Probably Due To Network Congestion

Posts Tagged ‘referrals

January’s been pretty good, a couple of nice surprises in the form of a $100 referral and $25 Extended license at Dreamstime, and January as a whole feels to have been a busy sales month.
CanStockPhoto has had some Fotosearch sales, one nice ‘Fotosearch regular sale’ brought in $19.80 and a trickle of subs sales from Fotosearch… looking more promising that CSP has for ages! (ever before!)

I’ve actually managed some uploading, and I’m still at it, I’m going to have to do some overnight (un-metered) uploading or I’m going to bust out of my ISP’s 15Gig/month limit an I’ll start getting charged more (£1/Gigabyte).
Considering that I’ve got myself a new project, of Beer brewing, I’ve done quite well with the keywording and editing this month, I have a batch of 103 waiting to go up to a couple more of the sites and lots of already approved images at Stockxpert though iStock have rejected quite a few of the first 20. Also I have another batch of 28 which is edited, keyworded and ready to go, iStock is going to take a while at 20/week in the queue and I notice that Dreamstime has set a 25/day limit on adding to the inspection queue too.

I’ve stopped uploading to Mostphotos and YaY Micro for the moment as its going to be counter-productive if nothing actually sells there!

Here’s the Lookstat graph:
jan2009-lookstats
Lookstat’s new feature is pretty cool, its an image specific stats function that lets you drill down through an individual file and check out its sales over time. Obviously this is only across iStock, Shutterstock and Dreamstime at the moment but from what I read over at their blog we’ll soon have Fotolia too… Quite an exciting prospect being able to cross-reference the sales of a particular file on all these sites and see their true full earnings, fingers crossed for Stockxpert next 😉

All-time earnings averages pie chart:
all-time-averages-a-month
The Leader board looks like this:

  1. iStockphoto
  2. Shutterstock
  3. Dreamstime
  4. Fotolia
  5. StockXpert
  6. 123RF
  7. BigStockPhoto
  8. CanStockPhoto
  9. Crestock

Dreamstime just edging ahead of Fotolia, which is probably due to good referrals and an Extended License sale at Dreamstime and the exact opposite at Fotolia.

All in all I have cashed-out $483.30 in January, which is above my current average of $401.65, not a bad first month to say we are in this (bogus) Recession!

We would be creeping out of recession if people would just start to spend again, so come on folks go buy the thing you were thinking of buying but just holding off to wait and see what the financial climate does. Spend wisely and save, but remember to spend, pay off those debts too!
Though I do like the USD-GPB exchange rate at present, watching the exchange rates can net you a few extra monetary units in PayPal with a bit of balance swapping or cashing out 😉

dreamstime_logo01

I had quite a nice surprise yesterday as my Dreamstime balance jumped up a full $100, after checking I found that it was a referral purchase, meaning that I got paid out 10% of the credit package bought 🙂 Pretty darn Good 🙂
Its always impressive the amount of referred members on DT and the occasional thing like this makes it feel even better.

My Dreamstime stats are as follows:

  • Member since –  March 9, 2006
  • 947 – Images Online
  • 1759 – Image Downloads
  • $1672.57 – Total Image Sale earnings
  • $485.31 – Referral Earnings
  • 255 – Referred Dreamstime members

My highest earning & Most downloaded file:
Cup Stains Set

My most viewed file:
Paper Airplane

My Oldest online file:
The Great Wall of China

One of my newest files:
Multiple White dice with spots reflections
© Photographer: Pdtnc | Agency: Dreamstime.com

yay_logo_large

Yet another stock agency… Looks a good clean, easy to use site, no fuss, easy on the eyes, navigation is all sensible, hopefully it will appeal to the hardcore image buyers out there.

