Im sure there is a post lurking here about the Agency collection but as some posts keep getting hijacked, I thought Id start another! I buy a lot from micro and macro, and I just went to look on istock for a generic image of 'colour'... OMG! 2nd page is full of 'Agency' stuff of an asian woman and a guy running with some fake clouds and skyline (both series stood out as obviously not correctly positioned and the price too, unbelieveable!), whole series of them, so frustrating I just quit out and went to Veer... Im sure there is more but I havent the time. If it wasnt for this site and being a contributor too I would never be aware of that stuff and would just think how awful they were, can this be turned off?

So.... 2 things.... as a user, they are going to really p**s people off, I havent the time to wade thorugh the s**t and 2 as a contributor this stuff is at the front of the best match search and is irrelevant, I really think this will hurt istocks reputation.

Dreamstimes new policy of 'no similars' is driving me crazy.

I shot a series of garden herbs, chives, coriander, basil, etc, etc, different bunches, and they will only accept one shot, so what if someone wants basil, chives, coriander, etc, etc and not mint. They have only let mint in. INSANNNNE! Sorry had to get it off my chest and there appears to be no appeals procedure for dreamstime, is there?

Ive been doing this for 15 months now and only last month did it dawn on me... I was in the shutterstock trap!

By that I mean I was feeling pressurised to keep producing a large amount of images weekly (large for me is about 30 i know its all relative!). I then knew i could expect to earn what was for me a significant amount. The problem is though that quality would sometimes suffer, I would find myself shooting anything on white or creating simple vectors just to keep feeding the beast as at the time shutterstock was way above the other libraries in terms of income. And I wasn't enjoying it.

Now I'm a bit further down the microstock road I have come to believe like some others here that quality does matter, so I've reduced my uploading to about 10/15 files a week, this has meant an immediate hit on shutterstock of down 30% this month (whether that is a time of year thing too i dont know) However my acceptance on istock has shot up and my sales there have doubled this month.... sales across all other sites are on course for a normal month, anyone else find this?

Hi All

Im interested to know if anyone has applied to getty (or corbis) through the traditional channels. By that I mean creating a bespoke portfolio for getty and then applied through the traditional way, in that youve put your portfolio online and then posted the link in the form on there site (or sent 10 images) and then waited for a response.

I know that there are other avenues, but istock isnt open to me as a relative newbie it will take forever and a day for me to be exclusive even if I wanted to be and then I know the process is still not guaranteed. Im also aware of flickr and may try that but Im not sure if that is all in all the same as the traditional acceptance. In essence I would like the opportunity to regularly contribute as a I do in microstock. The portfolio I am developing for mid/macrostock is very different and far more time consuming from micro and so I feel will work better there, its also very conceptual/metaphorical and will be lost in micro.

Any advice guys?

Jo

Hi All

I am interested to know if there is a general consensus as to when a portfolio sales may start to flatten out, I understand there may be a few things at play here including sectors targeted and upload rate  and of course quality. I upload about 30 images a week many of better quality than months before, and have a portfolio of around 1400 images (1 year in). Month on month my sales have continually grown. Now if things continue with such growth over the next year or two I would be very happy and could do this fulltime if I chose to. However I feel it may not be so easy and wonder if anyone has hit a brickwall...?!

Thanks

Jo