Very old thread btw

Out of curiousity just did a quick check.  I've had 3 rejections in the last year.  1 was well deserved and the other 2 are almost random like I was "due" a rejection (they were better than many accepted).  Subjectively, they have the best reviewers.  Objectively, I would expect good reviewers to reject the weaker and accept the better images and 3 of the top 4 fail by that yardstick.

It seems to depend very much on the type of photo you are unloading.   I just looked at Fotolia's "latest uploads" page.   About 90% of what's accepted is photos of attractive models, vectors, and manipulated composite images.   Only 10% are traditional still life/scenic photos.   It appears that Fotolia doesn't want a lot more of the latter types, and for them Fotolia's rejection rate is much higher than for other micro sites.   

Quote from: Danybot on May 13, 2012, 08:24

It depends on what you are shooting, from where.   It's private property if you step off the public street to take your photo.   I think it's well settled law that if you shoot private property from the public street, you can use the photo if it's an old building, which would apply to most of the buildings at Harvard.  (If it's a newer one with a unique design, the architect/owner can claim copyright in the design.)    If people want to enforce privacy against being photographed from the public street, they have to build a tall fence.

Isn't 'shot from public street' the rule for allowable editorial? That's certainly the case in the UK (though some micros err on the safe side even so). For commercial use, it's not 100% certain, but who wants to be the legal case for micro prices?

From the standard English reference book, Gray and Gray, Elements of Land Law, 4th edition, p. 229:  "It is no trespass to watch your neighbour's pursuits in his garden, as long as you do not enter his land, even if you use binoculars to improve your view... the onus has been cast on the aggrieved landowner to frustrate external visual access by raising his own boundary fence or other barrier."   

From the ACLU, https://www.aclu.org/free-speech/know-your-rights-photographers:

"Taking photographs of things that are plainly visible from public spaces is a constitutional right � and that includes federal buildings, transportation facilities, and police and other government officials carrying out their duties. "

Generally, the legal distinction between editorial and non-editorial is that you can use the photo editorially even if there is a copyrighted design in it.  Shutterstock, however, often imposes a stricter standard.  The photos sell for pennies, and they already have something like 20 million of them in stock.   As you pointed out, it's not worth their while taking a risk of a lawsuit, even if they are likely to win it.   

However, it is rather funny how inconsistent the rules are from site to site, and even from reviewer to reviewer at the same site.   At iStock, they are not fussy about buildings, but if you show the back of anybody's head in the photo, even if his mother wouldn't recognize him, it has to be editorial, while SS (quite sensibly) doesn't seem to worry about that.   

Hi All,

I'm only in my second month as a Shutterstock contributor, with just over 100 files on-line at this point.   I'm fairly impressed with the rapid pace of sales so far.  If that could be extrapolated to a larger portfolio, it would make my income per photo at SS more than double what it is at iStock, where I have been contributing for a few years, and have a large portfolio.   That seems out of keeping with the 100/67 ratio shown in the poll at the side here.   

I'm curious, however.   Is there something that streams newly accepted photos to customers, so that the download rate is more rapid when they are new? 

Oddly, some photos that are among my most popular at iStock have hardly sold at SS, whereas a couple that haven't sold at iStock are among my most popular at SS.

As a matter of fact, I also don't have any RF at Alamy.   The one to which I was referring was an RM "novel use" sale.  (I just checked, and it turns out, it wasn't $1.50, but $1.25.)   In the past several months, most sales have been novel use ones in the $4 to $10 range, all RM photos.   In 2010, I did have a couple of individual sales over $200, but in the past 12 months only one over $100.  For me at least Alamy has been going downhill fast, and I have stopped uploading to them.  

People are always comparing RF to RM and how much sold and values and all that, but it's the same thing. Photos of WHAT and how unique are they?

Alamy will never be micro style, I hope not, and what you wrote about sales, is generally true, the volume isn't there. The buyers are different. The needs and demands and content are different.

The line from the commercial with the investment kid covers it. Very funny: "You have the same chances of that happening as being attacked by a polar bear and a grizzle bear, in the same day."

Yes, someone sold a license for six figures, however... your results may vary. I might average $80 a download and someone else with common RF images, identical to what they sell on 50 other sites, may average $1.50 a download. It's not all about averages or hypothetical numbers as much as it is the content that we are selling. Also what I have on Alamy is one of a kind, moment in time material, that in some cases, no one else will ever have. In others, there will be similar images, also just as unique, but from other people. Nothing is staged or ever going to happen again. Editorial News shots.

That what I chose to shoot. To each our own.

