That article qualifies as a big "Duh" for most of us contributors. I'd expect it to be in some grade school publication. The fact that it's on SnapVillage shouldn't be much of a surprise in that the staff is still at that learning level.

Microstock>Complaints>Subject>Emotions>Intense>Distaste>Hatred:

Categories! Followed closely by categories. Next is categories. Then a whole bunch of categories. And finally, ending with categories.

Very slick. I can see a ton of uses for this application.

Paulie...I'm still looking for one use that will get them any money. I have to believe that they're not doing this for us just to see a few images in use. I wouldn't pay much for that ability, although it is fun playing with it. I'd love to know their reasoning.

As to the earlier reference to Google. Big difference, no? TinEye requires you to have an image to begin with. So you have to know the answer to the search before you can get the search. Follow me? Maybe I can't wrap my poor brain around this concept to recognize any money value in it.

The only application I can come up with is that if there were software where a designer could sketch a scene, then TinEye could find a photo to match. Other than that...

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Starving Micro Site Photographers Fund.

I found some of my images there and put them on my web site on the stock photo page.

Interesting technology. What I can't understand is how do they plan to make any money. Certainly not from the micro stock crowd.

Still low sales.New relevance order is totaly inacurate.

I just had a stroke of genius. What if the search engine was totally screwed up? Even worse than it is now. I bet this string would still be divided between those who loved the results and those who hated the results. Wouldn't the randomness of the search lead buyers to fresh ways of looking at things? Sort of like a brainstorming session where there is no right or wrong. Just to get different approaches started. Come to think of it it would also reward images with really bad/odd keywords.

Sorry, just rambling on a lazy 100+ degree Arizona Sunday.

A year or so ago there was a lot of talk about categories being nothing but a huge HUGE waste of our time. I don't recall anyone, seller or buyer, who would miss dumping categories altogether.

So. I hereby move to eliminate all category requirements forthwith from every site I contribute to.

Do I hear a second?

I'll repeat. Their search engine is broken. I believe the keyword database was "broken" during V2 installation. The fact that new image keywords may work better is that keywords attached to older files will not work correctly and they can't fix it. If someone has a better explanation I'd love to hear it. FT is not about to elaborate on this issue.

There are a lot of LOs waiting to drop dead. But I'd bet there are a few that will make it, especially if they can carve out a unique segment. For example, a food specialty (insert your own specialty of choice here) site that features tons of exclusive images easily found at a decent price.

Whatever the weakness of the big sites, that's where the startups can make the most headway.

Right now the newbie site with the greatest potential in terms of contributor services is YayMicro. Now if their marketing starting next month can start to drive traffic. Wait, I think I said the same thing last year about LO. Darn!

I'm at $10 across the board. But the last 4 sales have been .30 each. So I think I'll opt out of the subscription mode if I can. I just opted out of subs at StkXp a few days ago and sales have actually increased.

I got this response from SV after emailing them that I won't be uploading any more until FTP and they get their "time out" problems fixed:

Hi Lou -
 
Thanks for the feedback.
 
We're hard at work on a total redesign of our upload system. Check back on our blog for more updates.
Thanks for your patience.
 
In the meantime, if you'd like - feel free to send your images in to us directly via CD, DVD or hard drive, and we'll take care of the uploading for you.
 
 
Regards,
 
Brian
Team SnapVillage

I once owned a furniture store. I just got in a new import clothes tree. I thought it was butt ugly, but what ., so I slapped a price tag on it.

About ten minutes later a lady shopper looked at it and said it was the ugliest thing she ever saw. Then left the store. So I decided that I'd probably stick it in the discount section the next day just to get rid of the eyesore.

Not five minutes later another lady saw it and bought it.

Turned out it was one of my better sellers. It got better looking every day.

Tweaks? They need major re-versioning of V2. Every since V2 last year searches were damaged beyond repair, in my opinion. I believe that all keywords before V2 were affected. I re-tested searches today on my best sellers, using the top two keywords that are dead-on accurate. My images showed up WAY BACK, page 14 or 15, sorted by Downloads. Yet when using the download sort, but using only one keyword, they came up on page 1.

The short of it is, no, I can't see any improvement, at least with my images. The only explanation I can come up with is that something catastrophic happened to the site shortly after V2 -- or because of V2 -- and they can't fix it. A few months ago someone said that in order to "fix" things with your images you need to re-enter all your keywords and keep the total to under 10 of them or something like that. Fat chance of me doing that.

I don't remember the site addressing this issue. FT is a minor player for me anyway so I put more energy into the other sites.