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Messages - Oldhand
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226
« on: April 29, 2010, 14:22 »
My acceptance is woeful!
Views are fine, but sales very disappointing to date after one flurry a few months ago.
Don't blame them on the rejections though, what may feed the beast is not good for the gander.
I'll keep going as nice site, well run.
Oldhand the optimist
227
« on: April 28, 2010, 02:58 »
Hi there - I got a sale there yesterday, probably the low fee relates to the agreement with UK national newspapers.
Country: United Kingdom
Usage: Editorial
Media: Newspaper - national
Print run: up to 2 million
Placement: Inside
Image Size: 1/4 page
Start: 26 April 2010
End: 27 April 2010
$ 29.83
Total sales $29.83
My cut will be a grand total of $14. I saw the picture, and if I'd supplied directly through my own agency it would have been around $100 with no deductions. Things being as they are it is a sale gained rather than lost, as they would not have come directly to me for it, nor obviously taken my pic from their own library.
I remain equally delighted and frustrated in equal measures.
Oldhand
228
« on: April 25, 2010, 15:14 »
Qui t'accuse, s'accuse.
Manners maketh man and other such proverbs.
If you want help, support, co-operation, empathy, understanding, etc, please be more polite. You may well have raised a valid point, but I'll skip this one.
Night night
Oldhand
229
« on: April 25, 2010, 14:29 »
Great development . It levels the playing field for all those film premiers which need to be seen by picture desks ASAP. Unless you are a macro agency or are savvy about how to supply news pictures directly yourself, then this is great.
I also like to historical pictures / archival pics from 5mp upwards. It open's up a new channel for those older pics lurking scanned into a hard drive.
Oldhand
230
« on: April 16, 2010, 15:37 »
Hi there
My experiences have all been positive. Always paid on time, and with one hiccup when they had problems, which was corrected in the next payment.
For what it's worth it brings in circa $75-100 per month, and accepts 99% of my pictures.
Growth is very small month on month, but as least it's going in the right direction.
Oldhand
231
« on: April 16, 2010, 04:53 »
For me SS OD's remain the same -
BS - all doom and gloom!
Oldhand
232
« on: April 07, 2010, 07:09 »
On the flip side - you had the picture that they may have been looking for!
It's very difficult, without looking on the site I would imagine "woman lifting man" wouldn't get any matches. A client may type in [woman lifting man], or if it was me, woman lifting man. Probably all the images are accurately keyworded, but without disambiguation it's always going to be an inexact science.
It annoy's me as well, but as long as my CTR is higher than average and my pics on the first page ideally, I'm happy.
I once sat a keywording test for Alamy for fun. I can only describe it as very, very difficult. I was on the right lines, but to get to it right would have been beyond me on a regular basis. So much for doing things for fun.
Back to the grind...
Oldhand
233
« on: April 06, 2010, 03:30 »
My problem with CTR is that keywords are found in the wrong place. One problem is my name, "Adelaide", I get hits for any search related to the city in Australia. Someone looking for "adelaide cityscape" may see a photo of London.  Also there were the expressions in quotation marks, searches are reading individual words in an expression. Like someone searching for "American Airlines" and finding an image that has "Varig Airlines" and "Latin American" in the keywords. 
I take the point! adelaide cityscape shows 2 pics of London on the first page of otherwise correct matches "adelaide cityscape" - no matches adelaide city - first page of correct matches "adelaide city" correct matches Changing your name to a pseudonymn dones not help as it still seaches on the photographers credit line. I would have put essential keywords as "adelaide city" "adelaide cityscape" It's never going to be an exact science, the only way I have found to increase CTR is to be brief. "golden gate bridge" etc. The search engine gives highest priority to the essential keywords, so it they are good your CTR should be above average anyway. Not sure how to deal with the photographer name problem, maybe Alamy could be more help. Rgds Oldhand
234
« on: April 05, 2010, 16:08 »
The same happened to me, the image I sold there didn't get any zooms and in fact it did not appear in that list of searches. I guess it was purchased through a 3rd party or through Alamy's inside service.
+1 more
I also don't worry about Alamy rank and all that. People are looking for photos and if I have something that they want, that isn't the same as 3,000 other similar photos, it will sell. Some folks get all obsessed about no zoom or no view registered and worry about their rank. Good somewhat unique photos sell! 
