My understanding is that sites frown against something like this, since the two images are identical (except one is rotated 90 degrees).

People who are unwilling to provide links to their own portfolios shouldn't talk (that's directed at stockmaniac).

And people who spam keywords shouldn't be "Wiki Warriors".

You're a hypocrite.  You go around telling people that they are spamming and should have their accounts closed, when you yourself do the same thing.

I see the guys point. If the keywords are wrong, you send a warning, dont you? This is someone's living. We all sometimes put words which with hindsite werent necessary. At the most, the guy should have been given a week to fix his keywords. This is a typical example of dreamstime pushing their weight around.
This site acts in the way that we all hate- they treat us like a bunch of slaves, like theyre the big powerful corporation. They spy on forums that they dont run. They keep images for 6 months after we upload them. Sod them, I say. If they were as big as istock, theyd be a lot more hated. Fortunately for us, the other sites still understand that you have to at least act like you respect your contributors. Dreamstime dont. And Im sure theyre reading this post- so let me take this opportunity to say "screw you".

I completely agree with you and have sympathy for ArtmannWitte.

All of you throwing stones live in glass houses.

You're hypocrites.

I could go to any of your portfolios and find plenty of keywords that could be considered spam.  Anyone want to volunteer?

As a matter of fact, maybe I will.  Maybe I will get on DT and start to use that little red flag and start flagging some of your portfolios.  Then when your portfolio gets locked by DT you will be more considerate of your fellow photographer.

<span class=h7>Dreamstime contributors earn best royalties.

While there is no doubt that DT has good royalties, they are not #1 (although they are close).

First, the survey only compared three agencies: IS, SS, and DT.  SS only shows earnings (on average) of 0.25/image since they are subscription-based (and this was based on data before the raise), so that isn't a good comparison.

Second, in my analysis, both StockXpert and LO have higher royalties (on average).  So they would be #3 (according to my analysis).

Maybe if he would follow the rules that everyone else abides by, then he wouldn't be such a target.

I can understand DT's thoughts about placing established photographers with big downloads in a priority position; the job of an agency is to sell images, and if they have established contributors who sell and sell and sell, why on earth would they then want to give any form of priority or even equal standing to a newbie who has yet to prove anything?

If they want to promote the uber-portfolios, that is fine, just don't call it a "relevant" search.

The new search engine at Dreamstime SUCKS!

Do almost any search and you will find that the first few pages have the same contributors over and over again.

For example, search for "business people" and you will find that out of the first 40 images, 30 images are from only 4 contributors.

Not much of a selection for buyers, especially since many of the images are different shots with the same models.

I'm sure that buyers will be complaining about this new "feature" soon (or maybe they will just shop elsewhere).

On top of that, the new search engine takes into account the "performance of the contributor" and "exclusivity".  What does the "performance of the contributor" or "exclusivity" have to do with the "relevancy" of the image?  This means that a contributor with thousands of downloads is now automatically "relevant" for every search that their images are in.  And in the converse, someone just starting out that might have very relevant images will be stuck at the back of the search results just because they are a newbie.

I'm a Bouncer at LO, and to be honest with y'all, I can't tell the difference between what's a best seller elsewhere and what's not.

That is the precisely the point.  An inspector can't tell what will be a best-seller at any site because they can't predict the future.  Many images that were rejected might have gone on to become best-sellers, thus losing the site (and the artist) potential earnings.

steve-oh:

Here is some FREE but invaluable advice for your site:

Stop rejecting images that are technically acceptable.  Buyers should be the ultimate inspectors of an image.  If an image is technically excellent, then you should approve it and let buyers decide how good it is (by the sales that it will receive).

You can't predict what the market will buy.  Don't try to.  While the market might not want waterfall images today, there might be a run on waterfall images tomorrow and you might be caught without any images to satisfy customers.  What is news today, is old news tomorrow.

There have been plenty of times when I submitted an image just for . of it.  I didn't expect the image to do well, but some of those are now my best sellers.  There have also been times when I submitted an image that I thought would sell great, and it barely sells at all.  We can't predict the market.

You don't have a million images yet, so you shouldn't be worrying about disk space utilization yet.  In another year or so, when your database gets large enough, you can start to cull out images that don't sell (after having been online for at least two years), or move them to another "sale" area as a last hurrah.  That will help to reduce the amount of disk space that is required and delete any images that just aren't selling.

As far as how stock sites compare, most images do the same across all sites.  That is, an image that sells well at one site, usually sells well at another site.  The biggest variable for image sales is search engine placement.  That will vary from site to site, and thus so will sales.  But you all have basically the same customers, since you all market to pretty much the same individuals.  You all market in the same magazines, go to the same trade shows, etc.  So if an image is accepted and selling well at most of the other sites, if you reject it, then it makes you look bad.

I hope that you will pass this advice along and heed it.  It will only make your site better in the long run.

DT you can delete yourself just search then edit and disable

Although you can delete a few images from your portfolio, DT has very strict limitations regarding this.

DT requires your images to be online at least 6 months.  You are only allowed to delete 30% of your portfolio before the 6 months is up.

Here is the exact text (from http://www.dreamstime.com/terms):

"Commencing April 10, 2006, all Contributors are required to keep at least seventy (70%) percent of their portfolio online with Dreamstime.com for a period of at least six (6) months. You may disable all files older than six months from the date of review at any time. You will be allowed to disable a total of thirty (30%) percent of your total images submitted within the past six (6) months. Images submitted prior to April 10, 2006 may be disabled at any time."

Once again, IS comes up with something that is clear as mud.

Get rid of this guy please leaf.

I agree.  Banish him.

On top of that, some members have reported that some words are automatically replaced by other words by the forum software (such as Christmas).  Would it be possible to search for the phrase http://www.fotolia.*/partner/* and then remove it (or at least remove the last piece that is the referral - /partner/* )?

I love Fotolia.  My sales grow every month

Check out my pics http://www.fotolia.com/p/169859/partner/169859

FYI: This poster is a spammer.  The Yahoo microstock group (called micropayment) has had a few issues with him in the past.

He is just trying to use the link provided to get referrals.  He doesn't really care what you think of his images.

If you want to check out his images, then use this link instead:

http://www.fotolia.com/p/169859

It removes the referral link from the end of the URL.