I don't know much German, but generally I've been able to figure out what they are about.

looka t the good side ,it can only get better (hope?)

I'm not sure about that.  Just because it's already very bad, doesn't mean it won't get worse.   I have a portfolio of over 1500 on Istock, and 500 on 123RF.   My revenue so far in February on 123RF is $34, beating my revenue from Istock, which is a miserable $33.   That's about one-third of what I made this time last year on Istock.  Buyers have probably realized that Istock is very overpriced.   On 123RF, I get a 50% commission, so buyers have paid $68.   On Istock, I get a 16% commission, so buyers have paid $206 for about the same number of photos.  I've completely stopped uploading to Istock, and eventually will have my entire portfolio there duplicated on other sites.  Gradually, their selection will become relatively poorer, and buyers will have even less reason to go there.   Their attempt at making a huge profit margin is just not economically viable.   If they attempt to cut their prices to make themselves competitive, and still pay me only a 16% commission, I will just delete all my photos from there.   Why should I sell my photos for a dime on Istock, if I can always get 35 cents at Dreamstime or 123RF?

The only way Istock can remain viable is to cut their margin, and I'm not sure they have the foresight to do that.

Thanks guys.   I'm going to make all my photos that get any sales there Photo+. 

Probably not a good idea to max your quota.  Photo+ means the buyer is charged a higher price for the photo.   Your commission rate stays the same, and you only get paid more because the buyer is paying more.   So you should only increase the price on those photos that you think are sufficiently attractive/unique that they will continue to sell at double the price.  It's called elasticity of demand.

You may be right that price isn't the only factor, but I expect it is still a major factor.  Istock had a big head start and a large customer base, so the response to the high price would likely be somewhat gradual rather than sudden, and the worsening economic conditions have also made buyers more price sensitive than they were in the past.

Istock has the largest profit margin in the microstock industry, charging the highest to buyers and paying lowest to photographers.  The service they provide just isn't superior enough to justify that profit margin.  They are increasingly uncompetitive, and their business will keep sinking.   This latest irrational move to abuse non-exclusives even further will backfire on them.   Most non-exclusives will stop uploading  (and even remove the files they already have there), leading to an inferior selection that will drive buyers away.

http://seanlockephotography.com/2011/11/08/istock-serves-up-targeted-advertising/

Thanks, that explains it.   However, while Locke calls it "smart targetted advertising," that's obviously wrong.  It's a really dumb algorithm that somebody mistakenly thought was smart.

Since uploading and keywording was a lot of work, I have left most of my existing photos on iStock, but I haven't uploaded in the past year due to the commission reduction.   Istock used to be my top earner, but it is now generally number two or number three each week.

I'm sure I'm not the only one.   While it's true that there are a lot of people who continue to upload, different photographers have different images, and buyers will eventually start to notice that there are a lot of good images at DT, 123RF, etc. that they can't find on iStock.   That's probably already happening

It's hit and miss.  Sometimes the submit button appears, and sometimes it doesn't.  I've tried both Firefox and IE, and the same problem exists in both.  I complained to Bigstock administration, but they had never heard of it.

In one batch of three, two of them could be submitted without any problem, but the third refused, even though I did everything the same.  The clue is that the green check mark fails to appear at the top, even though there is a green check mark beside all the individual items.

My interest in this is more a matter of IT curiosity rather than anything else.   Sales are so poor at Bigstock that uploading would hardly be worth the bother, even if it worked well.   The second time it happened, I just deleted them, and decided not to try again.

  But it's honestly not that hard to get it right and complaining about things like "I put in the wrong date and they rejected it for having the wrong date!  That's stupid!" is just silly IMHO. 

Put that way, you make it sound like my complaint is trivial, but you are ignoring the context.  I make a tiny mistake in the date that is not material to anything.   The actual date from the exif is already there in another box.  If the date being off in the caption bothers the examiner, why doesn't he just correct it instead of rejecting it.   And they don't just let the submitter correct it.  No, because there is one digit wrong in the date, I have to waste time uploading a 5mb file all over again, and filling in a bunch of other information that doesn't get carried over on resubmits.   And then, if I have resubmitted the file with the caption corrected, there's at least a 50% chance they will reject it because of "a little more about compression."   Their rejection messages make me want to puke.  As I said, they treat contributors like dirt.   

And yes, I do know how to submit successfully to Istock, as I have several hundred images on-line with them.   However, they are getting worse and worse, and I would much rather submit to some of the other places like Dreamstime and Bigstock that are more reasonable, even if they don't have quite the marketing power of Getty Images.