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Messages - Sedge

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76
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Istock sales since price changes
« on: July 09, 2013, 13:48 »
As an independent I've seen my downloads stay at about the same level.  Perhaps there's been a slight increase, but it's still too early in the month to confirm any significant pattern.  Money is definitely down though, sorry to say.  :'(

77
Adobe Stock / Re: My images always refused by fotolia
« on: July 04, 2013, 13:47 »
Fotolia has been one the most frustrating agencies to deal with re: rejections for a lot of people, myself included.  Just look at the Fotolia section of this website and you will find many threads dealing with this topic.  My acceptance rate at the agencies I submit to ranges from 80 to 99%.  My acceptance rate at Fotolia was about 40% (I no longer submit to them).  I've found that they're simply not interested in certain types of imagery, which unfortunately includes mine.  If I change my style or subject matter sometime in the future, I may try uploading to them again, but for now they're in stasis.

Here's a good example of my frustration:  one of my best-selling abstract backgrounds on SS has been downloaded close to 1800 times in less than 3 years.  The same image on iStock has about 300 downloads to date.  Fotolia rejected it 3 times, for various reasons I can't recall.  My last attempt included an explanatory letter to Fotolia's "moderation team," to no avail.  I just couldn't get it through their thick skulls that this image had a reasonable chance of being successful on Fotolia, if only they'd give it a chance.  It was a maddening situation, but as I have no control over their acceptance policy I came to realize it was time to move on and concentrate on other venues. 

As others have said, don't take it personally.  But also don't put much faith or lose sleep in regards to their rejection reasoning, especially if they're the only agency that's rejecting images that get accepted everywhere else. 

78
Alamy.com / Re: Alamy strange keywording requirements
« on: June 18, 2013, 18:27 »
For you Alamy experts: what's the best way to keyword a phrase?  Take for example a travel photo of Santa Barbara.  If you enter the city name as two separate words, I imagine someone searching just for "Santa" wouldn't appreciate having to wade through photos of the city.  Do you use quotation marks for keyword phrases on Alamy? 

79
Shutterstock.com / Re: Shutterstock down - again ?!?
« on: June 10, 2013, 16:30 »
The site's working fine for me, but so far my sales are about 50 percent lower than normal for a typical Monday.  Very frustrating...

80
Off Topic / Re: Elite collection of photographs
« on: May 28, 2013, 14:15 »

"Come on, people, she just showed what she thought was a great collection, it is her personal choice, your choice may differ understandably. She is not an agency and takes no commission."


I believe "she" is actually a "he."

81
Shutterstock.com / Re: When is an image a bestseller?
« on: May 05, 2013, 23:08 »
Intriguing; thanks for the link.

82
Shutterstock.com / Re: When is an image a bestseller?
« on: May 05, 2013, 23:00 »
That sounds like a plausible average. How did you find that information or figure it out?

83
Shutterstock.com / Re: When is an image a bestseller?
« on: May 05, 2013, 22:52 »
The last few posts made me curious about the weekly download stats for my best-selling image when it made it onto Shutterstock's list of the "Top 50 Images this Week."  So I did a little research with some very surprising results.  On May 6, 2011 (a Friday), my best-selling image make it to the 10th position on the list.  This was back when you could filter the list, choosing either photographs or illustrations (wish SS still had that option).  My image was originally uploaded and accepted on January 15, 2011. 

I went back and checked my download stats for the previous week, 4/25/11 to 5/1/11.  Surprisingly, my image hadn't been downloaded nearly as much as I'd expected, with the total for that week at only 50 downloads.  I checked other weekly date ranges before and after May 6th with little statistical variation.  A bit of a surprise, wouldn't you agree?  :o

Obviously, it's much more difficult to get an image onto Shutterstock's Top 50 Image list today, especially now that the two lists have been consolidated.  My image is selling at least at the same rate as two years ago, with no sign of it getting back onto the list.  So if I had to guess, I'd say it would take 15 to 30 downloads a day to get on that Top 50 list, or perhaps more as has been suggested in other posts.  Right now I'm just happy that my image continues to sell on a daily basis.



