Author Topic: No sale in 4 months! (Read 28285 times)

4seasons · « **Reply #25 on:** June 30, 2008, 04:47 »

toneteam,
Warm up in the microstock market a few months, test the water on other agencies, at least the BIG 6-7, check and compare numbers etc... Emotions is good but make serious decisions only when stock market situation will be more clear for you. Good luck.

---
10 sales this month on FP, with one Small Business Extension License.
7-8 place on my earners list.

toneteam · « **Reply #26 on:** July 01, 2008, 09:29 »

Thanks for comments, i really do appreciate your experience and im grateful when people take me out of my own crazy ideas, Im serious. I have to wait and the most important of all is: I have to make photos more interesting for microstocks first and then begin to plan any kind of future on a real one present basis. I really think that so short prices are logical in a competitive market but I feel so terrible about to get 20 cents of a dollar for a single photo, I mean there must be a way to increase these amount 4 or five times at least. It just an impression.

sharpshot · « **Reply #27 on:** July 01, 2008, 10:35 »

Not many sales but every now and then I get $6.99 commission for one and that keeps me interested. I would like to send buyers there but there is the risk of them doing a lucky oliver and that stops me.

peep · « **Reply #28 on:** July 01, 2008, 12:42 »

As nothing has changed or improved there, I have just stopped uploading there (and on Canstock). However, I am not going to delete my portfolio. I am going to return there in a month to see whether or not they start selling reasonably.

Stu99 · « **Reply #29 on:** July 01, 2008, 13:16 »

I stopped uploading after a drought in sales that lasted a few months.

However, after I put my prices up to $10 from $1, sales have started again??

As a result I've added a few hundred more images at $10, hopefully a few sales a month will follow.

I wouldn't bin them just yet, there seems to be a bit of life in them still

ajn · « **Reply #30 on:** July 01, 2008, 15:14 »

June was good on FP. My BME. Had several sales a week. All my images are at the 10$ price point and it seems to be what works best for me. I sell more now than when I have everything at 5$.

They beat sites like BigStock and Crestock.

DanP68 · « **Reply #31 on:** July 02, 2008, 02:37 »

Well I'll be darned. My portfolio basically goes without views and sales for several months, so I leave FP. A few months later I reload, and it only takes a week to get my first sale. $1.80 profit for a small - nice!

Not sure if it is was related to me setting up my personal webpage or not. I kinda doubt it as it is only getting a few hits now and then.

4seasons · « **Reply #32 on:** July 02, 2008, 08:20 »

I uploaded a batch of some new images I have on Alamy. As on FP we can set our prices, I set all images from $100 to $300. I'm really angry at all these 20 cents, so it's finished with these prices. Anyway there are no many sells, my images are very good , I value them and please pay now accordingly if some want it!

About 90% of all my new images go now to Alamy only.

epixx · « **Reply #33 on:** July 02, 2008, 10:41 »

Quote from: sharpshot on July 01, 2008, 10:35

Not many sales but every now and then I get $6.99 commission for one and that keeps me interested. I would like to send buyers there but there is the risk of them doing a lucky oliver and that stops me.

If we all go around fearing that we'll lose a couple of dollars whenever an agency goes under, we can as well stay with IS and SS and accept the 10% or less they are going to offer when they've taken control of the market. Your maximum loss is $50.

While FP isn't a big seller for me either, it's been increasing lately, and with 7 dollars a shot, I'm smiling all the way

epixx · « **Reply #34 on:** July 03, 2008, 11:25 »

Here's a funny record:
After two - 2 - days of July, FP tops my sales statistics for the month, just ahead of SS. Who would've thought.

Oh well, that won't last for many hours I'm afraid, but it shows what those 70% commissions can do if you're lucky

Phil · « **Reply #35 on:** July 03, 2008, 21:20 »

Quote from: epixx on July 02, 2008, 10:41

Quote from: sharpshot on July 01, 2008, 10:35
Not many sales but every now and then I get $6.99 commission for one and that keeps me interested. I would like to send buyers there but there is the risk of them doing a lucky oliver and that stops me.

