Personally 123rf have medium sales but i continue to upload because for me its a rather hassle free process  no categories and reasonable IPTC reader and you can see if any ITPC details have been missed.

reviewing takes about 1-3 days depending on the time of the week, they tend to review all you have uploaded when first image hits the front of the queue (like the SS system), I think last week was a slow week for reviewing.

Maybe try a large batch then if still no joy maybe give up as the sales aren't great.

I actually uploaded a couple of hundred images since last night and the majority were reviewed with positive results, but whether they will ever be found is another matter.

Just sent this to FT support (obviously without the sharply_done comment)

I was looking through my portfolio, I  saw one of my illustrations for edinburgh castle. I checked, it has keywords including Edinburgh but if I click on the Edinburgh keyword

Search results 0 files No content found

If I type Edinburgh into the search box same result.

Another strange search result if I do a search for eiffel tower and click on illustration I see about 6 results. Only one is mine something i uploaded since V2, old illustrations (I must have at least five) don't appear.

If I search for "paris" and click on illustration only three results and my previously found Eiffel tower illustration isn't there even though paris is one of its top seven keywords and it is a conceptual category. An all photos/illustration search for "Paris" gives just 276 files, I scanned through and saw none of my illustrations or photos and not many photos that were obviously Paris.

Last year I used to have at least one photo of the arc de triomphe and notre dame on the first page.

Now in V2 a search for arc de triomphe ordered by relevance gives 2556 results on the first page of 32 photos of only one is of the arch in paris. There are photos of space stations and the earth from outer space higher on the page (by Sharply done how do you do it?)

Incidently "arc de triomphe paris" gives only one result of a statue ?? If I sorted by downloads I did find my photo with 7 downloads on the second page

A search for notre dame (order by relevance) gives lots of illustrations and photos of women (dames) with only three of the Parisian church on the first page of 32 images. putting quotation marks around the notre dame gives no results. However Notre dame cathedral does give more sensible results, but for me three of miy illustrations but none of my photos.

they seem to have an issue with Scotland the islands of arran, mull and skye (c'mon skye is probably the most famous scottish island) gives no results neither does scottish.

Hopefully the search engine can be fixed very soon so sales will return to normal.

After this little exercise I suspected most downloads I have had so far were from buyers who was looking for something else. Other place names give more sensible results.

SS 2,026,054 [2,000,270] (1,971,332) +25,784
FT   1,957,478 [1,958,929] (1,961,129) -1,451
IS  1,858,000 [1,835,818] (1,813,000) +22,182

DT   1,440,406 [1,418,362] (1,300,000+) +22,044
BigStock 1,214,000 [1,203,000] (1,179,000) +11,000
 
123 1,000,000+
StockXpert 569,397++

CanStockPhoto 480,349 [473,899] (469,895) +6,450
FP   312,550 [308,050] (301,275) +4,500

The shrinkage of FT database continues not sure if they are reviewing yet but they are still deleting more than they are accepting.

Of the bottom of the table

PSM = SPM (StockPhotoMedia) for some reason I always do that typo if I don't pay attention. I am not sure if they have a customer base few clicks and even fewer DLs

I frequently have a pic on their front page and have about 3,000 images but the sales are so dire I have stopped uploading. The only nice thing is every three months you can get your hands on your meagre earnings unlike other sites which have high payout limits which you are never going to reach

Also given up CanStockPhoto despite their new FTP function, finally reached $50 a while back and I got stung for the paypal fee. Will probably close that account when i reach the next payout limit.

Still contributing to Feature pics as I get 70%, and they are  linked up to my website and I use their search of my portfolio to find my keywords when I am uploading similar images.

Did anyone get paid by 123rf for last month?

A little table I made a while ago.

Referral buyers + sellers


Big stock claim 35% if its a brand new customer

Though the maximum credit purchase is $300 so you would get $105 as a one off payment but after that nothing nada zilch zero

Apoligies for stating the bleading obvious but in am sure i wasn't the only one trying to use the old log in details

ftp://submit.fotolia.com

User is the 5 digit number as before

password is a combination of your username and password eg fintastique***********

FTP details

I uploaded a few yesterday and keyworded some.

Apparently categories are now optional, the spellchecker isn't great a lot of country names aren't in their dictionary.

Extended licence default setting is off and when you switch it to on the default value is $1 so remember to change. 

The buy the rights options has apparently gone  even if the picture is set to exclusive.

I played briefly with the folder option, pictures can be grouped but they still appear in the full list. Allegedly we will be able to do group changes to the contents of a folder.

I think the search engine is improving slowly Glasgow has been found  but Edinburgh is still AWOL  though some searches for some of my illustrations are just showing a very small selection. 

A record day at FT 89 DLs but

only 4 of those earned me money the other 85 as far as i can tell were of the same free image. I thought I had deleted all my free images but obviously not.

We all usually post our % at the end of the month so if you wait three days. (I made an excel file - see link below to make it easy!)

Personally its a question of eggs is baskets this month with a bad month on three sites as I had not uploaded for three weeks at SS.

Fotolia's downgrade which will probably affect JUly as well

and having my account frozen at another agency for three weeks so if I had my entire portfolio at just one of those agencies it could have been an even worse month.

With istock if you have managed to get your acceptance rate at a very high rate then it is a possibility but if not, there will be a lot of time wasted on taking and processing images that you can't sell.

April 2007 earning thread

There was one for May 2007 but it was mixed up with May 2006

How many have noticed that previously accepted files now have keywords missing, I remember reading about keywords somewhere but I thought it was a problem of newly submitted images. I have 3,500 files at FT, am I expected to fill in the blanks? I have only checked less than 10 but half had blanks

It makes D/A at iStock seem like a walk in the park.

The only bright side with thoses with small portfolios it would be chance to correct keywording mistakes

Yep managed to request a payment an extra prompt appears
"are you an American citizen?"

 if so I guess you should have your social security number handy.

I don't understand credits earned on the 11th and 13th of June still not validated.

In V1 credits earned from affiliates were validated on the day of sale whereas there was a three day wait for your sale credits to be validated

Now my credit sales are validated on the day whereas affilated credits seem to be stuck on orange I think I prefer the new system as I am obviously earning more than 10% of my affilates.

Sales are definately down in V2 just did a quick search to see if where my photos are appearing in searches. I live in Scotland so my portfolio is strongly baised towards cities and scenics of this country and I had quite a niche market for a while. So I was shocked to see not only had various islands ceased to exist in Fotolio database but so had Edinburgh and Glasgow, even a search for Scotland showed only just over 1,000 results and not familar ones.

I sincerely hope the search engine is fixed very soon otherwise when people have used up their old credits they will go to sites where they can easily find photos they want.

I had a quick look at my microstock earnings across the board and unless there is a few miracles this will be the worse month of 2007

123rf seems to be working now both login and FTP.

Did anyone receive a payment for May? Is it still a $50 minimum with paypal or did they change it again?

not be able to upload is annoying but I can understand, not being able to get at those hard earned credits  is very annoying.

One strange thing on my credit list page is that "version 1" credits from 11th to 13th of June have not been validated still orange usually there is a three day wait but the credit from photo that sold this morning (and any other version 2 credits) has been validated.

On the bright side sale numbers seem similar to version 1 sales and a few folks are buying XL images at the new price.

Yep definately something wrong with their FTP managed to transfer one batch on the 14th but since then any batches seem to go from their server into limbo and haven't appeared in pending your edit page.

However sales are still fairly strong

Also I can't log into 123rf to FTP  today