MicrostockGroup

1

General Stock Discussion / New Image Format

« on: January 26, 2007, 13:41 »

http://news.com.com/2100-1045_3-6153730.html?part=rss&tag=2547-1_3-0-20&subj=news

I really hope their new format succeeds. That ability to save in 16, 32 bit and control the compression, from high to lossless in one file format is fantastic.

Mark

2

Off Topic / Way OT, New addition

« on: July 10, 2006, 13:49 »

Well I have a new addition to the family. My wife gave birth to our 3rd girl.

Mark

3

Featurepics.com / FeaturePics (low sales)

« on: May 17, 2006, 11:57 »

I was extremely excited about Featurepics in the beginning. I was getting consistent sales at a lower volume but with the high payout it was one of my best incomes. For the past 6 weeks it has just been almost dead for me. I'm hardly getting any income from it. I assume it is because they are attracting a lot more photographers and their sales aren't rising with the increase in new images.

How is everyone else doing?

Mark

4

Off Topic / Missing Finger

« on: April 25, 2006, 00:54 »

OK this is a little OT but I'll transgress this one time.
As I noted before I chop off the end of my middle finger. As someone else suggested I tried to get a few shots of it. I might as well make money from it, right?

Do you think it will sell?
http://www.scophoto.com/hand

If I make tons of money off it I'll let you know and you can start chopping your fingers off to.

Mark

5

General Stock Discussion / StockXpert

« on: March 31, 2006, 11:13 »

Someone suggested StockXpert to me because they require zero effort to submit to. They have an ftp service and don't require categorization. So if you have already keyworded your images all you have to is ftp it. Thats it, unless your image requires a release. But he said he hadn't sold a thing and not to expect much. So I've been uploading not expecting much. Well I checked it today and found I had several downloads in the past week and they are doing better than bigstockphoto for me. It is still low but for the effort I can't complain. Anybody else using StockXpert

Mark

6

iStockPhoto.com / Hardware failure

« on: March 24, 2006, 09:28 »

IStockPhoto is down. I can't even ping the site. How about everyone else?

Mark

7

General Stock Discussion / First sale at StockPhotoMedia

« on: March 16, 2006, 13:37 »

I decided to try a few European stock sites. I've been with both StockPhotoMedia and ScanStockPhoto for about a month. I finally got a single sale from StockPhotoMedia. A picture of some strawberries. I was surprised how much I got, a 1.80 in Euros. With the exchange rate that isn't bad at all for a single image. Of course that is only one sale and it will take 3 years at the current rate before I get a pay out.

Mark

8

General Stock Discussion / Fotolia Sales

« on: March 16, 2006, 12:35 »

How have Fotolia sales been for anyone? I've been submitting there for about a month and have over a 100 images. Still not a single sale. I've noticed that different sites cater to different buyers. What kind of stock does well at Fotolia? They also promised $0.20 for every accepted image in Feburary. I have several images that were accepted and my balance still shows $0.00. Has anyone received the promised reward?

Mark

9

iStockPhoto.com / Istock Approval process

« on: March 15, 2006, 11:53 »

OK, I've been submitting to IStockPhoto for about 6 weeks along with many other sites. I can definetely tell they are getting extremely picky and don't take much time on approving images from non-exclusive photags. I keep getting images rejected because of noise. I shot the images with a Canon 10D at ISO 100. They are as clean as can be. Then I get images rejected for being overprocessed and I only adjusted the levels and contast; I hardly touched them. It goes on and on. Is it their nice way of saying we didn't like the subject matter? I have no problem with comments like this image isn't suitable for stock photography or we already have enough similar images. Another issue is copyright issues. I've gotten a few back claiming copyright issues and there isn't a logo or anything of the sort anywhere?? Here is an example from today claiming copyright issues. They sent back a thumbnail with the rejection.

Do you see any copyright issues. Maybe I'm blind??

OK, I'm finished ranting, sorry.

Mark

10

General Stock Discussion / How many microsites do you use?

« on: February 21, 2006, 23:47 »

I've been on Alamy and I'm switching over to the microsites. The return seems to be higher. What I'm wondering is how many microsites do you use. Right now I'm attempting to upload them to Istockphoto, Shutterstock, Fotolia, Feature Pics, Dreamstime and BigStockPhoto. Is it worth my time to upload it to that many or should I spend the extra time shooting more pictures. Simply from a business point of view what is the best use of my time. I'm only getting my initial images approved so I haven't had time to evaluate which site will bring me the largest return. But my guess is Shutterstock and Istockphoto and then the rest. What are your thoughts?

Mark
www.scophoto.com