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Messages - LouisDavilla

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1
Selling Stock Direct / Re: Selling directly: How is it going?
« on: December 05, 2011, 09:50 »
My site has been up for about 4 months now. Revenue each month isn't steady yet, but at least I reached my break even point last month thanks to several extended license purchases. Haven't been doing anything much to boost the site's traffic, just occasional tweets and the sort because my design studio kept me busy like hell. Besides, I'm not sure how to actually 'boost' the traffic, because Ktool's engine is not that SEO-plugin friendly.

Would loooove to see if there's any WordPress template that can deal with stock image selling, including bulk image transfer. But then again I really don't have the energy nor will to redo the site at the moment.

2
Selling Stock Direct / Re: Ktools Photostore
« on: August 17, 2011, 05:25 »
Nice work - site looks great!

You customized the 3.9 theme, correct? This is a totally different process than every previous version. At v3.9 ktools started using the smarty template system rather than the previous tables, etc, setup. So at least you are working in a more modern template system.

Thanks! Yes, it's 3.9 and the theme is called V4 if I'm not mistaken.

Looking good Louis.

The only thing I would change is replace the word "SUBSCRIBE" with "REGISTER" in your top menu.  If you want to do it, you can by going into English.php but only change the word "subscribe" that's in the quotation marks.

The other thing I'd do is change:

Regular RF Licence - $10        to         Regular RF Licence: $10

Just so it doesn't look like negative 10 dollars.

Your vectors are great by the way.

Thanks a bunch for the input, I'll revise them as soon as I have the time.  ;)

It looks great. I was about to comment on how astonished I was that someone that was a noob in html/css managed to customize that well, considering the site is built in php. Until I got to the bolded sentence above.

Since you're not aiming for vector sales, maybe you are aiming for customization work from people who are setting up their own stores? Looks like that's what you and your team are actually in business for...to build web templates?

Well I still am a noob in HTML/CSS. You wouldn't believe if I told you I bought a bunch of books about HTML and CSS just to be able to start customizing the site. My graphic design studio specializes in branding, logo creation, illustration, print and web design. However, when it comes to web design, we don't do any of the coding. We usually finalize the design in layered PSD format and let the web developers take it from there. ;)  And NO, I'm NOT accepting any customization work for anybody. I need to rest my brain after this one... programming is not for me, hehe.

3
Selling Stock Direct / Re: Ktools Photostore
« on: August 17, 2011, 00:19 »
How's everyone doing? Just thought I'd drop by to let you guys know that I have joined the bandwagon recently. I struggled quite a bit setting up my PhotoStore site, and after 2 whole weeks of sleepless nights... I finally got my site up and running. Yay!  :D

The hardest part was the customization of the site, since their original themes were all...er...notsuitableformytasteatall. And being a noob in HTML/CSS and the sort, it was a really painful process for me. Support was okay, but you can only ask support for technical stuff and not the customizing part in particular. You have to ask on their forum for this, and their forum is pretty much dead.

It's actually a premium stock vector site, exclusively authored by me and my team at Wizmaya Design Studio. Most of the items there are our unused graphic stuff, experimental items etc. I'm not aiming for sales at the moment. The site is just there for the sake of it, and I know I'll be needing it sooner or later.

Anyway, feel free to browse the site at www.vectoriffic.com. I would really appreciate any feedback / bug reports / critics from you.


Cheers!

4
Weird..., this is happening to me too. I couldn't seem to access the upload anything since 3 days ago. It says "Sorry to inform that uploads will be temporarily stopped for 1 hour to facilitate a scheduled maintenance of our storage system."

I can upload via FTP, but couldn't access the upload page at all. Contacted support and still waiting an answer.

they are down since yesterday

Ah ok..., just thought that it was my account as it's been 3 days of uploading failure for me. (And I didn't see any official announcement from 123RF regarding this matter except for that short note when the upload fails). Cheers for clearing that up, I guess I should just sit tight and wait patiently. ;)

5
Weird..., this is happening to me too. I couldn't seem to access the upload anything since 3 days ago. It says "Sorry to inform that uploads will be temporarily stopped for 1 hour to facilitate a scheduled maintenance of our storage system."

