I’ve started to push images and get reviews.  I was pending this morning but a lot of batches were reviewed and now I’m starting to go live everywhere.  I can’t wait to see how the food images sell!

Our shooting has started off very well too – I want to get ahead a little. We have now completed 6 food shoots in the last 9 days – about 200 new photos to submit now.

We need to plan our dishes for this week – we’ve done a lot of desserts so I think it’ll be great to get a few lunches and maybe an entree out this week.

What are your favorite foods?  What foods do you really LOVE to cook?  And eat?  I’m really interested in the types of things you enjoy.

My upload strategy of late has been momentum.  I think if we upload consistently rather than doing Power Week then nothing, we’re going to be better with sales and have a better acceptance ratio.  So far that has proven to be true.  I am now almost a full week into this consistent strategy and what I’m finding is that sales on SS, DT and SXP are rising.  Fotolia always takes awhile and BSP/123RF don’t sell enough to notice trends yet.  This consistent approach is also good for my portfolio.  Let’s take a look at where I was/am as an update.

• Shutterstock 1/1 – 1441
• Shutterstock 6/7 – 2395




• Dreamstime 1/1 – 1570
• Dreamstime 6/7 – 2346




• Fotolia 1/1 – 646
• Fotolia 6/7 – 1696




• StockXpert 1/1 – 1365
• StockXpert 6/7 – 2758




• Bigstock 1/1 – 1540
• Bigstock 6/7 – 2857

5 full months of uploading has nearly doubled my gallery on many sites, +700 or 900 new images on many other sites.  However, I’m nowhere near where I need to be on images, sales or earnings to get what I want.  So this change, along with some other new things I will be doing, will hopefully get me closer to goal.

So from now on, I’m uploading 25 a day 5 days a week, every week.  I think 500 new approved images a month is going to have to be a “good enough” goal.  If I can manage that, by the end of this year I will have 3500 new images or over 5000 on every site (except IS of course!)

Another goal that will happen this month – I’m adding at least a couple batches to DeepMeta for Istock, submitting more to Fotolia and trying to create some images that may sell better than things I have now.  We need to improve out quality to keep up with the best in this business!

I learned a huge lesson in the last 3 months. That lesson:

“Success requires first expending ten units of effort to produce one unit of results. Your momentum will then produce ten units of results with each unit of effort.” – Charles Givens

What I mean to say, exactly, is that stock is a momentum game. The more quality images you upload, the more people visit your gallery and thus the more sales you have overall. The first bit of starting requires a harder push than later on but you must start and (here’s the lesson of the day) KEEP GOING.

I’ve watched the downloads of several major contributors this month and last. They nearly always are consistently uploading. Image totals go up here and there and the contributors continue to be successful. Another thing I did was watch a few contributors with totals near mine. Some went up, some did not.  For the most part these type of users make up the majority of active contributors – those who are basically spinning their wheels.  The last group needs no monitoring.  They are the contributors who submit a few times, don’t make $10,000 and go away never to be heard from again.

I’m concerned only with the group that uses momentum in its favor.  This group uploads consistently, 50-200 images  a week almost every week.  This group also seems to make most of the money in microstock.

So what is it that keeps the momentum going?  What keeps a contributor going?  I think they are obsessed.  One of my favorite quotes ever is by John Irving.  He said the secret to business was “You’ve got to GET obsessed and STAY obsessed.”  Many start there – how do  you continue your obsession?  What makes you enjoy the business?

Recently I was away for a few months, reconsidering what I wanted to do in microstock.  Over the summer last year I lost my momentum and it really hurt my sales and my mood.  I have in the last few weeks been kicking it back into gear.  It’s time to run again.  I am obsessed with microstock again.  I want to learn, move forward, WIN.  I want to hit goals, hit higher ones and hit ones so high I have to reset them all.  I am officially OBSESSED with microstock and it’s time to get back to good.  I’m not going to let summer stop me this time.  I am shooting again, editing again, uploading again – with more consistency and less “flurry.”  Powerweeks work against me – that’s figured out.  Moving forward in a consistent manner is the goal.  We shall see!

Thanks for reading – I really appreciate all of you guys.  Leave me a comment and I’ll stop by to see what you’ve been working on too!

