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Messages - zorki
Pages: 1 ... 3 4 5 6 7 [8] 9
176
« on: November 09, 2007, 12:44 »
I'm pretty sure this goes on all the time. People are pumping up their own accounts with reviews of their own images from different accounts.
177
« on: November 09, 2007, 12:43 »
178
« on: November 08, 2007, 10:50 »
That must've been when I wasn't uploading that much. Still unbelievable they can't shrink the wait time.
179
« on: November 08, 2007, 10:23 »
OK, I've been around the block on this Microstock thing over the past 3+ years, but I can't remember a time when IS review times were 8-9 days. It's been a constant point of irritation that they have the slowest review times out there. How is it that Dreamstime and Shutterstock can keep review times so low??? I'm just venting...
180
« on: November 05, 2007, 15:54 »
That's what we thought too. After that last big change to the search engine earlier this year we decided to test it out and see what effect the ratings had on Best Match and just what we could uncover about the search engine in general. Keywords help as does, but we had similar images with the same exact keywords, titles and categories and they showed up all over the place. So that led us to believe that there was something else effecting the search engine. Newness has some effect as does the ratings that others give (to a lesser degree now, but still there). What we decided was that there is some type of hidden ratings system that the reviewers have because there simply can't be any other external factor. Way, way back when IS started they used to have an "initial rating" given to the picture. This was a subjective rating the reviewer gave to the image and it was used in ranking the image. It used to show up when the image came on line. For some reason they stopped showing this field, but we came to the conclusion that it's still there simply because there is no other ways for the photographer to manipulate the keywords to get it to climb the best match search.
181
« on: November 05, 2007, 10:00 »
I had an image that used to show at the top of Best Match when you typed in the word "vineyard". I thought it was an OK image, not spectacular, but it was on the first row of best match for about 3-4 months. I sold hundreds of copies of that image in a couple of months and IS changed the search engine back in January and that image got shoved back about 10 pages and has had about 5 downloads in 10 months  It really shows how lazy people are, but it can do wonders for you portfolio. OTOH, a bunch of us over at the Yahoo Microstock group decided to do some testing to see what was driving the search engine and one thing we came up with was a new submission that got a lot of ratings stayed on top of Best Match for quite some time. Hence the ratings gangs that rove IS rating each other images. I really need to get into one of these to boost my earnings...
182
« on: November 03, 2007, 18:21 »
I don't get this... I hear designers talking constantly about not downloading files that have a huge amount downloads, yet the most popular files get hundreds or thousands of downloads!!! Who is downloading?
183
« on: November 02, 2007, 08:53 »
If you look back a few days, I had a group of 37 submitted to SS and only 10 accepted. These were all images accepted at other stock agencies. That's a 70% rejection rate. If Jon is correct that they are cracking down on standards, was there an announcement? What they really need to do is crack down on new submitters and only let in people at are worthy.
I think the days are fast fading where you can get accepted with a P&S camera and a few pictures of your dog and kids...
184
« on: October 31, 2007, 08:32 »
Yes, this whole keywording snafu is a chance for new uploaders to rise to the top of the search engine. When I get a chance in a couple of weeks, I plan on uploading a few dozen images. It's amazing the amount of crap that's on Alamy. I would say 80% of it wouldn't pass muster on a microstock company. I've read elsewhere that several die hard Alamy supporters have tried recently to get into micros and complain on how hard it was!
185
« on: October 30, 2007, 10:29 »
Not me... but that's partly my fault for taking a hiatus for about six months from my stock portfolios. I uploaded dozens of new images in September and sales won't kick in for a few more weeks. I'm hoping for BME in a month or two...
186
« on: October 30, 2007, 10:16 »
I sent them a CD with my initial 10 images about 2 years ago and all were accepted and until they got FTP recently I had completely forgot about them. When I got the email that ftp had been turned on for my account, I see that I had a sale for a profit for me of around $125. Now comes the hard part, uploading more so I can actually hit the $250 minimum payout...