Various permutations of the referral link (the second one is my portfolio):
http://yaymicro.com/register.action?referredBy=pdtnc
http://yaymicro.com/search.action?search.photographer=pdtnc&referredBy=pdtnc

To quote YAY from their press page:

Background

YAY Micro is an affordable provider of digital content. YAY offers photos, illustrations and vector files to customers all over the world. The parent company, YAY Media AS, is located in Oslo, Norway, and was founded by Linda Johannessen, Jan Ole Kjellesvig and Roger Bystrøm in January 2008. YAY Micro got their first images March 7th. The response from photographers and artists have been positive, and by launch June 2nd YAY Micro had over 200 000 images in their database. Over 1 000 photographers and artists have signed up.

Our vision is to be the leading digital content provider.

YAY offers both creative and editorial content

At YAYmicro.com you will find great creative and editorial images. Building an editorial database is a priority, and new images are added every day. Freelance photographers, citizen photographers and agencies deliver fresh red carpet images to YAYmicro.com.

Our goal is to be the first microstock agency to fully incorporate editorial content in our offering.

banner125x125_static

I like the way this site works, its pretty sensible and works logically, the upload procedure works well and editing image details is simple.
This is how the profile page looks, Its pretty concise and usable:

The Image portfolio page is just as easy with albums for organisation that work by drag and drop, and looks like this:

I have just completed uploading my portfolio of 1324 images, all accepted due to there being no inspection procedure to go through (the closest acceptance to that was 979 images at CanStockPhoto).

Earnings and referrals
Royalty-free images: earn 50% of the total price, which is €12.50 per sale.
“We offer you 1 Euro for every sold image by a referred photographer and an additional 1 Euro
for every image bought by a referred customer. This means you can earn up to 2 Euro every time a transaction is made between your referred friends”

All there is to do now is organise a few albums and site back and wait…. we shall see!

Its September!!  View My Portfolio

Double your referral rewards Sept. 1-30, 2008

You’ll be seeing double this month now that we’ve introduced double referral rewards. From Sept. 1-30, 2008, we’ll … more You’ll be seeing double this month now that we’ve introduced double referral rewards. From Sept. 1-30, 2008, we’ll pay you $20 USD every time you refer someone to become a member of iStock who then makes a credit purchase.

When you join the Referral Program, you start by selecting a site badge to post on your website. Then we track people who follow the link, become a new member and make a Pay-as-you-go or Subscription credit purchase within 14 days. As long as the new member purchases credits online and it wasn’t reversed, you will receive $20 USD from iStock within approximately three business days. Read the full details when you join the program.

Stock Photography: Search Royalty Free Images & Photos | iStockphoto.com

Its been pretty much hassle free internet for years now, the nice thing about it is that when they have a problem you can go and see what it is and what they are doing about it.
Here’s this mornings speed test:

Paying too much for broadband? Move to PlusNet broadband and save £££s. Free setup now available - terms apply. PlusNet broadband.
Want to save money on your broadband? Quick, grab this lifeline from PlusNet. Up to 8Mb broadband from only£9.99 per month. Free setup available - terms apply. Now with Internet phone calls. PlusNet broadband.
Premium quality broadband ideal for office networks. High-speed up to 8Mb broadband. PlusNet broadband.

get this…

Friday morning my earnings at Fotolia were about 85 credits, when I got home from work at looked they were at 135 credits.
I cashed out $100 at this point leaving 35… then just a few hours later my balance had shot up to 72 credits again.

Loads of +3, some +4.5, and a few +7.5 Referral credits, and a flurry of smaller credits… Blooming amazing.

Fotolia has always surpassed any of the other sites on referrals, but today was just mad!

A little self promotion now and again works, just spend 20 minutes occasionally pushing your referral links 🙂

Some of my recent Exclusive Images at Fotolia:
www.fotolia.com/id/7649106
Black hand prints and Smears background © pdtnc
www.fotolia.com/id/7729840
Grungy old leather book cover texture © pdtnc
www.fotolia.com/id/7728490
Coffee Coaster Rings © pdtnc


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