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Messages - stockmarketer
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751
« on: June 20, 2011, 12:26 »
I have to agree with JasV - quoted here by Vlad the Impaler.
Quality is very important.
So is variety, choice.
And a relevant search engine.
And in some cases, prices.
This is why Shutterstock, not IStock, is the market leader.
Because of quality, diversity and the search engine.
Please note - quality comes first.
Let's make this clear: files at Shutterstock are as good, or, at times, a lot better than what IStock has on offer. And there's a lot more of them.
The idea that Shutterstock accepts 'the worst' and it's suitable for 'amateur producers of content chances' is an insult to Shutterstock submitters, and absolutely not true.
It's a myth (might have been true a long time ago) that needs to be put to rest, once and for all.
I would strongly advise JasV (whoever he is), to perform a few searches, on any subject, at IS and Shutterstock. There's a very good chance that the 'Audi' file he's so fond of, will be found on Shutterstock, rather than IS.
Faster and at a reasonable price.
There are many reasons why buyers leave IStock and move to Shutterstock. The quality of the collection plays a very important role. And it's there, on Shutterstock, undeniable.
I'm afraid I disagree on most if not all these points. When I started submitting, I was very unsure of the quality of my work, but went ahead and submitted to all the sites. All except one, iStock, accepted my stuff right out of the gate, and it started selling very well. Even with great sales at all the sites, I continued to try to submit to iStock and was repeatedly turned down due to the quality of my work. And frankly, in many of those rejections, I believe they were justified. Still, however, the work continued to sell well on the other sites, and I finally got in to iStock, though they accept a minority of my submissions while Shutterstock takes 100%. It's clear to me that the quality threshold of iStock is set higher than all the others. Don't get me wrong, I love Shutterstock. It's my best earner. And I feel I do good work, but not so much on a technical level, but rather I think I'm figuring out some unique needs that other contributors aren't meeting. So from my perspective, this is what it takes for a collection of images to meet a user's needs: - Uniqueness (this could be why iStock is starting to flounder... it is keeping out a lot of images that buyers actually want, so they go elsewhere where the selection is wider) - Best communicates the intended message (this is why so many contributors are reporting falling sales... their images "say" nothing unique. You will continue to sink as the number of images just like yours increases, if you do nothing to set yourself apart in some way... make your images jump out and catch a buyer's attention by making it tell a story and scream a message. This will trump technical quality every time.) - Technical quality (not as important as you think... see above.) - Price (if a buyer finds the perfect image, he/she won't care if it's $1 or $10.)
752
« on: June 16, 2011, 09:50 »
For a few months earlier this year, FT had actually surged past SS to be my #1 earner.
It's now slipped back to #2 but doing very well. I think I must have benefited from the recent changes.
For the record, my earners rank this way: SS, FT, DT, IS, CanStockPhoto, BigStock, 123 (and the rest).
753
« on: June 16, 2011, 09:14 »
Is anyone selling enough at Stockfresh to be up in arms over this?
For me, Stockfresh is at the very bottom of the barrel in terms of my sales, and I don't actively upload there anymore. For instance, my June total there (as of June 16) is $4.50 in sales at Stockfresh, while the other small players have done pretty well: Veer - $49.70, GL - $40.56, CanStockPhoto - $251.32, etc.
Let's focus on the sites that matter. Stockfresh appears dead in the water.
754
« on: June 08, 2011, 05:30 »
Not sure why it is, by my experience with FT is exactly the opposite. My sales at FT have doubled in the past year. Doing in the $60 range (around 100 downloads) most weekdays now. I'm gold and non-exclusive. Been at it for 3 years. FT is currently my #2 site and gives SS a run for its money every month now. Very strange that I seem to be the only one here seeing increases at FT.
755
« on: June 01, 2011, 06:46 »
Pretty fantastic month. Up about 8% from April, and about 90% up from May 2010. Going on three years in microstock. I know in my gut the wall is supposed to be coming, but so far, it's not even in sight. My RPI, measured on a daily and monthly basis, continues to grow with no signs of slowing down. (As your port ages, that's not supposed to happen.)