187
« on: October 29, 2007, 21:13 »
After three days, send them some better images. But to be honest, I was rejected with my initial images in 2004 and learned and waited a year (a little long IMHO) and came back at them and was accepted. It takes a little experience to get it nailed down, but look, listen and learn and you'll get it eventually...
188
« on: October 28, 2007, 12:12 »
OK, you do illustration versus just photography. Illustrators can make far more money on fewer images and you do have two images that are more than 2/3 of your downloads...
189
« on: October 28, 2007, 09:23 »
34 images! Either you have an image that is selling like crazy, or that chart while it looks impressive, is misleading.
For me, uploads to IS start off real so, but seem to stay steady over the months. With Shutterstock, things take off right away, and quickly trail off.
190
« on: October 27, 2007, 09:19 »
Slow sales?
Hmmm, I guess not! 
Based on how many uploads? My stats looked really good the first six months, but unless you can keep uploading large quantities of images every month, you will hit a wall at some point
191
« on: October 25, 2007, 17:06 »
I can't tell you how much things have changed in the last three years. It used to be so tough at IS and DT, but they seem to have relaxed a bit and SS (at least based on my last uploads) has now become the tough one! They all seem to go through cycles...
192
« on: October 24, 2007, 16:13 »
For any of you old timers (like over two years ago) IS used to reject anything that was flowers, sunset and puppy dogs because they had so many of them already. But you know what, those are also their top sellers (other than business woman with a laptop and cell phone). IS gave up on the "too many" reason and no embraces them all if they are technically OK. I'm afraid I don't have enough at SS to "feed the beast" to keep my downloads coming in...
193
« on: October 24, 2007, 12:22 »
Wow! I've been spending more time uploading to iStockphoto and Dreamstime for the last year because they make way more money for me than SS. I felt that my portfolio had been neglected on SS, so I decided to spruce it up and uploaded about 30 images that had already been approved at IS or DT. Wow! is all I can say to the inspectors at SS. They have really clamped down on the "Too many of the same subject" and "composition". When I first started out three years ago, they pretty much too everything I through at them and IS and especially DT were the ones that were hard... golly gee  Not sure how much more I'll upload to them, considering that IS and DT both sell double or triple on nearly the same amount of uploads (around 300 each)...
194
« on: October 23, 2007, 13:18 »
You need a lot more photos on iStockphoto before you start to see some real sales. Keep uploading!
195
« on: October 23, 2007, 09:10 »
I agree... that could be considered art work.
I had a very public statue picture from Washington DC rejected on copyright concerns. Yet, I see public statues from all over the world uploaded daily... go figure...
196
« on: October 19, 2007, 09:30 »
This whole voting thing is a joke. On iStock there are gangs of people that vote on each other's photos to boost their standing in the search engine. It won't work because people will abuse the system. We proved that voting on images on istock does boost your rating in the best match search.
197
« on: October 17, 2007, 19:44 »
I would go for the top five, but not much beyond that. It seems to be diminishing returns on some of the lesser microstock sites.
198
« on: October 17, 2007, 09:09 »
I wouldn't abuse it, but in the case of this Zodiac thing it might be worth it. I've accidentally uploaded and had duplicate approved images.
199
« on: October 16, 2007, 09:39 »
I'm not seeing any increase in rejections... I've been submitting there for almost three years.
As for getting 2 out of a bunch of zodiac images rejected, the dirty little secret of IS is that you resubmit in a couple of weeks and they will probably be accepted. Different inspector, different results. I've even had IS inspectors tell me to do this rather than fight it through Scout.
200
« on: October 11, 2007, 19:14 »
In a former life, about three years ago, I was working as a database engineer on very large database system using SQL Server and Oracle and I had about 20 years experience with database systems. Things haven't changed that much in three years and I am flabbergasted by the fact that IS trying to run a computer system as large and complex as they are off of MySQL!!! Oracle, Microsoft and IBM all have systems that could easily handle the load they describe without a hiccup... IS spend a little money (well, OK a lot of money) and upgrade to some real software!!! sorry for the vent... back to your normal programming 
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