Here we are heading into 2012, and with picNiche heading for 4 full years it’s looking like an exciting one to come To mark the new year, I figured it would be a good time to talk a bit about what makes up the entire suite of ‘picNiche’ now, to brag a bit about recent [...]
A pretty thorough estimate of the number of unique images (photos and illustrations) on the entire internet, broken down by source.
Most of the larger estimates are accurate to within a billion or so, the smaller ones to within about 25%, where figures are exact they’ve been retrieved somewhere between Oct 2011 and April 2012.
I’ve been putting together a dataset to estimate wait times in the picWorkflow upload queues, and pulled out some data about the rates of agency’s FTP server receiving speeds. As expected, the agencies who accept footage have much faster connections than those who don’t, though a shameful showing from the networks of some of the top-tier agencies. (NB: This chart is upload speeds, not submission times… that’s coming next in the series 
)
With scalable bandwidth being so cheap at the moment, even with high usage figures a lot of the agencies in the red section really could use a pipe upgrade
Really, since (in the west at least) 500k-to-1megabit upstreams are the most common, receiving files at any less than half a megabit is wasting contributor’s time.
One of the most common questions I get about picWorkflow is how long keywording of images takes… since it’s a ‘natural system’ (because keyworders are crowd-sourced, subject to QA, and they choose which images they want to work on, and how much they wish to earn), it’s a difficult question to give a definitive answer to.
I have however, dug through the picWorkflow data and come out with some basic charts which give you a rough idea of how long the keywording of a photo (or illustration) should take. My data is clearly in early-days so it’s not particularly statistically significant, but it’s a good indicator (and I will update this post periodically).
This shows the relative number of people choosing to pay at each cost-bracket (between 0.5 cents per keyword and 2 cents per keyword). The long-tail shows most people prefer to pay at-or-near the minimum amount.
This shows that most keywording tasks (87.4% to be precise) complete within 2 days. 72.9% take 1 day or less. Not bad even if I do say so myself 
The trend here clearly shows that choosing to pay more, leads to a significantly faster turnaround AND a higher keyword-quality satisfication index (I don’t know if satisfication is a word, but heck, that’s what I’m calling it )…
Any questions or issues, please let me know
It’s been almost 2 years since I last uploaded new images for stock, and in that time there have been a few agencies emerge where I see real opportunities for new sales and a better reach.
Though I’d love to get back to shooting/illustrating more, I know it’s just not feasible at the moment (farrr too busy trying to make picWorkflow awesome! ), so I figured the best thing I could do would be to clean out the lesser-works from my existing portfolio, and distribute only the best of what I have.
The last few weeks I’ve spoken with many photographers (at StockInRussia and MicrostockExpo) about my own (fair-to-middling) portfolio, and figured I had about 2000-2500 images across the 10 main agencies. I expected to cut this by a few hundred, but read on to find out how much
I’ve had my entire portfolio in Lightroom since their earliest betas (I used to use PS elements) so digging through my portfolio was pretty easy:
Now over the next 3-6 months, I will watch how well this new smaller portfolio does, then go through the main agencies and start deleting or adding my new replacement metadata to a lot of my non-sellers from there too
If you trimmed your stock portfolio today… how many would you cut?
Would you (could you) drop four-fifths of your portfolio too?
I received a couple of questions today from a potential picWorkflow photo keywording customer, and I figured since I’ve been seeing similar questions coming in from search engines, that I’d post the question and my response here for anyone else who may be interested in the keywording or photo captioning service to see too.
Hi Bob,
Have spent the evening researching keywording services and came across yours. Here are my thoughts:
I have [a lot of] images on [agency]… mostly poorly keyworded. [a lot] more awaiting keywords.
- Question… “if he uses just anyone to do this what about the quality?”
- Question… “If they use pre designated lists how wrong can they be? Maybe a lot”
- I’m not in a hurry, and don’t need your upload service … just the keywords on a spreadsheet.
- You advertise 15 cents somewhere, can we make it $100 per 1000?
On #1, I don’t use ‘just anyone’, all keyworders on picWorkflow are experienced either in keywording their own microstock images (min 1000 images), or keywording the big microstocker’s images. They are quality-checked before acceptance, given specific quality guidelines to follow, and subject to ongoing QA both by me (as admin) and every keywording task can be rated by the keyword purchaser (admin rated after about 2 weeks if purchaser doesn’t rate). About 80% of all keywording tasks are completed by my top 3 keyworders, and all 3 are fluent english speakers. Quality is built into the system as the best keyworders see tasks sooner, so they have the opportunity to work on the best paid tasks.
On captioning, only the best keyworders are eligible to caption and like with keywording are subject to ongoing review.
I have (as yet) received not a single complaint about the service, the only negative feedback I’ve had is that keyworders did not find the scientific name of a plant on a few images (though they usually do pretty well with animals).
On #2, they don’t use predesignated lists, they keyword (and caption) directly from their own minds On top of text-input they are offered related suggestions, which are drawn from a good quality relational database of approx 45,000 keywords or short phrases, and about 350 million relationships.
On #3, You will need to upload the images to picWorkflow so we can generate the appropriate previews for the keyworders to use (anything already partly keyworded will be subject to a lower cost as a keyword audit will only be charged where addition/removal action is needed, the rest is refunded on completion).
Once keywording is complete you can export that via CSV or TSV.
