Dreamstime Blog Contest
I wrote last week about the Dreamstime Blog Contest and my entry. Well, and this is a bit of a downer, my entry was rejected for not meeting some or all of their guidelines. I checked those out, but am not really sure what I did wrong, but, hey, there are other things in life! I’ll reformat the article and post it here a little later!
In the meantime, I do have a favor to ask. My colleague, Alex Rotenberg, writes really well and is trying to make it in stock photography as his full time occupation! He has a blog entry over on Dreamstime, which I think is a pretty interesting perspective of someone who got into the stock game relatively recently. If you like it, please mark it as “Useful” in the upper left hand column! Perhaps we can get the prize for Alex!
Thanks
Hello, Steve.
I wanted to support your article, but it did not appear on the site list. It also did not open by reference from your post. Now I understand why this happened.
I supported your friend’s article. It is interesting and many photographers try to count such indicators. But I do not agree with them. I believe that it makes sense to care only about those processes that you can influence. For example, the quality of photography, the number, the choice of a popular topic. But we can not influence the decision-making process about buying photos by buyers. We can not get into their heads and influence them. So do not bother with such questions.
My recipe = quality + quantity + different topics. The rest does not concern us.
Best regards, Vlad Savin.
Hi Vlad – you make a very good point. You cannot directly influence RPI – you can maybe use it (as I do from time to time) to judge how the industry is evolving (towards lower payments usually!) and it can sort of tell you if you are maintaining a set of images that are earning in a similar way to ones in the past, but you are right that all you can really influence is subject matter, quality and quantity (and perhaps keyword quality as well).
Steve
Haha thanks Steve for the mention :)).
I didn’t think they were going to accept mine as I made reference to “submitting to multiple agencies”. In addition, I noticed they’ve edited it quite a bit.
I trust you’ll be able to get it accepted soon with some small changes and I won’t just like it, I’ll love it! 😀
Hi Vlad,
Further to what Steve has contributed, I believe RPI is good to measure a set of similar images within an agency and also between agencies.
Let’s say you shot 20 images of each model:
– Model A
– Model B
– Model C
Then uploaded them to:
– Agency 1
– Agency 2
– Agency 3
After let’s say 3 months you may be able to gather some evidence of which type of model has been most profitable (blonde vs brunette, for example) at each agency. This may work for those shooting different types of animals as well.
Also, you may be able to compare results between agencies. For instance, Model 2’s RPI at Agency 3 is a high RPI, so you may want to shoot more of those types of shot and upload them to that Agency. This may also give you an idea of which types of shots to ditch since it’s likely to give you a low RPI.
Something to think about.
DT a royal waste of time for me.
I have today, 31 Jan 2018 received from Dreamstime – FIVE emails for W-EL licences!! I don’t really know what this means (except more money). These were files sent up April 2011 – Feb 2014 – none have been sold on Dreamstime before – and if I am honest, they are not very good technically. Lacking also in two cases the RAW files. I am better now about record keeping!
Just to post this to give a ‘lift’ to others…
I have to thank you very much for all your useful information on your sites. I am a keen follower of your portfolios and your videos and I recommend your book wherever and whenever possible.
Best wishes, Sue Gresham in Andorra
Good to hear from you Sue! I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but I understand that Dreamstime announced that it was a bug in their system that was sending out these requests for W-EL licenses. There wasn’t a customer interested in them. Sorry!