Lets say that half my views and zooms are not recorded. Well then about half of everyone else's views and zooms aren't being registered either, so we are all on the same system. Level playing field, I'm not worried that someone is getting ahead of me because of some silly measures system that doesn't work all the time.
My Click through rate (CTR) is consistently higher than the Alamy average, and has been since I put a lot of keywording work in 6 months ago. Since then the sales have increased noticeably (along with zooms etc). I take your point, if a pic in unique then it will appear at the top of the page, but none of mine are particularly. The net result of an increased CTR has been my images appear on the first pages of relevant searches, an IMHO has led to increased sales. I created a Pseudonym for all new pics and edited the keywords to a minimum using their search terms etc. Next step was to go through the older pics and re-keyword them. For me it was a useful exercise. Regarding Zooms, a lot of searching is done in house. Alamy will contact say a newspaper every week and ask what subjects they are looking for, say for a sunday travel supplement. Alamy resarchers will then sort a lightbox of relevant pics, which will not show as having zooms. That's just the tip of the iceberg, as they are proactive in choosing the pics for clients. (keep's them happy!) My advice for anyone selling pics there would be to keep keywords brief and relevant. Having a CTR higher than average, even slightly, gives you a greater chance of selling. Any advantage has to be good, and who know's, you might get some large price sales. For the record every one of my sales has had zoom's. Oldhand
235
« on: April 02, 2010, 15:04 »
Hmmm!
In the UK we have Premier League football, and all photographers have to sign a licensing agreement agreeing to what it can be used for - basically editorial material. Anything else, posters, football cards, t-shirts etc, and you loose young license and feel the wrath of their hitmen. The license cost's a photographer / agency money, you need public libaility insurance, and have to be established before they'll give you one. In effect it's now a closed shop for any freelancer starting out.
I can keyworkd Premier League 09/10 season as much as I want, but woe betide I try and give the impression any image I create was taken at a premier league ground or invloves their logo if I sell for otherwise than editorial.
Simple was around this was to take pics of UK teams oversea's in European competition or friendly matches. Unless you signed anything before the game you were OK, and could do as you wanted with this pics.
I used to apply for World Cup passes for a large sports agency, again the problem is the restriction on how they could be sold. No problem with editorial use, but marketing merchanside etc is a hangable offence unless you are their "official" photographers.
With the amount of money in football, their rights are protected very well, hence the details posted earler that FIFA had filed back in 1999.
If you want to take a pic of a football on a South African flag, then I would caption away as "world cup 2010 soccer football". Stick the same image with the trophy on it, and it could be a problem.
Istock are correct and "world cup" is not copyrighted per se, but any photographs claiming to represent it or taken in the stadia are governed by licensing restiction.
Saying all this, every match I have ever attended (100's) has had unlicensed merchandise for sale outside the ground, all that's got to come from somewhere. Unless you need to stay on the right side of governing bodies so they will continue to grant photographer's passes, then I would not worry too much.
On a final note, I always thought football / soccer was the people's game! Fat chance when it becomes a money spinning business opportunity. Half of the World CUp Final match's ticket's go to sponsor and FIFA hangers on. The real fan get ripped off for their meagre allocation of seats. In England the former are all know as the "prawn sandwich brigade", i.e they don't attend matches for fun, just to fill their corpulent bodies with fine food and drink trendy wine.
Rant over for the Easter weekend
Oldhand
236
« on: April 01, 2010, 04:41 »
Not being a stats person!
SS blew the rest away with more than double joint second Fotolia and Dreamstime. 123 beat IS to fourth place.
Top four all BME's.
Crestock was less than my childrens pocket money, and BS and CAN would pay for a good night out.
Total revenue at a shade under $1000, which is no small change for me in this harsh economic World.
To add a caveat, Micro took up a lot of time for me this month, and it or I will have to up the game substantially if it's going to come close to Macro earnings, which although dwindling remain acceptable.
Rgds
Oldhand
237
« on: April 01, 2010, 04:33 »
For me Alamy has been steadily increasing with aound $400 on average per month as my cut. Put's it on a par with SS. Worth the effort
Oldhand
How long have you been on Alamy?