Just so everyone’s on the same page, if you want a “review” of the changes, you’re going to want to read Lee later on.  If you want to hear my OPINION on them, keep reading.  And it isn’t pretty.

So Bigstock announced today that they are implementing upload limits. Let’s look at that.

• New users with less than 15 total approved images are limited to 15 images in the Admin Approval Queue at a time
• Users with an approval percentage of 50% or less are limited to 10 images in the Approval Queue at a time
• Users with an approval percentage of 70% or less are limited to 20 images in the Approval Queue at a time
• Users with an approval percentage of 85% or less are limited to 40 images in the Approval Queue at a time
• Users with an approval percentage of 92% or less are limited to 50 images in the Approval Queue at a time
• Users with higher than 92% approval percentage have no limit.

“Remember, uploading images and deleting them affects your rating too, so please take some care not to upload images you don’t intend to submit.”

Ok, so Bigstock’s monster image queue is now getting an overhaul.  That’s fine – it’d be nice if you could get an image reviewed there in  less than 2 weeks when places like SS take like 2 days.  HOWEVER…

How can deletes count against you?!

We’ve been told for YEARS “not to worry” about that number.  It’s experimental and doesn’t mean anything.  It’s related to images IN THE LAST 90 DAYS.

As of today, neither are true.  It’s an all-time number and it’s related to your ability to do new business there.  I upload in batches of 50, so over FOUR YEARS I’ve made two mistaken uploads.  That’s 100 deletes out of 3048 photos.  That is 3% of my all-time total because of TWO MISTAKES IN FOUR YEARS.  Let’s make sure that sinks in.

Now, over time I’ve also cleaned up my gallery and self-edited so as not to clutter up the BSP gallery with 4 year old images that haven’t sold.  Oh, and gotten much better over FOUR YEARS of uploads.  Let’s not forget that.

So my rating is 88.43%.  This means just my 2 mistake batches alone drop me from 91.43 to 88.43 and from nearly being unlimited to being in this ridiculous “40 pending” category.  Not 40 a day.  40 PENDING.  Which means until BSP clears out their queue, I get 40 images to upload despite my *ACTUAL* approval % being something like 93-95% and my delete % being 5-7% over YEARS of images and uploads.

Now let’s do some math for you bigger contributors.  Let’s say you’re me.  I have 2560 approved, 335 deleted/denied.  If I get the next 500 images approved – that’s right, 100% for 500 images – I’ll STILL be at 90.1%.  Let’s say I get 1000 approved IN A ROW.   I STILL won’t be over 92%.  In fact, I won’t pass 92% despite having 2500 approvals in Bigstock until I get about 1400 images approved.  In a row.  No declines.  1400 images, 40 at a time.

And why? Because I self-edited, deleted some of my own mistakes, cleared up the gallery and basically saved the reviewers work and BSP space to house my old/bad/wrong images.  THANKS FOR THE SUPPORT.

I don’t really know what my options are other than “wait a year to have BSP access again” or YELL.  So I’m yelling.  I hate taking this step because it FRUSTRATES ME but what can I do?

Bigstock – use the 90 day rating.  That’s FINE.  Use the denied photos, not the deletes – that’s FINE.  Don’t make it impossible for people who’ve actually stayed with you, done the right thing, etc. to make it with you.

Like I said, if you want the news report of this, hit Lee up later.  For now, you get me.  You get me REALLY mad.

Ok, I know Powerweek was over awhile ago and I haven’t written.  To be honest I needed time to think about my next steps.

Here’s what happened

I submitted 550 images in 4 days.  Easily enough to beat the 700 in 7 days mark.  The “fail” for Powerweek v3 was our image quality.  On day 4, we had a BUNCH of images reviewed across many sites.  And the results were absolutely terrible.  Not my editing, not my keywording – but I had 4000 trip images to sort through and many were unusable at 100%.  I hadn’t noticed that while culling in Lightroom but upon closer inspection I knew it was going to be a hard week.

The second major issue we ran into was overdoing it.  Honestly it’s not a great idea to submit 1000 images in one week.  You lose the benefits of continued growth and spread as well as you “feed the beast” once instead of continually, which results in another loss for you.