756
« on: May 24, 2011, 10:52 »
I will repeat myself they want newbies! they want a picture of everything from every single contributor no matter its quality.. so Dreamstime is an agency always looking for new contributors and helping them to join 
This doesn't make sense. It's not in anyone's interest to let in a lot of garbage. If a newbie is submitting low quality stuff, Dreamstime should and will reject it. And I don't take comfort in saying "Oh well, Dreamstime isn't worth the time" if they reject my submissions. They make me quite a bit of money. So it is incredibly frustrating when they reject something of mine... I'm getting hit with the "too many similar submissions" rejection a lot lately, and in most cases I think these are crazy rejections. It's true that there seems to be an inconsistency among reviewers... but reviewing is so subjective... it's human nature that we can't expect everyone to work with the same mind. To me, the problem is the literal-mindedness of rejecting images as "similar." Dreamstime is doing contributors, customers and itself a big disservice by clinging to a foolish definition of what makes a "similar" image.
757
« on: May 02, 2011, 13:22 »
Even given the bank holiday in the UK today, today's sales have been like a bad weekend day and I am once again seriously thinking about whether it makes any sense to wait longer for IS to pull out of its nose dive.
Well, I guess this explains it. Today has been AWFUL. IS looks like it will be about 75% down from last Monday, which was the Monday after Easter, likely an extended weekend for many people. So, you're definitely not alone in thinking IS is tanking. My April vs. March numbers were disappointing, but the past week or two have been especially BRUTAL.
758
« on: May 02, 2011, 06:36 »
I am non-exclusive, started in mid 2008, and have nearly 2,000 images on most sites.
My April was pretty much as I expected based on trends of the past few years. March hits a high point, but April can't keep the pace due to Easter and Spring Break.
March was my BME, and April fell 15% from March. But this April beat April 2010 by 85%. The thing I care most about is that I'm still above my growth goal line that I plotted 3 years ago, driven by my daily RPI which has slowly grown (currently at 12.5 cents a day versus about 10 cents when I started).
As for specific sites, they performed for me in this order...
1. SS (down just a few percent from March, very encouraging)
2. FT (down about 20% from March, when it was my top earner)
3. IS (down about 30% from March)
4. DT (down about 25% from March)
And "the others" held extremely well from March, performing in this order...
5. CanStockPhoto
6. BigStock
7. 123
8. DP
9. GL
I no longer submit to the "bottom of the barrel" sites, but I still track them, as pathetic as the sales are:
10. Veer
11. Fresh
12. Crestock
759
« on: April 25, 2011, 06:44 »
Here's the change I've seen...
Used to be that SS accepted 100% of my stuff, and IS accepted about 60%
Now, SS is at about 99%, and IS about 20%
So for me, SS is virtually unchanged and IS is liking me less and less despite my stuff selling pretty well there. I think there's a disconnect between what customers want and what the reviewers feel they deserve.
760
« on: April 23, 2011, 19:45 »
Looks to me like it's sorted with two criteria: first by rounded sales by the thousands, then by number of approved uploads in the past 30 days. So if you had 9901 downloads but uploaded (and somehow convinced the reviewers to accept!) 100 files in the past thirty days, you'd rank well above someone with 9999 downloads but has had 0 approved uploads. Seems like a better methodology than alphabetically within the group of contributors within that range of 1,000 downloads. Something seems to have changed again with the way istockcharts allocate positions. For a while, it was alphabetical order within your fuzzy total, i.e. if your name was Aardvark and you had 9901 dls, you'd come well above Zumba who had 9999.
Now that has changed totally. I just rolled over 10,000 on Thursday, which means I must be around 'real' position 1994. But I'm actually showing at 1858. I can't see how it's worked out, but it's not 'actual' downloads and it's not alphabtical within fuzzy totals. It also seems not to be dl/ul ratio or dl per time on site, both of which would be useful differentiators within the fuzzy total.
Ironically for a long time when there was an 'absolute' total, I was position 1860.
I have counted my 'real' position as being c1994, so have voted for lower position/lower dls.
Strange. Would be nice to know what methodology they are using now. That might explain some of my growth too, but unless I know what changed I can't be sure.
761
« on: April 23, 2011, 19:35 »
I moved up, but sales are down. I'm in the top 5% or so, but lately IS has been rejecting almost everything I send. I now submit a small fraction of what I produce, guessing as to which shots have the best shot at approval, but even doing this, only about 20% of my "best" stuff is passing the test... these are shots quite similar to ones that have been approved in the past and are selling quite well, relatively speaking. Very frustrating.