Hi there - I have been there for four years, but struggled a lot with Quality control at first due to older equipment. I sorted the problems out, and have been actively uploading for the last year with around 2000 pics on a RM portfolio (very diverse, in my opinion mediocre material). Very sporadic sales at first, every couple of months for circa $200, however it is now consisent. Sold four March for $200, sold three in Feb for $1000. It averages around $400 net for me every month. Rgds Oldhand
238
« on: March 31, 2010, 16:10 »
For me Alamy has been steadily increasing with aound $400 on average per month as my cut. Put's it on a par with SS. Worth the effort
Oldhand
239
« on: March 30, 2010, 16:04 »
Oh, and to answer the original thread, yes you can, but it is beyond most one man mortal bands in Western countries without significant additional revenue from macro.
Oldhand (who should really have paid more attention at school and got a proper job where you wear a suit for work)
240
« on: March 30, 2010, 16:00 »
I have previously been employed captioning images - five minutes per picture, and I was considered fast and accurate. After four hour's I could see double. Slighly different with sequences of similar subjects for macro, I could get through 100 in an hour with no problem, (all slight variations of the theme - XXX on the ball for Manchester United during their game against Arsena, YYY on the ball for Manchester United etc, etc) but the parameters were different and not so exacting. Also I used Fotostation as a captioning tool, which works very well for that time of subject. For my macro work now I don't use keywords, except for Alamy which has a similar submission and search method like micro. I just have title, caption and photographer date info.
Having spent three years keywording macro pics for an agency which were supplied as stock to various newspapers, I visited their picture library. First thing they did was strip them all out of their files as they had their own specific set of key terms. In my own way I was probably the first ever (unintentional) spammer.
Everyone works in a different way. I could produce an image for micro with keywords in 10 minutes. It would probably pass inspection, except at Istock where I need to take considerably more time. Wether it sells or not is a moot point. The key for me is having good images to submit, that's what I find is the most challenging and hard work.
Rgds
Oldhand
241
« on: March 26, 2010, 04:24 »
Hi Mark
Just to chip in with my 2cents. I admire the aim, steady portolio increase along with increasing quaility images as you learn. I come from a macro background of editorial, but took the same approach to SS as you.
For me all my income comes from stock, macro and micro. With SS, I have been able to maintain a portfolia growth of 100 per week approved since November 09. It's a hard slog, and debatable wether more time should be spent on quality over quantity. As long as they are of a good standard I don't get hung up on this or RPI etc.
I'm up to nearly 3,000 approved, with the aim to double this by the end of the year (I won't keep up 100 per week every week!)
I started with photo's, and have increasingly moved to illustration, and the results are good. I only track the end figure every month, and it has steadily increased, with no signs of stopping. Up go 20 new images, some will be picked up straight away, but the whole portfolio gets a boost, and pics I had forgotten about are downloaded as well.
To give you an idea, excluding weekend's I have had double figures+ sales every day except 2 in March, with some EL's thrown in for good measure.
I realise this is not everyone's idea of a good selling technique, but results wise it currently works.
Quailty may win the day, but consistent mediocrity is more me.
Good luck with your next target
Oldhand
242
« on: March 24, 2010, 07:25 »
Same problem here, can't log in by FTP. Tried windows publish tool, that also no longer works for me.
I have to upload with the web form uploader, which isn't a huge problem in the short term.
I'm using WIndows XP.
Rgds
Oldhand
243
« on: March 17, 2010, 08:58 »
Hi there
Completely off topic, but being St. Patrick's day and meself a lover of Guiness on a lunch time, the following is an anecdote of my first trip to Dublin.
I hightailed it from the airport to the central bus station, walked over O'Connell bridge, and found Lower Grafton street. I was in search of that mecca of Irish music on a Sunday lunchtime, O'Donaghues pub. I asked the first man of a certain age and look the way.
The ol' fella looked me straight in my English eye and said, "you see that road there? - don't take that one!"
Glory glory hallelujah, straight out of the Quiet Man film.
On a slightly more serious note, it being a CEPIC conference, any micro stockers attending looking to find representation from Euopean agencies should go armed with CD's full of sellable material and you could find an unexpected and lucrative outlet for young images. Not every agency is as well known as Getty / Corbis / Alamy etc, and this is an as yet largely untapped market for photographers with RF and editorial material.