If you’re particularly technically minded, you could also use the photo keywording api which has some extra features (and makes it easier to manage a large portfolio), though you’d need to code your own app/site to consume it and apply the returned data to your images.
On #4, The flexibility on price is entirely your own choice, though you cannot pay less than 0.5c per keyword, to pay $100 per 1000 images, you could choose 20 keywords per image at 0.5c each (ie. 10c per image). Most people choose 30-40 keywords for microstock, though again your average may differ if your images are already partly keyworded (as mentioned above).
Kind Regards
Bob
I have been delighted by how good the picWorkflow keyworders are doing for image keyword quality and captions, so I want to thank them again for doing such a great job!
I know a lot of people who read this blog have already given picWorkflow a go (I’ve heard back from a lot of you already, thanks), but if you’ve not tried it yet, why not have a few photos captioned and/or keyworded, it’s inexpensive, it’s excellent quality, relevant metadata, and it saves LOADS of your time
Still have questions? Please comment below or drop me an email
Everyone lately seems to be talking about dropping RPIs and the increased efforts to be a successful microstock photographer. Well I recently put together this presentation for StockInRussia microstock conference (It was a fantastic event, if you weren’t there, you really missed out), so I thought I’d screencast it (ended up with a full 90 minute talk) and bring it to the web for all you lovely people
In this 4-part presentation I talk about the shape of the microstock industry now it’s matured, how to develop your portfolio to stay competitive and even to improve sales, some topics to shoot (harvested from picNiche data) and my view on how the microstock industry (and stock photography in general) is developing in future.
It’s a full 90 minutes so you might want to take a bio-break, make a coffee and a cheese sandwich before you start
Do you agree? disagree? Why?
I plan to have more tutorial videos and guides coming soon too, so if you want to keep upto date, subscribe to the picWorkflow/picNiche You Tube channel.
It’s a very exciting season for me, and for Microstock this autumn. I’m speaking at both STOCKinRUSSIA and MicrostockExpo, so I figured I’d let you know a little about each conference, and what I’ll be presenting about at both:
STOCKinRUSSIA has an excellent programme of photographers and microstock experts sharing valuable information on Copyright, Hardware, The History of Microstock, Stock Footage and Developing your microstock workflow. There’s a great lineup of presenters, including a workshop from Andres Rodriguez on making the most with limited resources.
I’ll be talking about Maximising your Earning Potential in a Mature Microstock Marketplace and will focus on these topics:
Microstock Expo has an awesome programme laid out and is offering something for everyone, from discussion panels looking at distribution, workflow and the microstocker’s lifestyle, to workshops, events and parties too!
I’m really excited to see MicrostockExpo come around, I’ve been disappointed by the lack of microstock content at most of the established stock conferences, and I’m delighted to be speaking on the workflow panel:
The workflow panel will explore different workflow methods, from post-processing, keywording, through to distribution, including submission…
We (myself, Jean-Marie Guyon of CandyBox, Jazz Mandair of JaincoTech, Rahul Pathak of Lookstat) will explore different options for each step of microstock workflow, to suit different lifestyles and different production rates, as well as different content. Whether you work alone or in a big team, do everything or outsource everything, produce a handful or a truckload, you’ll walk away with some useful enhancements to your workflow.
What ever you’re doing when these conferences are on… cancel it! Go to Moscow and Berlin instead
These will be awesome
The first phase of picWorkflow’s stats tools are now live on the site.
There’s more to come, but already the stats tools can be used to improve your portfolio metadata, to distribute your images to more agencies, and to find out where your images may have problems and how to solve them.
You can now use picWorkflow to track your portfolio growth at 10 agencies (more coming online soon) with handy charts for each agency. It also already imports your agency images in the backend and I will soon be adding the tools to the interface soon to automatically detect accepted images and flag up images which you may not have uploaded to some of your agencies so you can easily distribute your portfolio for maximum sales across all your configured agencies.
The stats page includes a section to review picNiche analytics data for all keywords found in your portfolios (both on picWorkflow and on agency sites) to figure out where the best opportunities are for more image-sales and for better promotion via SEO. This includes finding the most-searched keywords in your portfolio.
It will also flag up any potential spelling errors or typos on your discovered images to help you find any images which could be performing better and make suggestions to get your images in front of more (and more relevant) image buyers.
The free distribution tier has been increased to free 100 uploads per month for all accounts.
I’ve also added a TON of other tools to help you manage your images better, to distribute them, and to ensure your metadata is getting your images in front of more relevant buyers.
These tools are coming soon, working feverishly on getting them ready
What are you waiting for? To get all this awesomeness…
Filesize and Resolution of Images Distributed for Microstock
Just a quick reference post to share some charts showing the most common file sizes and resolutions of images (photos and illustrations) distributed by Microstock contributors through picWorkflow.
File sizes of JPEG images distributed to microstock agencies
Interesting to see that 80% of files are 10meg or less, and on a steep curve. Whereas the megapixels show a broader distribution across a range of sizes.
Resolution in Megapixels of JPEG images distributed to microstock agencies
Interesting here that 12 and 10 megapixels dominate the chart (the most common prosumer DSLR resolutions) with 6 not far behind (the lowest size for each image to be acceptable to all agencies).
Not quite sure why the large number of images at 39 megapixels (it’s actually 38-40 megapixels, but my grouping algorithm averaged that sector out to 39), presumably this is a popular export size for illustrations, though not sure why.