8 reasons why I have not submitted to VectorStock.com

VectorStock.com has been around for many years. It sells nothing, but vector. Many top vector artists have submitted to VectorStock simply because they do not have better options. They need to generate their income as much as possible.

However, I for once have not submitted anything to VectorStock because of the 8 reasons below.

1. VectorStock had denied my application as a contributor... twice. I have submitted the below two vectors in two different occasions, and their response is...

ARTIST UPLOAD NOT GRANTED.
Thank you for your sample submission.
We have reviewed your sample and do not feel your work is suitable for the VectorStock library at this time.
You may re-submit a new sample for reviewing if you feel you can illustrate a different style.
Visit the FAQ for more information.
Best Regards
VectorStock Team

Below are the two vectors I submitted to VectorStock on different occasions and both have been denied for not suitable.

2. I believe my sales will be poor and unworthy. Although, this page (most download) shows us that there are indeed sales, but the performance of their new files are utterly disappointing. Take a look at their latest vectors and browse the pagination up to as many as you can. You will see that 99% of the files have 0 download. I don't mind if older files will eventually sell, but try to browse up to page 1000, and you will still be seeing 0 download for 99% of the files.

3. They sell us cheap. For a start, you earns 25% of your sales. All your files are priced at only USD1. That means that if you sell a vector, you only make USD0.25. Mind you that this is not even a subscription rate download, but a totally on-demand download. You cannot compare this rate to site like Shutterstock because Shutterstock sells at least 1000 times more than a low earners like this.

4. VectorStock uploading process is lame. They want you to reduce your artwork size to 380 x 400. Ohh, please, you are actually troubling ten thousand artists out there just because your programmer does not know how to write a script to resize a JPEG for the website preview. I reckon they rejected my application earlier was because of this reason. Yes, I didn't create my artwork in 380 x 400, and if this was really the reason you rejected me, at least you should mention properly why am I rejected instead of saying "I feel this is not suitable".

5. Because they are selling our vector so cheaply, I feel that they are luring "thieves" into buying our vectors and then putting it up for free at file hosting site. The reason why these "thieves" put our vector for free in file sharing site is because of money. However, I will not discuss this matter today as it will take one whole blog entry to explain. "Thieves" will most likely target on cheapest stock agency and buy from them so that their earning margin is higher.

6. They don't have PR (personal relationship). When is the last time you heard about them saying anything at all on the Internet? They don't even have a news column and forum in their site for us to discuss their site related matter and doesn't even bother what everyone is saying about them outside. These are some forum threads about VectorStock and I don't see VectorStock sending a representative to comment.

http://www.microstockgroup.com/illustration-general/anyone-using-vectorstock-com/

http://www.microstockgroup.com/new-sites-general/new-vector-only-stock-site/msg17099

When you don't send someone to comment and to clear things up, you are basically losing your creditability. Take a look at Graphicleftovers, they are good at PR. I have recently wrote a review about Graphicleftovers, and they really care enough to send someone to comment and to clarify things up. I love them.

7. No marketing effort. I can't see their advertisement anywhere in the Internet.

8. No site upgrade. You never ever see the site improve or degrade before. Do they even have a team of programmers? Have they given up?

As a conclusion, I have decided that I will not upload to them. If you have anything to say about Vectorstock, please comment on the comment box below.

CanStockPhoto Review (The New Big 4)

Despite the ugly and only 125 pixel square banner it has, CanStockPhoto should be one of the Big 4, not Dreamstime. The ever popular microstock industry's jargon, the Big 4 consists of Shutterstock, IStockPhoto, Fotolia, and Dreamstime have always been the talk of all vector contributors in the world because of their success.

Nearly over a year in microstock industry, I realize that Dreamstime sales is actually very bad compares to the other 3. Just for a record, I have made a total of $482.69  in about 11 months at Dreamstime having 233 vectors with Dreamstime. On the other hand, I have 118 vectors with IStockPhoto and I make over $400.00 every month at IStockPhoto. Apart from the bad sales, Dreamstime vector uploading process is the craziest and longest among all.

