After selecting,editing,adding keywords and uploading the pictures you want to sell the first step will be to get them accepted which is sometime more difficult than expected ! Reviewing is very subjective of course and some agencies are tougher then others....
For this first experiment a series of 6 pictures belonging to various categories was uploaded and the outcome of the review examined. The following categories are represented:
- Animals
- Travel
- People
- Science
... and pictures uploaded to the following microstock agencies:
- Dreamstime
- Fotolia
- Istockphoto
- LuckyOliver
- CanStockPhoto
- BigStockPhoto
- SnapVillage
- Crestock
- 123RF
- Shutterstock
And here are the results !
Train departures board 1
Accepted: IS,FT,LO,DT,CSP,BSP,CT,SV
Rejected: 123RF (minimum commercial value), SS (limited commercial value due to framing,cropping and/or composition).
Train departures board 2
Accepted:IS,LO,DT,CSP,BSP, CT,SV,SS (initially rejected for limited commercial value but accepted after resubmission after telling the reviewer that this picture was selling well on IS !)
Rejected :FT ( type of photograph), 123RF (Minimal commercial value)
Birds on wire
Accepted: FT, IS,123RF,CT,CSP,SV
Rejected: DT (lack of composition + poor optical performance),LO (similar image already submitted in the same batch),BSP (Poor composition or cropped subject ),SS (Noise, film grain, over-sharpening, or artifacts at full size)
Chasing the mouse
Accepted: FT,123RF,CSP,SV
Rejected :CT (underexposed),DT(lack of composition,lack of concept,poor lighting setup poor contrast or incorrect exposure.The area occupied by the isolated subject is too small, and by cropping the resulting image is under 3 Megapixels),123RF (Minimal commercial value), IS (overall composition of this file's lighting could be improved),LO (Focus needs to be sharper on the cat),BSP (Blurriness, sorry.. a little too blurry),SS (Your image is not in focus or focus is not located where we feel it works best)
Measuring
Accepted: 123RF,FT,IS,CSP,DT,LO,SV
Rejected: CT (over/under exposure), BSP (Reason: Graininess/Noise),
SS (noise,film grain,artifacts,or pixalation at 100%).
Men at work
Accepted: 123RF,FT,CT,CSP,LO,IS,SV,SS
Rejected: DT (Poor lighting setup, poor contrast or incorrect exposure),BSP (Blurriness, sorry.. a little too blurry)
To summarize....
123RF(6/6) SV(6/6) CSP(6/6) FT(5/6) IS (5/6) CT(4/6) LO(4/6) DT(3/6) BSP(2/6) SS(2/6)
Even if this pool of images is relatively small, results of the reviews confirm some previous observations : reviews across agencies are not very consistent and some pictures are rejected for the wrong reasons (lack of composition,commercial value).
BSP is particular is not consistent at all, approving pictures with some noise and rejecting noise free pictures.It is also the agency with the lowest approval rate (2/6).
123RF, CSP, SV were the only agencies to accept all 6 pictures, IS is always very picky about noise but accepted 5/6.
It is worth noting also that review time was extremely different from few minutes to few weeks, SV and BSP being the the slowest of all 9 sites !
Also 123RF and LO are by far the easiest sites to contribute and IS is the more tedious.
This first experiment do not stop here but will continue for few months to see how these pictures are selling !
My bet is on the picture entitled "measuring", what is yours ?
My referral links
Fotolia 