84
Shutterstock.com / Re: When is an image a bestseller?
« on: May 03, 2013, 18:13 »
My two best sellers have sold for a combined total of 65 downloads on SS since Monday.  Their sales were a little slower than usual over the past five days, but overall sales on SS have been good this week.  Both of these images have been on Shutterstock's "Top-Selling Images of the Week" list back when they had separate categories for Photographs and Illustrations.  Neither image has been on the list since the merger. :-[

Also, both images have had very good to excellent sales on other sites, except Fotolia.  Yep, good 'ole Fotolia rejected both of them! :P

85
Pixmac / Re: Pixmac merges with Pond5
« on: April 05, 2013, 18:44 »
Thanks Zager, I'll do as you suggested.

86
Pixmac / Re: Pixmac merges with Pond5
« on: April 03, 2013, 20:37 »
I'm liking this merger news, but reading through this thread has given me a slight headache.  I've never registered with either Pond 5 or Pixmac, but I have portfolios on both DP and 123rf  (according to an older thread, Pond 5 was, maybe still is, a partner with 123rf).  Anyway, how can I find out if I have any images on Pond 5 or Pixmac?  I did some searches for both my user name as well as some keyword searches for my images, but came up with nothing.  Any suggestions, or should I e-mail them directly? 

87
Nikon / Re: Upgrading Nikon D200
« on: March 27, 2013, 01:33 »
Check out this thread over at dpreview:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/post/51125005

Download the model portraits from both cameras and look at them in Photoshop at 100 percent.  Some amazing quality from both camera bodies (d7100 vs d800).

88
General Stock Discussion / Re: Who's sending 1099's this year?
« on: February 09, 2013, 19:32 »
The 1099's I've received so far are pretty much in line with what's been mentioned.  Interesting to note that I've never gotten one from iStock.  Is that because they're located in Canada?  I didn't see iStock mentioned in any of the earlier posts.

89
One of the most important things to consider is how much actual printing you expect to do.  I've owned 6 Epson printers starting with the 1270 to the 7600, and am currently printing with a 13" 1400.  They all have their good (& bad) features, but on the whole I would recommend either Epson or Canon, although I only have experience with Epson.  The 7600 large format printer worked great, but I found I wasn't making enough large prints to really justify it.  Also, feeding small cut sheets of paper into a 24" or larger printer, while not especially difficult, can be a little tricky at times in that the larger printers are really designed for roll media.  If you're not sure, I'd suggest a 17" printer; it's a very versatile format that will allow you to take advantage of the larger sized ink cartridges while giving you a variety of roll-paper and cut-sheet paper options (depending on the model of course).  The smaller 13" printers are very good as well, but you don't get the ink savings and most of them won't accept roll paper. You CAN print nice panoramas using roll paper on a 13" printer, but in most cases you'll have to cut the paper down.  And most rolls of inkjet paper start at 17 inches; there simply aren't many manufacturers that offer it in the 13" size.

There was an earlier post about the problem of handling large format prints, and this is most definitely true.  I've printed 24 inch by 4 foot panos that are a bit of a nightmare to handle; they tend to kink very easily so you'll need a lot of free table size to view, handle and package large prints.  One thing to consider is canvas, which is very hot right now at outdoor art shows.  Canvas has its pluses and minuses, but it'll save you a lot in terms of framing costs and weight if you're shipping. 

If you decide to go with a continuous ink supply, check out http://www.conecolor.com/.  Definitely the best third party inks out there.  And finally, someone earlier mentioned that you should convert your files to CMYK before printing.  Don't do that; the software in any given printer's driver does the conversion for you on the fly.  Work in Adobe RGB or any other wide-gamut color space with a calibrated monitor, and your prints will look great.

Hope that helps...












90
Sandralise posted in a similar thread about FAA that she does quite well there, with regular payouts.  She has some outstanding work.

