i think geopappas biggest reason to feel ill-done by is that 2 of the series was accepted and 2 were rejected. That is where the problem lies.� Wether a company wants to be extremely pickey or not I can live with.

Yes, Leaf, that is one of the reasons for my discontent.

The other reason is the ridiculous reasons that they have given for the rejections.  "Lack of Concept" for the first two candles, and "Poor lighting setup, poor contrast or incorrect exposure" for the blue ticket.

If an image is borderline one reviewer might except it and one don't. And some might make mistakes.

I don't think that any of the images that I posted were borderline.  And to back up that claim is the fact that those images have been accepted at every other agency that I have submitted them to, including SS and IS (the two toughest reviewers in the business).

So, no, I don't feel sorry for people who can't do their job correctly.

If they don't know the difference between a good photo and a bad one, then they shouldn't be there in the first place.

Not only are they costing time and money for the photographers who are trying to submit good work, but they are also hurting the buyer that is looking for a good image and can't find one.

I have started to grow very weary of Dreamstime.� I am getting to the point where I am beginning to think about pulling all of my photos from their site.

Dreamstime is EXTREMELY inconsistent in their reviews lately.

For example, I submitted the following four candles splashing into water a few weeks ago:





Well, the first two were rejected for "Lack of Concept", while the second two were accepted!� "Lack of Concept"!� Are they kidding?� If they can't understand what the concept is, then they must have a lack of imagination.

And all of the images were taken with the exact same settings on manual mode.

So now buyers only have half of the series that I submitted, which will lower the amount of choices that they have.� What if a buyer is trying to create a design for a first anniversary, first birthday or New Year celebration.� Well, they will be just plain out of luck because Dreamstime reviewers don't have a clue.� Buyers will have to go to one of the other five microstock sites that I submit to in order to get the photos.� So Dreamstime is stabbing themselves in the back.

I emailed support asking them to review the rejections and haven't received one reply in over three weeks.� I guess they don't care about their buyers having choices, nor do they care about breaking up a complete series of images.

Then there are photos of two general admission tickets that I submitted last week:

� �

Once again, the first one was accepted and the second one was rejected for "Poor lighting setup, poor contrast or incorrect exposure".� Well, the images were both scanned, so there was no lighting setup to speak of.� And as you can plainly see, the exposure and contrast are both fine on the Blue Ticket.� As a matter of fact, both images have been accepted at every other agency they have been submitted to.� So once again, I wrote support asking for an explanation and here is what I received:

"The image is to dark and the lower part of the image that contains lights could not be amplified by processing. You can adjust the levels and lit up the image."

What lights on the lower part of the image are they talking about?� Are they even looking at the same image?� I have written back twice asking for a further explanation but haven't received anything yet and doubt that I will.

So once again, Dreamstime has limited the choices for a potential buyer and will send them to another site if they can't find what they are looking for.  Not very good business sense if you ask me.

Dreamstime wants to act like they are one of the Big Two microsites, but they aren't.� Their sales have plumetted lately and their site has been down multiple times in the past few weeks.

And don't get me wrong.� I can take rejections just like the next person, but it is the inconsistency that is getting under my skin.� If I put up a series of images, then I expect them to either all be accepted or all rejected.� It makes no sense to accept half and reject half.

Many of the threads seem to be discussing how slow some of the sites have been, or how few downloads they have received.

I was just wondering at what point do you make a decision to remove your images from a site?

I ask this because if you only make a small amount per month at a site, then it will take you many years to get a payout.  For example, if you only make $1.00/mth, then it will take you about about 5 to 10 years to get your first payout! That assumes that your photos will continue to sell at that rate, and that the company will survive that long.  So if you have to wait that long (or longer) for a payout, do you keep your photos online or remove them?

I think that one of the dangers in this business is to continue to keep images online in hope that the company will take off.  But if they don't take off, and you remove your images (for lack of sales), then any sales that you have made will be forfeited to the company, so you essentially gave those photos away for FREE.

What do you think?

Sorry but I have to disagree with you guys.

Views are basically how the marketing and advertising industries work.  TV uses the Nielson ratings.  Advertisers use similar stats, as well as web pages (such as Google).  Companies want to know how much foot traffic they are getting.  I want to know the same thing.

While sales are the most important, views are second.

For one, I can compare different sites with the # of views.  For example, I have had my images on one site and my most popular image has had about 200 views.  I just uploaded the same image to another site two weeks ago, and it has already had over 200 in two weeks.  So this shows me the traffic for each site.

Second, if an image is getting lots of foot traffic, then it will probably get a lot of sales as well.

Third, if I market myself in some way (by participating on forums, by creating a website with a link, etc), I can track how well that marketing will affect views (and ultimately sales).

Can you see how many views you are getting on your photos in Shutterstock?

Can other people see views as well?

I use Downloader Pro from http://www.breezesys.com/Downloader/index.htm

I think that it is an excellent product, but I will check out the one that you recommended as well.

My external drive is a network drive:

sneaker net 

is your disk a internal or external hard drive?

I have two internals (the main and one backup), and one external (a second backup that is stored in a media fire safe).

From a practical stand point, do you really think you'll be using DVD in 50 years or even 10 years, I seriously doubt it.� Look back tens years and see how backup has changed.

That is one of the reasons that I have switched to hard drives as my backup media.  HDs have been around for a long time, and will last a long time as well.  There is less of a probability that I will have to switch media every few years.  Plus they are very fast.

I have my photos in three places:

- The original is on an internal drive

- The first backup copy is on another internal drive

- The second backup copy is on an external drive which is stored in a media fire safe (which is different from a paper fire safe) in the garage

FYI: I used to do CDs, and then DVDs, but they are too much of a pain and they don't last as long (for archival purposes)

ichiro17:

Most people don't go exclusive unless they have reached a certain level and it becomes financially sensible. �Almost everyone loads their photos on multiple sites.

As far as site traffic, most people have been stating a slowdown across the board for microsites.