But until they don’t offer FTP and ‘proper’ IPTC keywords* it’s not worth the time in my opinion.

*there are many different styles in IPTC synthax and they only accept comma separated words, while semicolumn separated or one per line are not working

Well, it’s been ten months (time actually does fly!) and I just wandered back to this post. About a month ago (roughly April 2008) I decided to give SnapVillage another try. The first thing I discovered after much trial and error was that it was impossible to complete the upload process at all using Mac Safari (probably v3.1.x). So, I decided to give give Firefox a whirl (currently v2.0.0.14) and that made all the difference. However, the upload process is tedious as it’s an HTTP-based system allowing only five images at a time. That in and of itself is not horrible, but I discovered that if I let the upload go, switch to an app to get some work done, then go back, there’s a great danger of the session timing out with me needing to start the process from scratch. So now I find myself continually checking switching from whatever Adobe app I’m working in back to Firefox every few minutes to be sure I don’t time out.

I had occasion to contact SnapVillage about an issue and although it took probably two weeks, they responded and actually asked me some questions about the upload process, how I might feel about alternate upload methods, etc. (which I thought was nice of them to do). My response was that anything browser-based is tedious and ties up the browser, so FTP would be far preferable.

Anyway, while it seems a bit a risk at this point to invest a huge amount of time uploading to an as-yet unproven site (they are still in “beta”) I’ve got about 50 images accepted with a grand total of 1 download at $0.30.

Also on the upside–for my ego–is that they seem to accept pretty much whatever is uploaded. I haven’t determined yet if that will change and how it might ultimately reflect on the overall perception of quality on the site, but it’s nice for now to only get acceptance notices.

I’ll post back again. Hopefully it won’t be 10 more months.

Yes, I considered creating a forum but there already exist a few excellent forums on the topic of microstock. Seek them out and sign up. Microstock Group in particular has a very vibrant and helpful community.

- Lee

Thanks for your response. I’m still waiting. Have you thought about adding a forum section to this blog? It seems that with your design as it stands right now, we can only really comment on news that you have posted. Plus I think it would nice to have all our posts in one area (not that I have that many yet, just a thought).

I haven’t had any photos reviewed at SnapVillage yet either. They generated a lot of publicity with their launch so they’ve been swamped with submissions. They’re hiring extra reviewers to help get the queue under control.

Review times go up and down at all websites. Some show you the number of photos in their queue so you can get an idea of the wait times. Sometimes you can be lucky and have your photos reviewed immediately, even before you’ve finished keywording the next one! It all depends. We tend to submit and forget, focussing our attention on creating and uploading more images.

Be sure to let us know how you go with SnapVillage!

- Lee