91
General Stock Discussion / Re: December 2012 Stats Thread
« on: January 01, 2013, 20:53 »
December was my worst month of the year, but not by too much so I'm not panicking just yet.  iStock was terrible; my worst month in over 5 years and I'm estimating that my PP sales will outperform my regular iStock sales for the first time.  How depressing is that! 123 RF and DT were good.  Fotolia sales were poor, but not unexpected as I have a small portfolio there (they reject most of my background images).  SS was excellent as usual.  Despite the slight downturn, 2012 was my best year in MS (going into my 7th year).

Other things to keep in mind about this December: There were 10 weekend days in the month, which I'm told doesn't happen very often.  Also, the past two years both Christmas and New Years were on a weekend day.  I think both holidays being on a Tuesday this year was a detriment to sales as it provided more opportunities for folks to take more time off from work.  Just my theory, but I think it makes sense.

92
New Sites - General / Re: Pocketstock RIP?
« on: December 28, 2012, 22:54 »
They're back up in California 8)  Still at $0.00; I'm so crushed ;)

93
New Sites - General / Re: Pocketstock RIP?
« on: December 27, 2012, 15:09 »
Not working for me either in California.  Tried both FF and Safari with the same "server/page not found" error message.  Joined at the end of August with no sales to date, so no sleep lost over this agency's possible demise.

94
DepositPhotos / Re: First Sales?
« on: December 11, 2012, 21:47 »
I've been on DP for about a week and have had 19 sales.  I'd say stick with it; they seem like a good agency.

95
General Stock Discussion / Re: Fotolia Rejections
« on: July 09, 2012, 23:28 »
A lot has to do with what you're submitting.  I do mostly backgrounds and textures, and generally have 80% to 90% acceptance rate at all the micros except FT.  My acceptance rate at FT is terrible, something like 30%.  I've had two images make it into the top 50 images of the week at SS and yup, you guessed it, both rejected by FT.  They've rejected many of my images that have turned out to be best sellers at the other agencies.  But there's nothing I can do about it; they just don't like my style or subject matter so I rarely submit to them anymore. 

96
Adobe Stock / Re: How fast you can fall?
« on: June 15, 2012, 23:53 »
Yeah, I've seen a big reduction in sales so far this month as well.  Made about $300 in May and so far I'm on pace to do about half of that.  I've got a small portfolio there of about 200 images.  I mostly specialize in texture backgrounds and Fotolia rejects just about all of them, even though I've got one there that's sold over 2000 times.  Go figure, they just don't like my stuff whereas the other agencies accept just about all of it.  I've even had two images rejected by Fotolia that have been in the top 50 images of the week at SS.  So yeah, they drive me crazy sometimes, but you've just got to move on and spread your work around (hopefully without diluting it too much).

97
Shutterstock.com / Re: Recent uploads disappeared
« on: May 11, 2012, 15:32 »
After uploading a new file, is anyone getting this type of message "file not accepted by our system, please upload again, file may be corrupted."  This has happened to me 3 times with the same file, which I know is fine (no problems uploading it elsewhere).  I use the http uploader (I only submit a few images at a time).  Very frustrating.

98
General Stock Discussion / Re: DT Nightmare
« on: May 03, 2012, 15:11 »
My sales last week were terrible; perhaps the worst in years since I initially signed up.  But today it finally recovered with $15 so far today (1:00 in California).  It'll be really interesting to see how is all shakes out by the end of the month.  Also, lately I've experienced an unusually high number of rejections (too many similars in my portfolio).

99
General Stock Discussion / Re: DT Nightmare
« on: April 30, 2012, 13:23 »
I was having a fairly good month until late last week, then only two downloads since April 25th including today.  This is highly unusual and quite disturbing.  DT has never been a huge performer for me, but I could always count on at least two downloads a day.  I average about 100 downloads a month with a little over 500 images.  Summer slowdown starting early?

???

100
Shutterstock.com / Re: Shutterstock stats still weird...?
« on: April 23, 2012, 14:32 »
My stats are OK but for about 30 minutes today (around noon in California) I couldn't log in.  Tried multiple browsers and cleared caches to no avail. Finally was able to log in at 12:30.  More than a bit concerned for about a half hour.

 ???

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