The Last 30 Days in Microstock - Bite Sized:

Lookstat added a new 'collections' feature which allows you to analyse sales on arbitrary groups of your images, then continued their series of anonymous analytics from their contributors with a very interesting look at portrait v landscape v square images, followed by an analysis of beer v wine stock images and Easter photos. The results rhyme with those from google analtyics found in microstock submission calendar.

iSyndica added reporting of sales for GraphicLeftovers and Vivozoom channels, they now support sales reporting from 23 sites. They have added several new features this month: Choose the size of images syndicated (e.g. highest resolution to only some agencies and only low resolution to your promotional channels) : Custom water marks : mark your uploads as approved or rejected.

Picniche added graphs of historical data to their stock photo demand tool.

Dreamstime announced they were increasing the size of their free collection from a few thousand to "hundreds of thousands". This conveniently followed last months news that they were culling some of the older images from their collection. Those old and unsold images can, at the choice of the contributor, be added to the free section, sent for paid re-keywording or deleted. Some other search and site functionality improvements have also been made at DT.

Clustershot added stats to their pro accounts allowing you to see where people are finding your photos, encouragingly my stats include not just "customers" I referred to clustershot but also "visitors" from the search engines - noting what I have written before that visitors from search engines are more likely to be doing their homework (literally) than be in the market to buy stock; eyes on images and 'reach' from google is still a very good thing to see. I really hope some of the larger agencies implement similar detailed stats of referrals from web sites and searches. cluster shot review

Fotolia launched a Turkish web presence at fotolia.com.tr, Fotolia's CEO, Oleg Tscheltzoff said “As the number one image provider in Europe, Fotolia is proud to be the first major microstock in Turkey”.

Getty Launched a Call for Artists Group on Flickr, photographers on flickr can submit 10 images for review to the group, good enough submissions will receive an invitation to join Getty and contribute to the flickr collection. We watched as more than 4000 images were added over a 24 hour period, there are at time of writing 57,000 images and 11,000 photographers hoping to catch Getty's eye. Good luck.

Dreamstime dropped their upload limit to 30 images per day. Leaving users with acceptance rates of 50% to 80% just 6 images. This might be a temporary thing but starts me wondering how long it will be before we start to get bribed by some agencies with "upload more if you also offer the rejects to the free section".

Shutterstock announced that their red carpet program was likely to cover 175 events this year. Launched back in 2007 the "on the red carpet" program allows individual photographers to get the assistance from shutterstock in obtain press passes to special events (concerts, sporting events, festival etc). Logged in shutterstock submitters can access the event application form via their control panel.

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