I can upload via FTP, but couldn't access the upload page at all. Contacted support and still waiting an answer.

6
iStockPhoto.com / Re: iStock royalty cut goes live
« on: January 11, 2011, 21:54 »
Newb question, guys. It says 15% illustration royalty on my stats page, but how come I received $3 for a 10-credits vector image today? Last time I checked, I only got like $2.4 for the same image.  ???

7
it's not strange you were a little confused, I have never heard of any agency (before iStock) that required you to be totally exclusive to them for absolutey all RF content.  

Generally with exclusive contracts, the exclusivity refers to the images submitted.  Dreamstime and Fotolia both have these options... so you can upload a single exclusive image to those sites.  Macro (traditional) agencies also work this way and some require it, but it is always on a per image basis.. not EVERYTHING you produce.  The iStock exclusive deal is really very restrictive.  That said, some people (photographers mostly perhaps??) are doing very well as exclusive.

I agree with what has been said though.  Try out a few agencies - perhaps the top 6-10 and see how your earnings are and then consider exclusivity from there.

Yes, I was really hoping that it was more about the images, because I thought it was funny to 'own' a contributor. It just doesn't make any sense to me. If that really is the case, all the exclusive contributors should at least receive a monthly 'salary' or some sort of periodic reward/compensation for their constant image uploads, not just some short image-review time (with broken search-indexing engine anyways) and free biz card, lol.

Well here's hoping for a change of rules in the future. (Wishful thinking, I know). But there has been some discussion about IS future planning for vectors on their forums, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed.  ;)

And thanks for the kind comments, Leaf. Most of my first images that I submit to the sites had been collecting dust in my HD, so I'm glad that they are at least collecting real coins now. Love your site, it has been a great resource for me as a newbie microstocker. Cheers!

8
Yikes, exclusivity trap..., and I was heading right to it! Better stay away from that path then. Thanks for those links, Cclapper. For now I think I'll follow your advice: keep submitting to a few agencies and see how it goes next year.

9
Thanks for the confirmation (and the kind compliments) guys, I really appreciate it! I guess I will have to reconsider then. I surely don't want a single exclusivity decision ruin my future work planning.

I do know from the forum that IS is really being unbelievably harsh to its contributors recently, but since I'm pretty new in all this, it's still hard for me to see the bigger picture here (long term benefit vs loss etc). *Edit: Thanks for the links Lisafx, will definitely check those threads thoroughly!

PS: seen plenty of your works around, Helix. You do awesome works! Nice website too, exactly what I'm planning to do in the near future  ;)

10
Hello all,

I'm pretty new in this microstock world (joined the "Big 4" in November 2010), and have been an occasional lurker here in this forum. This site has helped me a lot by providing plenty of useful information about the microstock business, so thank you!  :D

I'm not a photographer, and I only sell my vector illustrations. I guess that makes me a 'vector contributor', right? Anyway, so far things have been going quite well for me, and I really enjoy the fact that I can now fun-doodling for some money. SS is my biggest earner at the moment, but I'm starting to think about aiming to be an exclusive contributor to IS. Now my question is... can you be an exclusive contributor to IS while still submitting totally different illustrations to the other sites? For example, I will create more complex and detailed illustrations just to submit to IS but at the same time I will still submit some different, more 'effortless' cartoons to the other sites. Is that allowed?

I also have this idea of selling my exclusive works on my website in the future. Of course I will be selling illustrations that have never been submitted to any of the microstock agencies, but I'm a bit concerned about the term 'exclusive contributor' in IS: are the images that really matter, or the contributor in person?

I would really appreciate any input or infos. Thank you in advance!

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