Something new for me - I received, through DT,  a request to buy the exclusive rights to a photo.  I'd consider it, but it's a photo that sells well and might continue to sell for years.   I have no idea what a reasonable price would be, but I'm thinking a few hundred.    Am I right?

... what exactly is Photo+?   I tuned out that announcement, and haven't submitted anything to IS in ages, but now I'm thinking, what the heck; maybe I'll make some of my best sellers "Photo+".   Except I can't find out exactly what that does for me.  I hunted around on the IS site and "help" but about all I found was this:

"Photo+ is a set of images in the Main collection selected by the artists."

Um ok. Thank for that.  Now what exactly does it mean in terms of jprice and commission?  What are the pros and cons?

Has anyone else been able to access the Zazzle forum for the last few days?  I've been getting a blank page since Friday.

After getting the results of a recent handfull of submissions to SS and DT, I realize that I need to stop this humiliating, self-destructive behavior - I need to quit doing microstock photos. Please help me.


There were no technical problems with any of the photos. 

SS took the common subjects; the unusual had "low commerical value".  A keyword search shows dozens of the same subject and mine is better than any of them.  But they'd rather just keep selling the old cr@p.

DT accepted the oddball subject, rejected the more common ones as "not what we're looking for" "too many in series".  Yes I have several older shots of this subject matter, they sell well, that's why I spent time coming up with this nice new take.  They don't want it.

GL: took them all, even put a few in their "GL collection".  I think my last sale was in August.

CC:  2 years, 20 cents.

IS: I quit dealing with them.  My sales tanked there anyway.


If I can't be reasonably confident of getting my photos accepted by both SS and DT there's no longer any possibility of making them pay off.  And as of today I don't know what these agencies want, and I don't think they know, either.

I need to walk away now. I need to move on.   

Not long ago I retired, and had wanted to ge more active in microstock.  My tiny portfolio (about 150) has actually done pretty well over the last 2 years, considering that it's mostly oddball shots of objects.  

But during that time, IS only got weirder.  The difficulty of getting photos accepted there, the tedious keyword process,  the sinking commissions,  deteriorating search placement - there's no future.

That left DT, SS GL and CC.

At GL I made a bunch of nice sales at the start, but it went dead months ago.  In 2 years at CC I've made 20 cents.  

My acceptance at SS was always very high. Until now.  But I've just had a bunch of rejections that have left me completely baffled.  (I won't bore you with the details).   My feelings are hurt.  I don't like SS any more.

Meanwhile DT has consistently accepted all my stuff, and my sales have been steadily increasing.  After their recent search changes and the 'level 0' thing, photos that had been stone cold for months started making an occasional sale.

I'm burned out on fighting with IS, SS has changed for the worse; CC and GL are just not going to happen.   So now I'm thinking - maybe I should just go exclusive at DT.  

Holy smoke.  A year ago, I would have ridiculed this idea...

This 'level 0' thing appears to be doing something.  Recently I've had sales of a few photos which had been sitting there for months or years without a sale.  The money is insignificant, but I feel vindicated because I thought they were good photos.  Somehow they are now getting their chance.

After 2 years, I made a sale at CC.  Smallest size; I received 20 cents.   You can probably hear the sounds of the party I have going on over here; let me know if the music gets too loud.

But,  it is a hopeful sign.  I only have about 120 photos there.  Given this extraordinary jump in sales, I may submit more.

Just got a 'refund' email from DT.  I suppose this isn't new, it's just the first time for me.

So the microstocks have a really streamlined credit card verification process.  They just send it through and if it turns out to be bogus, rip the money back from their supplier. Sweet!   So you never know what your real earnings balance is - some of it is funny money. 

By the way we shouldn't be calling these "clawbacks".  A "clawback" implies that the person being clawed has been convicted of a crime.  We're not the perps here. 

I'm getting interested in Zazzle. I did some coffee cup designs, ordered a couple and was very pleased with how they look.  I think I could sell some locally, through friends and small shops.  But not at Zazzle prices.  And I don't need to sell through Zazzle, I think I can do it myself.

Does anyone have a recommendation for a source of custom printed coffee cups, with good quality and reasonable prices for small quantities?  I

I want to do some night photos looking out through window glass.  The reason for this is that I live in Minneapolis and we have a lot of glass 'skyways' connecting the buildings so people can get around in the winter. The skyways give interesting views of the streets at night.

To keep the camera still I need to brace the lens against the glass, so some sort of rubber lens hood could serve as a bumper.  The catch is that I need to angle the camera somewhat, so the lens wouldn't be flat against the glass. 

I need a gadget that will bumper the lens against the glass but be adaptable to different angles. And the lens has to be quite close to the glass to avoid reflections and glare.

Any ideas from any of you experienced street photographers?

I'm looking for a compact, simple P & S for my wife, who isn't a techie.   Image quality is not the issue and it doesn't need 12 MP - these will be just casual and travel photos to share with friends.   What we want is simplicity - the fewer features, capabilities and 'modes' the better. 

About the only useful feature might be optical zoom (and not some cr@p fake digital 'zoom' ).  And I want it to show up on USB as a drive - with no crummy dedicated software needed just to get the pictures downloaded.

Simplicity, ease of use, are 90% of the decision. The other 10% would be quality, which is hard to predict.  If it can take nice low-light pictures on its own, because its firmware is incredibly smart, that's great.  If getting nice low-light pictures is possible only by tweaking a set of options via menu settings, forget it.

Any doofus product manager can cram 'features' into a device until it becomes a nightmare.  It takes good engineering and design to make something truly simple and easy to use. 

So I come to the highly knowledgeable people on this forum, to ask for their experiences.

As I continue to micro-manage my tiny portfolio, try to maximize it's meager earnings, and decide whether to continue with this microstock insanity...

I've already dropped FT because... well you all know the reasons.   Graphic Leftovers is actually making an occasional sale netting me $2.60, that's cool.  IS and DT make some sales too, at varying prices - sometimes 20 cents, but sometimes $3.  A few of my photos have accumulated enough sales that their price has gone up. That's cool too.

SS on the other hand is road kill in the sun.  My photos are niche things, not blockbusters, and at 25 cents, you have to make a lot of sales for it to make sense.  I make about the same number of sub sales as always, but enhanced and on-demand sales have totally dried up, and I think that says a lot about SS's direction.

I know others are still big on SS but for me, it's going nowhere, and I no longer think it makes sense to put the same portfolio on sites where the prices are so different.   I am thinking that these worthless subscriptions sales are now just me competing with myself on other sites - and losing that competion - and I might as well close SS next, and focus on DT, IS and GL.  

Is anyone else feeling that SS is now nothing but subs, and no longer a good place to be?
 

In the past I've used WHCC for prints, and they're great.   But they have 2 ways to submit orders - a Java application called ROES, and FTP.   Their FTP system is a weirdly overcomplicated thing that I'm tired of messing with. And ROES has a conflict with my ISP,  so I can't use it.

I started looking at alternatives but quickly found that ROES is everywhere - many print services are now using it, which means I can't go there.  I do small numbers of prints at infrequent intervals, so nothing with a yearly/monthly fee makes sense for me.  

Can someone suggest a good quality print service with a simple web-based interface for submitting occasional orders?