Cad mle filte
Old (hiccup) hand
244
« on: March 04, 2010, 04:51 »
The majority of microstock submitters still produce low-cost images, something that I think will be profitable for a long time.
but the real problem is that the % of the total libraries is always reducing. Unless you are able to substantially increase output and/or saleability then growth will eventually stop and then reverse.
I'm sure I'll remain profitable, in so far as the images will sell for more than they cost me to produce, but the question is for how long that profit will remain high enough to live off.
Hi there Gostwyk I wholly concur with this, for me I have had to treble production of images since I started. As a bench mark I make sure I have 100 accepted on SS per week, with other agencies taking what percentage of that they will ( or I am able to upload as in IS). I have done this for four months, and yes my revenue is increasing every month, not a lot, but an increase nevertheless. Naturally you have to factor in time etc, but currently it is still a workwhile use of it. With such small growth the lost of StockXpert was a hit, but I still increased by a small margin in February. I am not sure how long this wil be sustainable, so I can do one of two things. Shoot more sellable images or increase output again. I'm no David Bailey (famous British photographer), so option two looks good. Here I run into the proverbial brick wall. Yes, I could up to 150 per week, but at what cost? I am already working 10 hours a day, six days a week on micro and trad agencies. If the UK editorial market hadn't been squeezed by the economy I would not have entered Micostock, but times change and we must change with them. For me the final answer will always be more hard work and an eye out for new markets. I'm a grafter rather than an businessman with insight, and on current figures my only growth (trad / own agencies / Alamy / Overseas agents etc) is Microstock. Musing over it's back to the daily quota. Oldhand
245
« on: March 02, 2010, 15:14 »
Mystery solved, senior moment!
Oldhand
246
« on: March 02, 2010, 14:52 »
Very hand tutorial for anyone submitting to Alamy.
Rgds
Oldhand
247
« on: March 02, 2010, 14:46 »
Hi there
I got four messages today for incorrect keywording - funny thing is when it show's the picture and keyword, it's not mine, it's someone elses.
The mystery deepens.
Rgds
Oldhand
248
« on: February 28, 2010, 07:42 »
"I kind of give up on Alamy cause whole process takes to long. In order to have 5000 images there it will take years (I do not even have 5K on SS). I do not have enough experience to figure where each image would be accepted so all agencies get the same stuff. This probably reason why I am failing on Alamy cause they want something else."
Hi Melastmohican!
Alamy only judge on quaility of pics, not subject matter. Don't try and second guess what will sell or not, as the most odd things do. If you have the right file size, upload them.
My portfolio is very diverse, I make $100 - $250 per month, although this month I sold one for $1050. Think of it as buying lots of lottery tickets - the more you have up there the better.
Oldhand
249
« on: February 24, 2010, 09:02 »
For me glamour would be lots of models wandering down catwalks in fancy dresses, or hundreds of portraits of beautiful men or women. All well and good, but they won't sell like that. Put them all in business clothes then you're talking.
On an aside, by some modern day miracle, Alamy sold a pic of mine for just over $1000 dollars today - it's my highest ever single sale for advertising, and was of a snowy mountain range.
Really, the oddest things sell...
Rgds
Oldhand
250
« on: February 17, 2010, 15:35 »
Hi there - I run my own macro agency, and used to scout for talent on the internet in it's early days. I took on as many contributors as possible, and all worked well while I was selling their material and providing good sales figures.
Hard time's hit about three years ago for me, suddenly I couln't be sure of making good returns on material, hence I had to stop taking on contributors. I sent them all off in the direction of larger trad agencies, although most were not taken on. They either gave up or ended with Alamy.
I cut all my overheads and increased by workload significantly just to survive. End of the day, all I want to do is pay the mortgage, and I'd sell my soul to the devil for that.
Whichever way you go about it, IS exclusive, selling great images for peanut subscription fee's, or hanging outside seedy hotel's waiting for indiscrete celebrities, it does not matter.
All come's to the bottom line for me, I've got a family to feed, so sod the principles and I'll take every extra cent I can. It doesn't make it right, but until I can give my family what they deserve, I'll reserve the luxury of principles.
Oldhand (who's not that old really)
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