Veer Marketplace opens, Snapvillage closes:

The new Veer Marketplace went live last Sunday (having been in Beta with transferred Snapvillage images for a few months). I only have 52 images live so far (with more pending review) so I am not expecting too much yet! Meanwhile, Corbis announced that their Snapvillage site will shut this Saturday (August 1st). Whilst never giving me many sales (or income) there is a tinge of sadness as this was the first site I contributed to. That said, it provided me with valuable training in the Microstock world which I can take forward. Veer Marketplace certainly has much greater prospects and could turn out to be a very exciting outlet. That said, at present their review process seems very erratic. Good images that sell well elsewhere get rejected whilst some of the less exciting ones get approved. My initial strategy had been to try and upload as much as possible asap, but I am now keeping it to regular small batches until things settle down! Another factor in the "feed the beast" conundrum is that I am also trying to fatten up my Shutterstock portfolio at the same time -and that one is certainly paying off! More to follow... Regards, David

And three days later....

Got my second sale on Yaymicro! Not the donkey though but another archive shot of a steam locomotive on the Bluebell Railway that I took about 35 years ago. Of course, I don't know if the IOTD feature led to the sale or not but it is quite possible. This was a Medium resolution sale which pays a healthy 2.5 euro in commission. I'm hoping this site will gather momentum in the coming months. As I have said before, uploading and captioning (using their bulk edit feature) is so quick and easy that I am quite happy to give Yay more time. Regards, David

Made "Image of the Day" on Yaymicro:

http://www.yaymicro.com have a new Image of the Day feature on their blog. One of mine was chosen today! A reluctant donkey resisting being pulled up a ramp into its trailer. "A case of the Monday's" as they captioned it. The strapline says "One of many historical images from Newsfocus1", with a valuable link direct to my portfolio there. Must admit, I would have thought that my archive shots of Margaret Thatcher or Gordon Brown would qualify more for the "historic" tag, but anything that directs buyers to my portfolio is more than welcome! Regards, David.

Accepted At Veer Marketplace:

Have just been accepted as a contributor at Veer Marketplace. They required a test submission of 10 images. From mine 7 were approved for the site so I am in. I can now upload up to 100 images per week. Those images that are approved will go into the Veer database but will not be available to buyers until the full launch (scheduled for mid Summer). Currently Marketplace is in Beta using images transferred over from the Snapvillage site. As you will see from earlier postings, mine weren't included in this. As I expected, I have been approved for Veer on a set of images which were already on SV! On the plus side Veer is being more selective in what it takes which can only make for a stronger offering and (hopefully) better sales. As a general rule, sites that take just about every image you throw at them tend to be poorest selling sites. They are generally the new sites which are trying to amass a large number of images quickly to make themselves attractive to buyers. Snapvillage was a classic example of this approach. By being more selective and with their well established reputation Veer are looking like a very good proposition for contributors. As with Shutterstock, I now just have to "feed the beast"! Regards, David

In at Shutterstock!

An exciting step forward this week when (at second attempt) I got accepted as a contributor at Shutterstock. This New York based image library specialises in subscription sales, paying contributors from 25c per download (the amount goes up once you reach a certain sales level). This may not sound a lot but Shutterstock gets high volume sales. Some new photographers I know have had loads of downloads in just a few weeks with just a few files online. Many Microstock photographers give this as their top earning agency. So my hopes are high. Now I just need to "feed the beast" to borrow a quote from the http://www.microstockgroup.com/ forum. Photographers wanting to sign up to Shutterstock can follow my link on the left hand column of this blog. Picture buyers can use the link below (in both cases I get income under Shutterstocks referral program). Regards, David

http://www.shutterstock.com/?rid=370843