Pure Reviews

Cutcaster has never looked more like a professional stock site then they do now.  Over the holidays Cutcaster rolled out a massive update to the site.  If you have not been there in a while you will be shocked with its new look and color scheme.  First up the site is much faster and a lot easier to read.  They have still have the bid option on buying images, but have also expanded with subscription sales and pay per use.  As far as contributors go you will be happy to see that they have reorganized the upload page, your personal profile and basically everything else.  The best part is everything makes sense and is easy to find.  Hopefully this drastic improvement will lead to stronger site viewership and sales.  Great job to the Cutcaster team.

Shutterstock is building bridges to Bigstock as a way increase image submissions.  They are starting to roll out a test program for their most active Shutterstock users that will allow them to just upload once to Shutterstock and have the images avalible for download also at Bigstock.  The idea is to save photographers type on submissions and increase the image volume at Bigstock.  This is currently in test phase only and is not open to everyone yet.  Right now Shutterstock still plans to keep the sites indpendant as SS is marketed to subscriptions and Bigstock is marketed pay per image uses.  See the write-up below . We’re excited to tell you about a new program we’re offering to a select group of Shutterstock contributors. We’re calling it the Bridge to Bigstock . Here’s what we’re doing and why we think it’s a win for everyone. As you may know, Shutterstock and Bigstock are two stock image sites owned by Shutterstock. They’re run as separate bran...

Here is the chart for January 2011.  Overall the month was down quite a bit compared to a year ago.  Lets hope this is not a trend. iStock , Shutterstock , and 123RF where the top players this month.  Dreamstime had strong referral sales, glad someone was selling some images.  Click the image below to enlarge.

Fotolia has rolled out several updates for January, which is phase I of multiple changes they are planning on doing this year.  Some of the new features include faster search engine, recency filter, negative search option, show more option button, etc.  See below a for a brief description of the updates.  For contributors a less known change was to royalty, which you can find at the following link for the new structuring (yes it was a pay cut for most).  New Royalty Rates We've been working hard on our search engine, and are proud to announce phase 1 of a series of new features. These features were at the top of the request list from the community: Recency filter : aimed at filterin...

iStockphoto officially is accepting editorial images as of today.  So open the flood gates and start uploading your best content.  If you have not signed up for iStock then sign up here . iStock is gearing up to offer files for Editorial Use later this month – so hurry and submit your work. Uploads will be accepted starting today, and inspections will start soon (we'll let you know when). Just upload like normal and click the box that says "Editorial Use Only." Make sure you know how to write a good caption. You can learn more about writing them here . In a few weeks it'll be out there for all the world to search and download.