Posts Tagged ‘stock image’
This is news to me, its the first sale I’ve had marked like this “Credit for Photo Sale by reseller”…
Could this be how the Fotolia Free API works??
The Pics below:
http://futureworks.co.kr a Fotolia Reseller in Korea, is a Flash website, but I couldn’t spot how to purchase images.
The recent Fotolia new letter:
“COMING SOON: FOTOLIA’S FREE CONTENT API
The first website based on the Fotolia’s free content API will soon be released! The site will drive traffic to Fotolia and is a fantastic opportunity for Fotolia’s contributors to get additional visibility amongst stock photography buyers.
Fotolia’s extensive API infrastructure (partner, Business, Developer and Reseller) has already shown their capacities in driving qualified traffic on the Fotolia website. We’re confident that this new API will do the same.
As a backgrounder, Fotolia’s free content API is based on free contents and unsold files. This API will be used by Fotolia to attract more stock imagery users and to invite them to buy additional imagery on Fotolia. That means: more traffic, more buyers and more sales. As you already know, you can add your unsold files to this program and get a half credit for each file added. Your file will be still offered on Fotolia.com at the standard price, while at the same time, being offered for free through the API.”
March ‘09 Microstock Earnings Stats
Posted on: April 1, 2009
March was different, I made my average cashout level but just missed out by a day or so on cashouts from iStock and Dreamstime, for the first time in a while SXP did not reach the minimum payout figure.
Here’s the Lookstat graph for March:
Next up here’s my monthly cashouts graph over time, after reading things on Microstockdiaries regarding some slowdown, so the graph below kind of backs that up showing me that earnings for March are as good, or bad, as they were over two years ago. August ’08 being my best month ever, its looks like a gradual slide downward now.
This is backed up my blog views at imagepushing.com , the first graph in weeks and then months after shows a slump in views… meanning less designers, artworkers, and buyers are searching for images
What I need to do is to start being more targeted in what I shoot and submit, if only to improve my approval ratings a little!
Its a short report this month, more in reaction to Lee’s over at MD to see if there was any correlation.
Here’s the Lookstat graph for February ’09, Shutterstock, Dreamstime, and iStockphoto:
As far as actual banked payouts go, I’ve cashed out $304.95 with a $100 pending payment from iStockphoto, I think their new payout schedule has slowed down the cash-out procedure… Annoyingly this makes my payments graph miss out iStock for the first month since July ’07 though next month with look nice for it!
iStockphoto, no real surprises just steady away iStock are accepting way more than Shutterstock or Fotolia at present, I’ve had my second batch of Dollar Bin notifications from iStock… Fingers crossed that their second chance sells a few.
Fotolia was interesting with its 2 email updates, its nice to be told about changes so hopefully they are learning that its good to keep their contributors up to date in a timely manner… I would say ‘an accurate and timely’ manner but the details of their update were, and some still are, a little sketchy/ misunderstood/ lacking real insight into how Sales will work in their Free API etc. I think their second email pretty much sorted out the Fotolia Exclusivity 🙂 Sales here have been picking up this month and I’m due to turn Silver status very soon 🙂
Regarding the Free API, I added around 80 images to it and made an initial 40 Credits to my balance, I’d think that Zero-Selling old files going for free won’t effect my regular sales and would act as some extended marketing possibilities, though I’ll believe it when I see it 😉
Shutterstock reject 102 out of a 103 batch… the very same batch has been fully accepted at Stockxpert (also selling) & Canstockphoto, with BigStockPhoto and 123RF have accepted the bulk of this batch, iStock are still accepting-rejecting-and-selling images out of this batch uploading takes longer at iStock with their 20/week limit, Dreamstime accepting a good portion of them too.
The 1 image accepted at Shutterstock and the 102 rejects were questioned with support and I was given the chance to re-upload about 3 more shots… but quite frankly its not worth the hassle of looking through the files and uploading again… their loss!
Dreamstime is a steady ticker, credit and subscription sales are always good and new referrals every week is no bad thing… other than the review-queue limits recently I have no problems with Dreamstime. Things are pretty fair and clear, new files sell, old files sell, their referral links on each and every image are really handy for bloggers and personal websites, generally a fair image review process that give files a good chance, their Image ranking system that increases the price / payout for good selling images works a treat without devaluing your work.
123RF has been picking up after a slow start to the year, no problems here either.
Stockxpert is as consistent as ever, only issues being their lack of answering forum questions and their old referral system that is still broken on the stats page.
Canstock, BigStock, Crestock… nothing much to report… fingers crossed Canstockphoto is getting better with their new beta portfolio section, worthy of the upload time, and just checking now another nice $19.80 Fotosearch regular sale 🙂
Mostphotos, Yaymicro… nothing… no report… no action… no sales… (sorry guys… but its true!)
And last but not least, *chuckle* I had a massive payout from SnapVillage…. $0.30 with no PayPal fees! Wow!! I’ll be looking forward to a Veer Marketplace invite or copy-over or something 😉
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:
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:
The Leader board looks like this:
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 😉
December ’08 Microstock Stock Stats, this time using Lookstat.com
Current supported sites are iStockphoto, Dreamstime & Shutterstock, with Fotolia, 123rf & Stockxpert to follow.
December has been a slow month for sales with the only real event being an Extended license sale at Dreamstime, iStock worked hardest and Shutterstock sold most but made less money! I’ve been pretty slack with uploading, editing, and keywording for a good part of this year maybe I should make a new years resolution to get my finger out! 😉 Lately I’ve had computer problems and had to upgrade spending over £500 on Mobo, CPU, RAM & PSU (Acronym city!!!) and I’ve spent a good bit of time on my really old PC and installed ubuntu and had a good play around in Linux for the first time… *Maybe this is the way computer operating systems ‘should‘ work, its been enjoyable finding that almost everything I need is contained within the Ubuntu environment, albeit running on a slow-as-old-AMD Athlon system. I’d encourage anyone who uses a computer for general stuff to concider installing Ubuntu linux. 
Back to Stock, here’s the Lockstat view of my stock History on the current three sites:
No referral earnings will be in these numbers (Adding my referral earnings to these stats would bumb them up quite a bit).
As for features I’d like to see in Lookstat:
- Track an individual files’ sales history
- Show the Sell Through rates for each site
- Average Monthly figure for each site
- Specify an exact date period to show stats
- Further site additions of Canstockphoto, Crestock & Bigstockphoto
Now, the question… “Would I pay for this Service” ?
Not sure, it is interesting to see whish files sell the best, but for the most part I find it easy to keep my own little spreadsheet to keep track of my sales and site stats. If I was to pay for it, the amount would have to be low enough so as to be offset by an hour of my time earch month with my own spreadsheet.
First Extended license sale at Dreamstime – Stock Photo: Poppy seed cake
Posted on: December 10, 2008
© Photographer: Pdtnc | Agency: Dreamstime.com
Making me a whopping $20.83, the files’ first sale and someone wants to print a load of them or something!
Description:
Stock Photo: A scan of some poppy seed cake, scanned at 1200dpi
Keywords:
abstract, background, baking, cake, element, organic, poppy, seed, structure, texture
Woo 🙂
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.
Looking at the ease of upload and getting images online I thought this place would be good to have a go at.
There is a good write-up at www.microstockdiaries.com so I won’t write much more untill I see some results after I get my full portfolio online.
Probably Due To Network Congestion 
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