The Big Mo…
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 …
Bigstock upload limits
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 …
Powerweek, v3
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 …
Canstock Bulk Uploader
WHOA!? If you’ve read NiltoMil for any longer than 1 day you already know I’m all about speed, workflow and making things simple for us, especially across the smaller sites where it’s not necessarily worth our while to upload unless it’s dead easy.? Well I have had the opportunity to try Canstock‘s new bulk upload tool and I’m impressed!
According to Duncan, who is obviously still running things over at CSP after their buyout by Fotosearch, the main benefits of the bulk upload tool include:
You do not need to categorize …
January 2009 Earnings
January – blessed January!? How do I love thee?
It was absolutely fantastic to get back to uploading with any sense of regularity.? I only uploaded about 200 new images during our busy bridal show/booking month but 200 is more than enough to get me back on track!
As always, our spreadsheet of microstock earnings is here.
The January numbers were great!? In fact, this was our best month since I stopped uploading last July (other than the ridiculous ELs from SS in Nov (3 of them!)? The final total for all …
List of rejection reasons
All in one place and organized by microstock agency, I present to you the canonical list of rejection reasons microstock agencies use to kick your photos (not vectors or videos)? to the curb.
There are two quick notes on this:
1) It’s incomplete – IStock and StockXpert refused to give me a list.? The 123RF list was given to me by Alex and should be fairly complete.? The Bigstock list is fully done.? I believe I caught every Fotolia and Shutterstock reason.? The other lists are created from my own rejections, a …
Speed Editing – Intro
Today is going to be fun I hope – I’m going to show you how I edit.? I don’t claim it’s the ONLY way.? I’m not even sure it’s the BEST way.? But it’s fast.? REALLY fast.
This image was shot over grey instead of white because I like the flexibility of being able to isolate on white OR having some texture to a background if I want to colorize the available texture with some sort of blend mode.? For stock, I’d always turn this white though and let the buyer …
Approaching and reaching goals
We reached a few portfolio milestones this month already and may reach a few more before the month is out.? This is the current list and what we hope to accomplish by the end of the month.
On 123RF we are at 1973 on our way to 2000.? We will definitely surpass this goal by 1/31/09.
At Bigstock we passed 1500 by a ton – 1878 out of 2000 as well and could easily hit this mark.
Dreamstime sits a bit lower with 1733/2000 but I have just over 100 pending.? Assuming a …
Top 10 about the first 10
Every day for four years, someone has posted about their “first 10 being rejected” by Shutterstock, StockXpert, or other agencies.? When you are trying to start in microstock photography, that first batch is often the hardest.? I’ve narrowed down a few reasons why it’s so? hard to get started and some ideas for getting approved.
1) Submit a variety of images.
This seems simple but you should always ensure that your first batch is not 10 textures, 10 photos of your kids in mixed light, 10 photos of a piece of …
Rankings Charts
(chart taken from StockXpert top portfolios)
Figuring out where I rank on stock sites is a curiosity more than a necessity.? I don’t need to know – my goal is $1,000,000 regardless of whether Yuri or Lise has made $55,000,000 or what Lumaxart is doing.? However, it’s interesting to compare progress and see where we’re at and where we reach in what time periods.
Here are the tracking tools I’m aware of:
Istock Charts
Bigstock Gallery Size Listing
StockXpert Gallery Size Listing
(Araminta Studios has a great listing but it’s currently offline.)
As far as my own …
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