Shutterstock Photographer Forum :: View topic

dwiedemann · Joined: 19 Feb 2007 Posts: 60 Location: Brazil

Hello fellow Shutterstockers.

I've recently signed up at iSyndica and I've found that it's an amazing service for stock photographers.

I did find it odd that we can't see Shutterstock's stats on it and that disappointed me a little. I contacted them and they said it's beyond their power (mainly legal) and it depends on Shutterstock's.

Does anyone else use iSyndica and think there should be a way to fetch Shutterstock's stats? If so, let them know so something might be done! The more, the merrier! (:

Thanks a lot!
http://twitter.com/Dan_Wiedemann

lolo30 · Joined: 22 Oct 2006 Posts: 53

+1

I've been using Isyndica also for few months now and it will be great that SS gets on board too!

aynia · Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 5:54 am

This looks like a very interesting service.

I don't upload many photos because I find the whole thing very tedious and time consuming, and I haven't joined a whole lot of agencies because of it.

There are 2 on my list there. Perhaps it's time to join some more.

Thanks for the link Daniel. (it would be good if shutterstock joined the list or whatever way it works)

dwiedemann · Joined: 19 Feb 2007 Posts: 60 Location: Brazil

nicemonkey · Joined: 14 Jan 2006 Posts: 81 Location: Southend

I really like iSyndica as well and with the shutterstock stats it would be a much more useful tool.

loopall · Joined: 31 Jul 2007 Posts: 18 Location: Ukraine

+1
Isyndica is a very good service, but it would be much better with Shutterstock stats there.

nightowlza · Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 12:29 pm

+1
I also use iSyndica and would love shutterstock to come to the party and make reporting possible and maybe even direct uploading from iSyndica

anibaltrejo · Joined: 14 Aug 2009 Posts: 377 Location: Barcelona

Since ive signed up with http://vds.isyndica.com/Affiliate/AnibalTrejo, ive improved a lot my workflow.
Would be great if we can include ShutterStock within their analytics!
Thanks in advance to make reporting avaiable!

www.anibaltrejo.com

apa · Joined: 14 Aug 2008 Posts: 22 Location: Denmark

Submitting to just one site just doesn't cut it. If you are serious about making money in microstock you need to submit your photos to as many sites as possible.

iSyndica has made a world of difference to me and without them I really don't think I'd bother to upload anywhere now. Also iSyndica has made everything much more fun - with combined analytics and a lot of other features that simplify the process of selling your photos.

Come on Shutterstock - like the rest of the industry has!

Anders Peter Amsnæs

Arctic Stock Images

pongiluppi · Joined: 30 Dec 2006 Posts: 65 Location: Spain

vaclavek · Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 1:35 pm

Hi, I'm using iSyndica too, it is a great tool. If you want to know more about iSyndica, you can read my review here: iSyndica - easy multiple upload on several microstock sites. It's an old review, from this time the iSyndica tool improved it's services.

aussie · Joined: 25 Oct 2005 Posts: 1 Location: Buenos Aires

I can understand Shutterstock's point of view on this issue. iSyndica requires a contributor's Shutterstock password in order to work, which is a big issue, even though almost all other agencies deal with it. The real solution is Open-Auth technology (of which I actually know very little) which allows one website to authorize another website to interact without requiring the authentication details to be passed from one to the other.

However, the dynamics of the market don't make this look too likely. Contributors are many, and they're all very keen to get their photos onto the agencies with big buyer bases like Shutterstock. But the competition for buyers is fierce, so naturally Shutterstock is focused on developing systems to better serve buyers, not contributors. This is obviously great for us contributors as it brings in more sales, but at the expense of the convenience of integration with tools like iSyndica. (acknowledging that "more sales" is only beneficial when they're from new buyers, not buyers converting from other sites where a contributor may also license their photos)

So the dynamics aren't quite working in our favor on this particular issue, but I still think it's worthwhile for us to politely register our interest with Shutterstock so that they can at least take our preferences into consideration during their decision making.

komarinasia · Joined: 02 Aug 2007 Posts: 181 Location: at my desk

I've been using iSyndica for a few months too, it just simplifies everything, as everything is one place. You can see which images have been sent to which sites, u can adjust your keywords easily, upload images just once and see analytics of pretty much all your sites, uh hum, well almost all. It would be so good if shutterstock were on there too.

photohome · Joined: 08 Jun 2006 Posts: 4 Location: QLD, Australia

I know there was a lot of big news in microstock in 2009, but for the contributor isyndica is definitely on my list as one of this years top stories, since June my upload time is something like a 10th of what it was. and having (most of) the stats in one place is great.

I have already written my thoughts on APIs at http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=60925 when the captcha was implemented in May

aussie - I agree with you that the focus is on buyers who are the main and most important thing, but there are many reasons that creating an API to allow access to shutterstock stats and thumbnails etc can be of benefit to both contributors and buyers. Opening things up like that lets people access data in a controlled way, that reduces scraping and allows lots of novel uses to be made. flickr don't make money with their API, in fact I guess it costs them a lot to host it but without that API flickr would loose a huge amount of 'advertising'. You see flickr all over the place because of it. I realise that there are some big differences between flickr and a stock agency but there are a couple of other micro agencies who's images you see on 3rd party stock search sites because they have an api for all that to happen. If I wanted to set up another site to search lots of agencies at once and send buyers to the image they liked who do you think would get left out? and if I was able to access stats to see which of those images had sold the most or was from a photographer with lots of sales? or was most popular in the past month, sold the most in Germany or was from a German photographer? or had not sold at all? Opening up is useful for sellers AND buyers.

dwiedemann · Joined: 19 Feb 2007 Posts: 60 Location: Brazil