MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => Shutterstock.com => Topic started by: hatman12 on March 16, 2007, 03:51
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I know I have only been uploading to SS for a week or so. But so far the speed of the thing is surprising me. I heard so many stories about huge rejection rates etc etc. Yet they are accepting almost all of my images and approving within hours. This surprises me - its not what I expected. Huge numbers of downloads too. How can they accept so many images so quickly?
It took me six weeks to get 60 images up at IS. At SS I've got 80 in six or seven days.
Does SS publish a waiting list etc like some of the other agencies do?
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Hi!
Shutterstock is indeed awesome - in particular if you are used to IS. I don't experience high rejection rates either, acceptance is usually at 60-90% for me. SS is growing very fast (which will possibly bring its own problems with it).
I don't know how they do it - I'm quite sure that it is at least a semi-automatic process where filtering algorithms do most of the stuff and reviewers only get those photos which passed those filters, in order to review them for "subjective" quality then - such as composition. This would mean that human reviewers only see get 20-50% of the actually submitted photos. That's just speculation though.
What do you mean by a waiting list?
All the best,
Michael
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I found them speedy with the approvals too! and in the first month downloads were crazy. I have almost 200 pictures and half way into my second month and downloads have dropped to less than half, which is expected once the glut is over.
Adding small quantities of new pictures weekly, will be interesting to see how it fares after a month of normal downloading.
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Your experience seems to be the same as everyone else on this board Penny.
I suppose SS have a bunch of clients who want to download everything, so once uploads stop so do the downloads.
Only answer to that is to upload furiously on a constant basis I suppose. But I think that might take some of the pleasure out of what we do.
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Only answer to that is to upload furiously on a constant basis I suppose. But I think that might take some of the pleasure out of what we do.
Hatman, this is what I do. I began uploading small batches on a regular basis. The day the pix are posted, I experience higher sales. BUT, it isn't just the newly posted pix. I will sell pix that could be months old as well. For the next couple days, the sales decrease. Then I upload another small batch and do it all over again. I haven't had a zero sales day at SS since early January.
I don't know if it is a coincidence or what, but in the last two months, my acceptance has been in the 90 percentile. I'm also getting less than 24 hour approval.
I would say this. If you are one that experiences high sales the days your pix are posted..... try uploading smaller batches more often and see if a pattern develops.
For the last 3 months, I can't say anything bad about SS. It's the only site bringing me mad money. 8) -tom
MODIFY: In a couple of other threads, I'd been throwing around an approximate number that impressed me about SS. That was what percentage of my portfolio was being sold. I did the math. SS has sold over 77% of my portfolio. Now, I've never seen that number discussed so.....
I have no idea if this is good or not. Basically I have the same porfolio everywhere give or take a couple dozen pix. Some sites have sold less than 10% in the same or longer time.
I'd like to throw that question out to you all. Which site sells more of your total portfolio than others? And what kind of percentage of the total are they selling?
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Yes Tom - I took your advice re SS. Many thanks.
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I got a question.
Say you upload 105 pictures, then you're only able to keyword 50 of them. But do you HAVE to do 50 pictures or can you do let's say 15 of them and send them trough for approval? I don't seem to find this, so I always send in 50 pics. I'd like to send smaller batches for approval.
Cheers
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I also think that you have to send all 50.
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In a couple of other threads, I'd been throwing around an approximate number that impressed me about SS. That was what percentage of my portfolio was being sold. I did the math. SS has sold over 77% of my portfolio. Now, I've never seen that number discussed so.....
I have no idea if this is good or not. Basically I have the same porfolio everywhere give or take a couple dozen pix. Some sites have sold less than 10% in the same or longer time.
I'd like to throw that question out to you all. Which site sells more of your total portfolio than others? And what kind of percentage of the total are they selling?
There was a thread about this a couple of months ago at the SS forums. I don't remember exactly, but I think most hovered around 60-70%, which makes 77% look rather good.
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I also think that you have to send all 50.
I stand corrected on this matter. At SS I do believe you do have to keyword the entire batch you uploaded in order to submit for approval. At SS I upload in handfuls, not large batches. I apologize if that confused any, it was misleading as it was written.
At BigStock & LO, I DO upload large batches and then keyword/submit in small batches. I don't do FTP, as a consequence at DT, StockXpert and others I can only upload one at a time. However, as long as DT takes, they do approve in some kind of batch system. StockXpert usually has approved the first picture while I'm uploading the fourth. I've uploaded 6-12 pix at StockXpert and gone back in 10 minutes and they were all approved (or rejected).
Clarifying my SS comments, yeah, you have to keyword whatever you put up in the batch... I'll go back and remove that statement. sorry 8) -tom
edited: I went back and removed the confusing statement from my earlier post. -tom
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In a couple of other threads, I'd been throwing around an approximate number that impressed me about SS. That was what percentage of my portfolio was being sold. I did the math. SS has sold over 77% of my portfolio. Now, I've never seen that number discussed so.....
I have no idea if this is good or not. Basically I have the same porfolio everywhere give or take a couple dozen pix. Some sites have sold less than 10% in the same or longer time.
I'd like to throw that question out to you all. Which site sells more of your total portfolio than others? And what kind of percentage of the total are they selling?
I think that your observation is correct. Since SS sells more images (by quantity) than any other microstock, it makes sense that they would sell a larger percentage of a person's portfolio. At this point, SS has sold 95% of my portfolio (although many of them have only sold a few times).
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I have only been there a week, but of my initial 84 approved images, 58 have been downloaded. That's 69%.