762
« on: April 15, 2011, 22:59 »
Anybody take the Home Office Deduction?
I hear that's a flag that can trigger an audit... if you try to deduct too much, you could be calling unwanted attention to yourself. You'd have to be realistic about how much of the time spent in the office is spent on your business, and be conservative about utilities -- electric, internet, etc. So you'd probably have to scale it down to a pretty small number, and when you get down that low, you have to ask if it's worth it... how badly do you want to risk an audit? My dad used to do taxes for H&R Block, and one of my best friends is a CPA, and they both talked me out of the home office deduction.
763
« on: April 15, 2011, 19:10 »
Cool. Those are the exact ones I got. So do you simply add the rest up and enter it as Miscellaneous or something?
764
« on: April 15, 2011, 18:46 »
I would try the "add them up" approach, but if they actually did send 1099s and I just didn't get them because of my move, that could raise a flag at the IRS and get me audited. I want to do the best I can to break out all the ones that paid me enough to trigger a 1099. I'm scouring the Intertubes, but can't find the EINs anywhere.
765
« on: April 15, 2011, 18:32 »
Hi gang,
I have to write some big checks to the IRS and my state this year, so I've held off until I really had to do it.
Now that I'm trying to wrap it all up, I realize that I'm missing some info...
I moved late in 2010, and I might not have changed my address at all the microstock sites to get them to send the 1099s to my new address. I know what I made in 2010, so I am fine in filling in the amounts, but I think I need an EIN (Employer Identification Number) for each of the agencies. I did get my 1099s for some of them, but I'm missing a bunch...
Anyone know the EINs for:
iStock
CanStockPhoto
123RF
HAAP/StockXpert/Thinkstock
Regarding iStock... I read somewhere that they don't send 1099s. Is that correct?
766
« on: April 15, 2011, 12:56 »
Afraid I'm going to be a lone dissenting voice on Fotolia again. I just had my BDE yesterday, and overall sales have been on a pretty quick climb for the past several months. Steadily uploading everyday... no stopping here.
767
« on: April 01, 2011, 11:54 »
March was my BME by a long shot, up over my previous BME (this past Feb) by 20%.
I must be * the trend at Fotolia somehow, since it has become my #1 earner, followed by SS, IS, DT and the rest.
768
« on: March 31, 2011, 11:25 »
I just got the invite this morning and immediately signed on. It won't matter for my existing ports... I think my ports on SS and BigStock are exact mirrors... but the "just upload to one site" promise was what hooked me. Should save me about 5 minutes each night... That's an extra half hour of free time each week. To me, that's better than money.
769
« on: March 30, 2011, 13:51 »
2,5 is a typical price for XL Standard at Fotolia, so I'm afraid that must've been a mistake.
Wait, don't we get 2.48 for an XL Standard? So far today I've seen a bunch of Subscription XL commissions for .38, and also a bunch of Subscription XXLs, also for .38.
770
« on: March 25, 2011, 16:17 »
I can't find that image on my Shutterstock portfolio. hmmmm.
The file 'A speedometer on the Earth' is a popular 3d file included with one the major 3D packages available for download through torrents. In other words for those use the cracked version of 3DS or C4D there are a bunch of 3D scenes included.... usually a centurion underground release.
Admittedly I don't know much about 3D, but assuming this is true, is it allowable to submit sample images that came with the (cracked!) software as your own?
772
« on: March 25, 2011, 12:40 »
Your flippa listing said you made $500 a month selling DVDs on Ebay. Here you're telling us $5,000. Which is it?
775
« on: March 15, 2011, 15:44 »
Whenever I see anyone extolling the possibilities of an infinitely growing RPI, it's a dead giveaway that they are either not a high volume or successful contributor, haven't been at it very long, or are just talking out their ass. Or all of the above. 
RE: Infinite growth... I don't expect my RPI to grow infinitely. Started at 10 cents daily RPI and now at 14.5 cents three years later. I don't expect that will grow at that rate forever, but I've managed to grow it while weathering all the commission cuts that Lisa mentions. Flat is a goal, anything above it is gravy. Will I see the decrease in the coming years? I'm still a nube compared to Lisa, so I'll defer to her experience on that. Lisa is a contributor I admire and respect. She's hugely successful and clearly knows this industry, so I'll take my licking. I probably deserved it.
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