1) My process ARE better.  I could easily edit and key MORE images than I should rationally submit in a week.  I like that.

2) I still need to get more new images up – we had several shoots since Powerweek which has kept me busy and one of our major goals is to improve our photography dramatically in the next 12 months.  I definitely think that will help all around.

3) Our trip images were not what we needed.  We had a great time, I’ve sorted through and picked another 1200 or so we can use but overall the images themselves were iffy at best and not very good stock.  Lesson learned.

What’s Next?

I think my next goal will not be a Powerweek but a Growth Month.  I would love to grow our gallery fast still.  I think a better way than 700 in a week and 150 for the rest of the month would be 50 new images uploaded 3 times per week.  150 new images a week for a year is not enough but I can add some in whenever possible to add to that.  I still want 10k up by the end of this year although I’m not certain I will close N2M if I do not, given our new education.

I still need – I still hunger.  I have to work on my lessons and what is next for us.

What is a Powerweek?

Basically I’ve cleared my schedule for the next 7 days.  I will be doing *nothing* except microstock from Sunday March 8th through Saturday March 14th.  I will track the total number of images submitted to my top 10 agencies.

Why do it?

I think I can get 700 images up in one week and break 1000 for the month.  But it’s not been done.  As far as I know about, the record for NEW image uploads in one month to the top 10 agencies is 1035.  I would like to break that mark one week!

What happened in Powerweek 1 and 2?

Powerweek 1 resulted in 400 new images in 4 days.  I quit 3 days short of goal because I simply ran out of images.  I believed it was easier to shoot 1000 new images than get them up to the agencies but that is incorrect.  To quote myself “The single most difficult and time consuming part of the microstock process is to shoot stock worthy images.” I learned that you need a backlog when you start.

Powerweek 2 resulted in about 400 new images in 3 days.  I quit before the halfway mark because I was simply going too fast to too many agencies.  I was submitting 200 images a day to 15 agencies.  My upload speed is decent but I waited too long to upload the first batch.  Do not upload 200 at a time.  The upload time kills you!

How will this time be different?

So I just admitted to “failing” by not completing Powerweek v1 or v2.  In truth I’m not sure how much 800 images in 2 weeks is failing but I have learned.

1) I’m only uploading to 10 agencies for the next 7 days. I will have a backlog of images to go to the others later if necessary.

2) I’m uploading batches of 50, not 200. 50×10 = 500 total images per upload.  That should take 1/6th of my previous batch time.  I’ll make up for the smaller batches overnights when I do 100 at the end of the day.  That should allow me to do 200 per day if I can edit that quickly.

3) I have my backlog! I have 3200 images to edit now.  I will not run out.

4) My processes are better. I edit faster, keyword smarter and don’t waste my time on borderline images.

5) Need. I have to get through as many images as possible to earn as much as possible so that we can schedule our next trip.  The more we make the better, of course.  I like money.

So, wish me luck and see you in 8 days!

This is my “very quick start” to fractal generation.  Lately a lot of photographers/graphic designers have been creating fractals and I’m definitely one of those.  Half of my last 5 batches (125/250) have been fractals.

Video Tutorial here (no sound): http://niltomil.com/tutorials/frac/index.html

Here’s a quick example of what I do:

1) Start a new fractal.  Duplicate the triangle 4 times and move them out to evenly spaced spots around the center triangle.

2) Set all Linear 3d variations to a value of zero and all Linear to a value of one.

3) Now you can start experimenting on the red triangle (#1).  Whatever you do will be replicated 9 times around you and fading toward the edges so you will get a good idea of what you have done with each variation.

4) I used julian and juliascope to create some cool shapes and an organic looking background.

5) After picking a color scheme press Ctrl+N to get a random variation of colors if it doesn’t automatically generate correctly (sort of a bug fix to push Ctrl N to add gradients)

6) Render it out!

It’s fairly simple to create fracs and you can make them look like almost anything you want.  Play around with different variations one at a time to get an idea what each does.

Here are some of my favorite fractals that I’ve created:

More of my fractals can be found at Shutterstock.  While you can find scripts to do certain things, I always find that playing around by hand lets you learn faster and eventually do MUCH better at fractal creation.  Good luck!  Link me to your favorite fractals in the comments!

