since they've now added a dumb captcha to their earnings page, I will probably remove them as a 'proper' agency in the next release and relegate them to Get More too.

-----

There are a bunch of other bugs creeping in on the workflow-improvement stuff too, but I've been spending a LOT of time on picWorkflow lately and haven't had the time I'd like to spend on the picNiche toolbar to spare.
That said I'm planning a rewrite of it from-scratch to make it all fit a bit more with the current model of browser-ui-ness (and to do a chrome port), though finding the 2 weeks to rebuild it is proving tough :)

I'm not doing much on 'minor' updates (mainly because mozilla have made it such a PITA to update), and I know it's not perfect at the mo (if it ever was ;)) but I hope to get it totally revamped in the next couple of months :)

Bob

67
Had another boost in demand for keywords since Microstock Expo, so I'm recruiting for more keyworders again. Anyone interested drop me a mail with a link to your port on any microstock site :)

68
PicNiche Toolbar / Re: Picniche.com down?
« on: December 08, 2011, 09:01 »
Down for about 15 minutes today, something to do with my host.
Should be back to normal now, though I'll run some maintenance tonight at which point picWorkflow uploads will pause for about an hour and picWorkflow and picNiche will be offline for about 15 minutes. Can't say exactly what time, but if it's offline, it won't be for long :)

69
General Stock Discussion / Re: IPTC Spellchecker
« on: December 05, 2011, 07:39 »
The picNiche panel on Leaf's keywording tool includes spelling suggestions (I coded it :)), will be adding the same stuff to pw soon too (that will actually modify the source IPTC). Not sure if that's a perfect fit for you, but figured I'd mention it anyway :)

70
General Stock Discussion / Re: New Microstock Keyword Tool
« on: December 05, 2011, 07:36 »
Not sure how to fit everything on a small screen, perhaps automatically check and resize elements if the screen is too small??

I find that setting a css min-height on elements which are expected to fill the height of the screen generally does the job without having to mess with detecting actual screen size... it just means anyone on a netbook/tablet will get a scrollbar if there is too much content (the pw keywords screen does this). It's not perfect, but it's a lot more reliable than trying to screen-size-detect reliably :)

71
PicNiche Toolbar / Re: Picniche popups
« on: August 29, 2011, 16:20 »
The popups cannot be re-triggered directly, however all popup events (earnings, image acceptance, blog posts, image requests etc) add an entry to the picNiche notifications panel in the picNiche sidebar.

To open this, left-click on the P-icon in the status bar of your browser (you might need to enable the 'addons bar' depending on your firefox version) OR goto Tools/picNicheTools/Sidebar. The notifications sub-panel should be expanded by default, but if for reason it is not, just click where it says Notifications and all the popup entries for the current browser session (ie. since the last browser restart) will be in there.

Bob

72
PicNiche Toolbar / Re: Firefox 4 + picNiche
« on: July 27, 2011, 14:44 »
Not sure if I reported this or not but if IS balance is over 1,000$ the program stops the sales pop-up. it does update on top though.
Thanks, I'm probably still using parseInt rather than parseFloat, will modify it for the next update :)

73
PicNiche Toolbar / Re: Firefox 4 + picNiche
« on: July 25, 2011, 22:04 »
I've run a bunch of tests on my browsers (fx 3.6 and fx5.0) and can't seem to replicate a problem with memory usage. At least not one I can attribute to either of the picNiche toolbars.
My dreamstime poller also seems to work ok for pollers started at both logged-in and logged-out states.
Since I can't replicate an issue, for now I will put it down to 'normal' firefox unusualness, and won't put a new version out, although I will keep an eye out for similar issues.

There is a complete rebuild of the picNiche toolbars in the works at the moment, so will also be sure to test the new code for any related issues :)

In the meantime, if there is a problem with any of the authenticated pollers (FT, SS, DT, BS or 123RF should all work fine, IS has some known login issues due to their ajaxy login) you should clear previously stored credentials and use these steps to ensure firefox has them stored for the correct site/scope. If you seem to be having issues with continuous login on a poller as mentioned by WooStock, hit ctrl-shift-J or tools/error-console and view only the 'Message' tab, every time a poller accesses the account set it outputs "Asking password manager for password for *agency*"... it 'should' never show the same agency more than twice in about 15-20 minutes but if it does, try following the steps at the link above.

General firefox performance tips:

I have noticed firefox has some pretty odd memory usage particularly in firefox 5, though there are reports that these are mostly resolved in v6 which should be along soon. To deal with these, I have been using an addon called Memory Fox. Enable it once installed (I use it in browser-only mode) and it's pretty good at clearing memory automatically.

You might also want to check the firefox global Slow Performing Add-ons list. Firebug is a bit of a hog lately, so I run it only in my dev-profile. Some others to watch for are known memory leaks in Adblock+ which havn't been patched yet, some greasemonkey issues if using * targetted scripts and general slowness in NoScript.

I've also run some tests on bare firefox with various commonly-used sites and found that both Google+ and Facebook take up a lot of memory (particularly if used in pinned-tabs). Google docs and wave have similar issues, probably because of the constant server-polls and some known firefox bugs with their revamped remote-asset-loading code. I don't know enough about firefox memory management internals to know if these are a problem for everyone, but I mention it as it's worth a look next time you have memory issues.

A bit of a lengthy response, but figured I'd put up everything I've found as I've heard of a lot of people having memory-management issues with firefox lately and since I still think it's a far better browser than Chrome, these bits will keep it usable till firefox 7 which from what I can tell on the mozilla boards has some major core improvements and will bring it's speed and memory management into line with Chrome (which currently has the edge on speed and memory due to it's 'sandboxed' execution model).

Hope that helps :)
Bob

74
PicNiche Toolbar / Re: Firefox 4 + picNiche
« on: July 24, 2011, 13:24 »
Thanks for the report, will look into it this evening.

75
I'm curious what you mean by 'autokeywording'... wouldn't that be really poor quality keywords?

(I run picWorkflow btw, just asking cos I'm curious :))

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