If we all go around fearing that we'll lose a couple of dollars whenever an agency goes under, we can as well stay with IS and SS and accept the 10% or less they are going to offer when they've taken control of the market. Your maximum loss is $50.

While FP isn't a big seller for me either, it's been increasing lately, and with 7 dollars a shot, I'm smiling all the way

hmm, i agree it's funny logic. I 'lost' about $20 (spending on other people so they got payout) when luckyO went down, but before that I made a couple of hundred dollars for the little bit of time I put in. Glass half full

worst case if fp went down I'd lose up to $50, but it may never happen and in the mean time I make $50 every 4-5 weeks.

sharpshot · « **Reply #36 on:** July 04, 2008, 02:07 »

Quote from: clearviewstock on July 03, 2008, 21:20

Quote from: epixx on July 02, 2008, 10:41
Quote from: sharpshot on July 01, 2008, 10:35
Not many sales but every now and then I get $6.99 commission for one and that keeps me interested. I would like to send buyers there but there is the risk of them doing a lucky oliver and that stops me.

If we all go around fearing that we'll lose a couple of dollars whenever an agency goes under, we can as well stay with IS and SS and accept the 10% or less they are going to offer when they've taken control of the market. Your maximum loss is $50.

While FP isn't a big seller for me either, it's been increasing lately, and with 7 dollars a shot, I'm smiling all the way

hmm, i agree it's funny logic. I 'lost' about $20 (spending on other people so they got payout) when luckyO went down, but before that I made a couple of hundred dollars for the little bit of time I put in. Glass half full

worst case if fp went down I'd lose up to $50, but it may never happen and in the mean time I make $50 every 4-5 weeks.

What I meant was that I don't want to spend lots of time linking photos on my own website to FP if they have to close like Lucky Oliver did. Time is money and I see it as losing a lot more than $50 if that happened. I might lose more money if someone asks were to buy my photos and I send them there. It has to be a risk that they will close and I could lose a good buyer. If they had better sales, I would recommend them to everyone. I really hope they increase sales, as they offer us more selling options than any other site.

epixx · « **Reply #37 on:** July 04, 2008, 06:00 »

sharpshot,
Aren't you a tiny bit pessimistic now? We don't know anything about the financial health of any of these agencies. One of the big 6 may as well go under as a result of all their marketing costs, overhead or whatever. If nobody support new and/or upcoming agencies, we may just as well leave all our business to IS or SS, and accept the 1.5% commission they'll offer us when the competition is gone.

Or, as an even safer alternative, we could all go home, pull a brown paper bag over our head, and hope that the sky won't be falling until next week

sharpshot · « **Reply #38 on:** July 04, 2008, 06:30 »

I don't think I am being pessimistic. I had much better sales with Lucky Oliver and was surprised when they closed. I will give new sites as much support as I can but if they are not making much money for me after a year, I won't spend much time on them. Might as well concentrate on the sites that are making me money. There are 7 of those so far, not just SS and IS. Then there are the traditional sites. My 1 sale with alamy made about as much as I have made with FP in 18 months.

I still upload to FP every now and then and hope that they attract more buyers but I don't see that paying us 70% commission and not spending much on advertising is a good policy. All the sites that have good sales have spent lots on advertising and they are unlikely to go under as they now have lots of buyers and happy contributors. Buyers seem to be loyal to sites, so advertising pays well in the long term. Isn't this why LO and several other sites failed? What makes FP so different?

epixx · « **Reply #39 on:** July 04, 2008, 11:32 »

Quote from: sharpshot on July 04, 2008, 06:30

What makes FP so different?

- They pay us 70%
- They treat us as photographers and partners, not a bunch of "community members"
- They leave to us to value our photos
- They mostly leave to us to decide which photos should be in our portfolio
- They are easy to upload to
- They accept RM and editorial
- They pay promptly, after a couple of days, not after two weeks or three months
- They seem to me to be cost efficient. Not all the fancy (and probably costly) bells & whistles that you find at some other agencies (LO springs to my mind)

If they are able to keep their cost at a moderate level, they can survive for a long time, even with slow sales. That's exactly what I'm looking for: long term commitment.