Enough about Dreamstime, let's get back to the main topic. Yes, CanStockPhoto should be one of the Big 4 because the sales are much better than expected. I made about $100.00 per month with 250 vectors at CanStockPhoto. Apart from the easy uploading process, CanStockPhoto loves all my works. I have 100% acceptance rate at CanStockPhoto. They values my work and they sell them with a good price. Every sale averaged between $1.50 to $5.00 at CanStockPhoto. For a comparison, majority of my sales at Dreamstime ranges from from a pity $0.24 to $0.35.

Like many other stock agencies, CanStockPhoto should revamp their web design. It is mediocre. Period. I have involve in the Microstock industry for nearly a year now, and I have only joined CanStockPhoto in last 2 months because I have doubt with CanStockPhoto. The design of the website looks unprofessional and it feels incomplete. On the other hand, I must give praise to their programmers and marketing department because the functionality and the sales of the site are much better than anyone can expect.

CanStockPhoto - Mediocre web design

In my opinion, no bottom stock agencies should sell cheap. You simply cannot win the pricing war anymore with Shutterstock. Many CEOs thought that by lowering the price to $1 per vector would gain them competitive advantage, but this is wrong and it is proven wrong. Vector pricing should be about $5.00 to $15.00. Money earned from this should be spent on marketing. Come to the end of the day, it is all about exposure of your company. IStockPhoto sells our vector in an expensive way (about $15.00) and with the money earned, they can have even more aggressive marketing. Buyers who can only spent a pity $1.00 per vector are most probably not someone who will actually buy again because they are poor. If they cannot spend $10.00 per vector, they probably will not spend $1.00 per vector. They would rather download the vectors from illegal site than spending $1.00 for it. Do you want to sell shoes at South Africa or do you want to sell shoes to Roger Federer? Think!!!

CanStockPhoto does sell our vectors cheap in subscription package, but in a way, CanStockPhoto is able to attract its buyer to buy a lot in credits. I have got a couple of Extended License in just 2 months at CanStockPhoto and that is something.

To summarize this, I think CanStockPhoto is in the right direction. I hope they keep it up and hopefully one day later it can be truly recognized as one of the new Big 4. Until then, good luck to CanStockPhoto and I wish this company all the best.

Graphicleftovers Review

I have become a contributor for Graphicleftovers for 3 months now. Uploaded 155 vectors there, and I have made 6 sales with a total $18.72. You can set your own pricing for your items. Graphicleftovers pays you 52% of the sales made. This is a very good deal. Furthermore, the uploading process is one the easiest.

There are many great comments about Graphicleftovers if you search over the Internet. But to be honest, I think this site needs some improvements. I wonder why the team in Graphicleftovers has never thought of doing something simple to improve the overall sales performance of the site.

I got a huge number of views (over 1000) in the first 10 days when I uploaded my vectors to Graphicleftovers. Then, in the next 3 months, I only have about a thousand views. There is no longer sales in my vectors and there are reasons why this happened.

Graphicleftovers does not have a good search engine. Period. I do not know for sure how the default search works, but basically, you can only filter your search by

Vectors/Images
GL Collection/GL Personalities
Vector Price ($1 - $20)

Where is the search for:

Relevency
Newest
Most Popular
Most View
Most Download

These are some very basic features a search engine must have, and Graphicleftovers only program some useless database query. This is the very reason why your images hardly get exposures even if they are good. Of course, they do have this GL Collection where your vector is handpicked by the inspectors, but who are them to judge whether a vector is good or bad? Beauty is in the eyes of the buyers. A good vector means more downloads/view/popular and those are the necessary key elements of how to sort your search results.

More annoyingly, the search result page only returns you with 20 results per page. This is undoubtedly difficult to navigate the search results. Graphicleftovers should show at least 100 results per page. Apart from that, they should show the search results in full screen, and not in a stingy 960 pixel width division. We are in the modern era where most of the people already have a big screen. Take a look at all those successful sites like Shutterstock, IStockPhoto, Dreamstime, and Fotolia. They all have full screen in their search result page. This is not rocket scientist, and every web designers can design a liquid layout.