So far in 2009 I’ve done almost 8-10 hrs a day on some part of microstock or NiltoMil.  Whether blogging, editing, keywording or submitting I’ve definitely put in the hours.

So what’s the return?  So far, so good.  I’ve uploaded just over 100 new images to all 7 sites and had 70-95 accepted on each.  I also have 100 more edited images and will keyword them tomorrow morning.

I was a bit surprised by Shutterstock today.  I had a large jump in downloads but with that  many new images, on a Monday – well let’s just say I expected more.

Dreamstime, on the other hand, has been great to me lately.  I love image levels.  I think it’s the right way to do sales.  I’ve never been tempted at ANY level to go exclusive with any agency but if I were to do so, I think Dreamstime has the best shot of getting my images.  It seems fair and it’s our second-best earner.

By the end of January I should have submitted close to 1500 images – if a consistent 70% gets accepted, we’ll add just over 1,000 new images to our portfolio this month.  Now *that* is worth waking up in the morning.

My remaining agencies are now full-up pending.

123RF – 100 pending
BigstockPhoto – 100 pending
Dreamstime – 108 pending
Fotolia – 5 pending (haha!)
Istock – ok 0 pending
Shutterstock – 100 pending
StockXpert – 84 pending

So now the only thing to do is wait.  Wait and keep editing, keywording and readying more files.  Just as a bonus, I’ve created the wild horse image in 900×600px as a free download for personal use only.  If you use a larger desktop and want a larger wallpaper version leave me a comment and I’ll put up an 1800×1200 tomorrow.  The image was taken at Assateague, Virginia of a truly wild horse.  This guy fends for himself full time.  Would have loved to be closer but this part of our trip was one of the most memorable.

Let’s see how well you know logos.  Who am I quitting?  Want to guess why?

Do yourself a quick favor and compare the Long Tail we’ve been discussing to the chart on the “Recent Results” page of my spreadsheet.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pZEgM338rPYAiUQorCHGoYQ&hl=en

Now if you understand that I suck at Istock and just move on from there, if this were a Long Tail situation, I would have a few sales at one of the bottom agencies.  I would have fewer but *some* sales at a couple and I’d have nearly no sales but a couple at a few agencies.  The fact that those bottom 6 agencies have earned $1.73 COMBINED in November and $2.46 in October and never more than $25 COMBINED – it’s a sad day but they are being removed from our upload queue.

Agencies we are sticking with:

Shutterstock
Istock
Dreamstime
Fotolia
BigstockPhoto
123RF
StockXpert
(possibly Alamy)

Agencies we have accounts with that we’ll no longer submit to until sales increase:

CanstockPhoto
Crestock
FotoMind
FeaturePics
ImageCatalog
YayMicro
SnapVillage
MostPhotos

One reason we bottlenecked during our PowerWeek was upload speed.  It took HOURS to upload the first 200 images to these 8 agencies.  None of those 200 images will likely sell!  What was I thinking?!  I’m all for trying out something new but most of these agencies have 100s of my photos available and few sales to justify my effort.  This also gives me more free time to upload to Istock and push at Fotolia.

This is NOT a long tail situation.  I’ll say this about the long tail – if your time is NOT maxed out, (maxed out = you do NOT have enough time to get every image uploaded to Shutterstock, Dreamstime, etc.) then you should not worry about who you submit to.  If you have extra time, always do the extra submits.  It doesn’t make sense.  You can’t take the time with you.  It is gone after you waste it.  If your choice is playing a game online to pass the time or uploading to Yay, upload! However, if you are maxed out on time, like we are on PowerWeek, don’t waste your time!  Save it for what is important.  We have a huge backlog of images and uploading them to 7 sites instead of 15 will cut our upload time by MORE than half.  When you’re uploading 20 images this doesn’t matter.  When you upload 200 it matters a GREAT deal.

Note:  we will NOT be closing our accounts on these sites mentioned.  That would be even dumber than uploading to them in the first place.  You never know what’s going to gain traction.  I still think YayMicro could be a big player in our industry but I’d like to see them kick it up a notch or ten.