If a client asks me how to buy one of my photos, I can send him to IS and get 20% or I can send him to FP and get 70%. As long as FP exists, that's a very easy choice if you ask me. Should FP be gone the day after, I'll possibly lose, not my 70%, but the 20% I would have earned, had I send him to IS instead. And I can still send my client to IS or wherever the next time he needs one of my photos.

Alamy obviously pays better than any microstock agency, but at FP, I have both: microstock photos for microstock prices and RM photos for macrostock prices. And FP pays much faster than Alamy or any other macrostock agency.

madelaide · « **Reply #40 on:** July 04, 2008, 18:43 »

Quote from: epixx on July 03, 2008, 11:25

Here's a funny record:
After two - 2 - days of July, FP tops my sales statistics for the month, just ahead of SS. Who would've thought.

Oh well, that won't last for many hours I'm afraid, but it shows what those 70% commissions can do if you're lucky

Just one sale this month and FP is ahead of DT, BigStock and 123RF, equal to FT, and after IS and StockXpert only. While it may not last, it's delightful.

Regards,
Adelaide

null · « **Reply #41 on:** October 13, 2008, 08:21 »

Reviving this old thread, I got worried about Featurepics. Being used to having 2-4 sales consistently every month, sales suddenly grinded to an halt after July 2008. That's hard to believe: a stop by deteriorating business should rather be gradual. Apparently, they didn't change the search algorithm too much, since my shots still pop up very well.

The question remains whether anybody else had similar experiences since July.

pauloresende · « **Reply #42 on:** October 13, 2008, 09:13 »

My last sale was in August! Since then 0, nada, zip, capute nothing, rien!

madelaide · « **Reply #43 on:** October 13, 2008, 12:23 »

I don't have my numbers here with me, but had some sales every month. This month, two so far.

Regards,
Adelaide

HermanM · « **Reply #44 on:** October 13, 2008, 13:13 »

No sales here, either... I have long ago given up on them...

peep · « **Reply #45 on:** October 13, 2008, 16:10 »

So did I. They did not sell a single file for a few months so I gave up uploading. However, I did not delete my pictures. They have still about a thousand of them if they should start selling.

dbvirago · « **Reply #46 on:** October 13, 2008, 20:04 »

Nothing since August after 4 good months in a row. Not sure what changed. Will stop uploading end of month if something doesn't happen.

epixx · « **Reply #47 on:** October 14, 2008, 01:31 »

It's very up and down. July and September were good months for me (BME in July), but I had no sales in August and none so far in October.

I see from sales at other agencies that sales during American business hours have gone down, while European business hours are good, probably due to the fact that the financial crisis started in the US and has hit much harder there. If FP has done little or nothing to market themselves in Europe, that may be one reason for the lacking sales now. On the other hand, a small agency like FP will always have less consistent sales than larger agencies.

If I want to have something to worry about, I would rather look at SS. The number of sales per day there for me are around half of what they were one year ago.

madelaide · « **Reply #48 on:** October 14, 2008, 16:11 »

I forgot to mention that I reached a new pay-out.

I am concerned however with their recent site mail:

Quote

Unfortunately, we haven't done so well the last 2 months. Our sales have dropped.
It's not a reason to give up, but it is a reason to do more from our side.

And I learnt yeaterday that they stopped the RM licensing. Images currently set as RM will remain so, but new uploads will be only for RF or RF editorial. Sad.

Regards,
Adelaide

Phil · « **Reply #49 on:** October 14, 2008, 16:43 »

still ticking along but slower last couple of months

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Author Topic: No sale in 4 months! (Read 28285 times)

4seasons

toneteam

sharpshot

peep

Stu99

ajn

DanP68

4seasons

epixx

epixx

Phil

sharpshot

epixx

sharpshot

epixx

madelaide

null

pauloresende

madelaide

HermanM

peep

dbvirago

epixx

madelaide

Phil

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