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Kachoozie.com

I had added photos to both kachoozie.net, and kachoozie.com starting a week or so ago. I followed all directions that I found to upload and sell them on kachoozie.com. After all this time, the site still says my photos are pending. I am wondering if there are other obligations I must meet to get full benifits of the site, or if I must pay to make this work. I have sent 3 messages to Terry, and have gotten no response on the matter. I removed all photos from kachoozie.net to insure there weren't any that could just be copied in full resolution from the site. I may adjust them in the future to add back on (.net), but for now I would just like to be able to get things going on kachoozie.com. Any help is GREATLY appreciated. Thank you. J.Hevenor

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Permalink Reply by James Hevenor on October 5, 2009 at 2:07pm: I just received a response to my questions. Appearently it can take upto 3 weeks to get pending photos approved. I believe it is a very new site with perhaps only one or two people running it. I was feeling very much the same as you do in regards to trying other sites. I love photography and I take it very seriously considering the potential that exists in a site like this. The commission structure here is great in comparison to other sites, and other sites like istock are extremely hard to get into, with their restrictions and guidelines. Check into it by all means. You are not bound to the kachoozie sites in any way. I suggest seeing what works best for you. I think I am going to keep trying to work with this site to see if it is legit. I am withholding my best shots until I determine the validity of the claims made. As to whether anyone has sold a photo yet, I cannot say at this moment. I removed all of my photos from the .net site to keep them from being able to be freely downloaded by just anyone. I severely suggest resizing anything you put on there to a size that is hardly beneficial for anyone to steal. It seems the only photos approved on the .com site are flower pics which it says specifically not to add, and photos of people and things one would deem hardly saleable for any asthetic value. I wish I knew more so I could be of some help, but we are in the same boat. Good luck, and I wish you the best in your endeavours as it seems you have nice photos to contribute.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Terry Runion on October 6, 2009 at 8:03am: Hey James, I have responded to your inquiries, sometimes it may take me a few days to get back to you, but I have a policy about returning emails, and that is to respond to all of them , no matter what, the only exception is for obvious spam, there is nothing worse to me than companies who don't address email .

Hopefully this will help. The .net site is really like a place to gather, get feedback on your images , show off some great shots, there is no e-commerce installed here to sell pics, pretty much this site is for information, as is digitalgranny. Digitalgranny is more about tips and tricks and is a blog only. There are more sites , and more coming, if you would like to know what that is all about , you can PM me, and I will share the strategy with you.

You are both correct , both sites are pretty new, they have been in the works for a few years, and due to some really bad developers we were set back in regards to development time. We are working with a great developer now and that is going well. One thing that I think is important, is our current developer has implemented a backup system for .com which means the over 100,000 images are backed up nightly , this may not seen like a big deal but I assure you it would be if anything went haywire.

Here is another blog that explains more http://www.kachoozie.net/profiles/blogs/why-kachoozienet-and .

As far as site sales they have been consistent, so that is good, we have been getting hammered with signups for new photographers, every day, and that means an abundance of images to approve. We have multiple folks who work on the queue, it is not just tone or two. If your flower images were approved you should be very proud, since we have pretty much stopped accepting those , the next category will be beaches and sunsets. This is not a commentary on anyone's skills , however we need a well rounded portfolio for designers to choose from .

I would like to let everyone know the things the approvers look for in all submittals:

Focus ( You would be amazed at all the out of focus shots we get, some folks think this is artsy, but for what we are doing it is not acceptable, I mean, who wants to purchase and out of focus image for their brochure? )

Lighting/Exposure
No Spots/ or Sensor spots ( I saw some the other day that were obviously bad scans of old pics and you could see spots on the images)

Model or Property Releases- If a person or some sort of artwork is being shot we need a release

Keywords, Categorization- In the beginning we were pretty generous with this, and anyone who submitted images, we have dedicated folks that go through and update categories and keywords, with the onslaught of images being submitted, we simply could not continue this practice since it quickly became cost prohibitive. We are also working on a new categories page, so images categorization is huge .

Finally, there are some images we accept that the other stock photo folks would not, like photoshop designs, artworks etc, that one my friend will have to wait for another day since that is our main business plan !; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Steven Love on October 14, 2009 at 8:42am: I haven't yet.
But then again this is a fairly new site.
I've been with IStockPhoto and Fotolia for several years and it took me 6 months with both of them before I made my first sales.

Given the state of the general economy it might take some time and patience.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by James Hevenor on October 14, 2009 at 9:15am: "This could be a great place to get in on the ground floor". If the other sites are popular, it is because enough people stuck around and then brought visitors. Patience, and encouragement, as well as feedback to the producers of the site will
be what make this a worth while venture.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Terry Runion on October 14, 2009 at 7:15pm: James, it totally is, since in our business plan we are planning on implementing a very unique way to sell images.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Terry Runion on October 14, 2009 at 7:14pm: Yes, Dan we have had sales.

There are a few trains of thought on the Microstock photo industry, there are those who say you can't make any money until you have volume, and then there are those who say you must have quality. I think it is a little of both, quality, quantity, and most importantly images of what people are looking to purchase. So images of flowers or pets , while they are great there are an abundance of them, my recommendation is to look at the big sites like corbis, or istockphoto.com and on most of those sites you can see what types of images are selling the best, then you can cater your images to those topics.

Finally , while it is nice to upload images and count on the traffic being driven to the site for sales, it is important for you to drive sales as well, put links to your work in your signature line on emails, add it on facebook and other sites, every little bit counts.

Think of it this way, the Internet is like an ocean, and a website is like a pebble in the huge sea, when you put up links to the site it is like building shipping lanes to the pebble which with enough shipping lanes, will become a destination, and a bigger pebble, then hopefully an island. ;} ter; ▶ Reply to This