Hmm...maybe my tactics are wrong, I'm selling all photos for 1 USD there ;-)

Hall�chen Yvonne,

Hallo, is it possible to switch to Fotolia Germany ?

Thank you yvonne

This is currently not implemented, but on my ToDo list:
http://www.microstockgroup.com/index.php?topic=1209.0

I'm currently not sure how to implement all the national derivations of Fotolia in the most efficient way, but I'm investigating it.

All the best,
Michael

Dear friends,

I'm very very happy to announce that Microstock Monitor is available again.

After what happened with the old version (see here: http://www.microstockgroup.com/index.php?topic=1314.0) I was first very reluctant to ever distribute it again. However, in the days following this incident, I have exchanged quite some e-mails with Jon from SS (CEO/Founder) and he took some of his (probably very valuable) time to explain the situation to me. Basically they are going after any program which asks their user's passwords, because such programs are a security risk to them. He told me that if I manage to rewrite my program to not ask user's passwords, then it would be fine with them.

I spend considerable time to think about a solution and today I'm happy to announce it. I've totally rewritten Microstock Monitor and it is now an extension of the popular Firefox browser. That means that you no longer need to provide any user information to Microstock Monitor, as it re-uses the session information of the Firefox browser. Microstock Monitor will no longer get (and no longer needs) any of your user information, which makes it much safer to be used.

Finally thanks to all of you guys who stayed in contact with me even after I had to stop distributing the old Microstock Monitor.

But now, let's get going! Please head over to


read the documentation and install the software to test it!

As you can imagine, I've spent quite some time to rewrite this and I would love to hear about your experiences with the software here. If you enjoy it, please consider signing up with some agencies through the links which I provide in Microstock Monitor and at the website, which might get me a little compensation for the work I did (through referal earnings).

Finally, please spread the word!

Many thanks for all of your support! If you want to get in touch with me, I'm available through:
icq: 71772353 | skype: daneel1409 | msn: [email protected]

I'm looking forward to your feedback.

All the best,
Michael

I also think that you have to send all 50.

Hi!

Shutterstock is indeed awesome - in particular if you are used to IS. I don't experience high rejection rates either, acceptance is usually at 60-90% for me. SS is growing very fast (which will possibly bring its own problems with it).

I don't know how they do it - I'm quite sure that it is at least a semi-automatic process where filtering algorithms do most of the stuff and reviewers only get those photos which passed those filters, in order to review them for "subjective" quality then - such as composition. This would mean that human reviewers only see get 20-50% of the actually submitted photos. That's just speculation though.

What do you mean by a waiting list?

All the best,
Michael

Quote from: sim on March 13, 2007, 17:14

By the way grp_photo, with sales like that you probably have a kick ass portfolio that does well everywhere! 

Thanks but i never made over 300,- a month at Fotolia or Dreamstime so i'm clearly doing better at StockXpert.
Now i started to delete my Portfolios at this places.
Regarding Microstock I will concentrate on StockXpert,SS,Featurepics and 123rf because the have the easiest submission process.

Check out LuckyOliver then. Great bunch of guys and their submission process is super easy (except for model releases, but they told me that they are working on that). They are also performing better than 123RF and Featurepics for me.

All the best,
Michael

Hi!

Featurepics.

All the best,
Michael

Hi all,

which lossless compression method do you use to archive your photos? Adobe Raw?

Thanks,
Michael

Hi Pixart,

which agencies does this MR work with?

Thanks,
Michael

They look very good.

My guess is that the last one will sell best.

I dont do people shots but my guess is you need to think about what people want and do photos to cater for that.  Otherwise all you have is very high quality family portraits.  Just looked again and the first might sell well too.

Many thanks! You are completely right, those were just "test shoots" which came out so well that I simply submitted them ... and they got approved.

However, I think the second and the third might sell as well. A designer can use these to draw attention to a specific element of his design - e.g., a new product. The girl would then be looking at this product.

I've quite curious how they will perform.

I'm only uploading these at SS and DT at the moment. Some of the other agencies have a rather complicated system of handling model releases :-(.

All the best,
Michael

StockXpert was doing well for me but my sales have deteriorated after they changed the default search to most popular.  Hope they fix this soon, as there isn't much motivation to upload new photos when they are not being viewed.

I think this is why StockXpert performs much worse than all of the "up and coming" agencies which I'm with. I think I joined StockXpert at the time when they changed their search order.

Frankly, StockXpert is quite a puzzle for me. The few photos (about 130) which made it through their undeterministic (and unpersonal) review process are not selling at all. The illustrations which I have there have been mostly accepted but are not selling either. All that stuff (in particular the photos) do well at the other agencies (SS, FT, DT, ...) which have much higher acceptance rates as well.

It feels like they are trying to be like IStock (very strict acceptance process) without either having the customer or photographer base to do it.

Oh well ...

All the best,
Michael

Hi all!

Do you use the lens hood for isolations? Is it useful to enhance the contrast / correct exposure of the object while still keeping your background white?

Thanks,
Michael

why don't you put your camera on manual, and then take a few test shots to figure out what to set the lighting at.

that way it won't matter what get's metered the lighting will always be correct.

I do always use full manual. But still I have to chose the metering method. I think I know what you mean though, I was thinking that metering does more than just adjusting the exposure indicator*1. If it does only that, then it probably really makes no difference in full manual.

All the best,
Michael

*1: I thought that it might somehow help in getting the object correctly exposed while still making the background white. With my current setup I always have to slightly overexpose the object to make the background white. I guess I need stronger lights?