Stingy 960px width and only 20 search results per page.

All and all, I am pretty upset with Graphicleftovers as they do not even have the two most fundamentals feature in their site. I must say that although Crestock sales is as bad, but at least they have push the site features to a very high standard one.

I hope Graphicleftovers read my blog, and they can pay attention to the two features I mentioned above - Search Filters + A Liquid Web Design.

GraphicRiver Rejection is Too High (for me)

I have been demoralized by GraphicRiver rejections due to their new standard of quality. I am doing not bad there, ranking 67 for total sales among all other artists, and I have only been there for a little over 6 months. Of course, the quality of my works are not top notch, but my portfolios are basically useful in the eyes of buyers - at least I think so. Buyers will buy stuffs that are more simple, useful and easy to work with. I have seen beautiful complex artworks that generate much lesser sales than expected.

Enough of the rant, and let me show you why I have finally given up on submitting new vectors to GraphicRiver. Below are some of the rejections I have gotten from GraphicRiver due to low quality.

I have to admit that it has been annoying to keep getting rejections after rejections, and sometimes I felt that they dislike me for personal reasons - yes, this is of course not the truth since a lot other designers has been getting rejection too, but it still hurt bad that you know you can earn so much more if they would have accepted those.

What GraphicRiver has been accepting recently are mostly cartoon characters, which we all know that are tough to produce and hardly any sales. Let me show you some example below from GraphicRiver.

http://s3.envato.com/files/1542754/1.jpg

Amazing artwork. Super, I must say.

2 sales in first 18 days.

http://s3.envato.com/files/1528359/retroframes-preview.jpg

Simple artwork.

5 sales in first 24 days.

http://s3.envato.com/files/1548946/1.jpg

Cute stuff and complex beautiful characters.

0 sales in first 16 days.

http://s3.envato.com/files/1568426/template.jpg

Simple silhouette.

4 sales in first 9 days.

As you can see from the above examples, simple silhouettes and common artworks tend to generate more sales than complex one. Not only this, but the time used into producing such a high quality artwork is so much more than simple silhouettes and yet the sales is much lower. We are in a business here so we need to factor in the time and revenue.

The truth is, GraphicRiver thinks that 18000 vectors/psd is a lot in their collection. I hope that they are more greedy and lower their standards to accept more vectors. I may be wrong in this case, and who am I to judge their direction since they have successfully build the Envato marketplace into a very unique site.

To me, GraphicRiver is not a microstock site. It is not a microstock site because they don't have enough vectors (stocks) for a designer to choose. Simply search for the keyword "kitchen" and it will only return you with 25 results.

I am rather disappointed in this situation because I know GraphicRiver is a gold mine, and yet I am unable to capitalize it due to my current skills. Having said that, I still have to give up on GraphicRiver and concentrate on other more lenient site like Shutterstock which LOVES ALL MY VECTORS and generate at least 10 times more sales than GraphicRiver does.

I hope that there would be a day that GraphicRiver suddenly wake up and realize that graphic designers need something more simple to work with, and not complex cute cartoon that can only fit into a story book. What so unique about stock site like Shutterstock is that they simply have EVERYTHING you need even though more than half of it are rubbish, but yet, there are still thousands of good one to choose from, right?

Tutorial: How to Draw a Clock Face with Adobe Illustrator?

Drawing a clock with Adobe Illustrator can be very difficult if you do not know the trick and technique. Here, in this tutorial, I will explain to you how to do it the simple way. 

First, draw 2 rectangles like the below. They must have the exact X coordinate. These rectangles will represent the hour of a clock.

Group them and Rotate it by 30 degree. Remember to use Copy function instead of just rotating it.

To repeat the rotation and Copy, go to Object > Transform > Transform Again. Repeat this until you get all the 12 rectangles.

Now, repeat the above steps for the minutes. Instead of rotating it by 30 degree, you should rotate this by 5 degree because these rectangles will represent the minutes. You may want to use a small rectangle for a better visual.

After you have successfully adding the minutes, you should now put the numbers. See the below for example. Remember, the number (text) should be Aligned Center. To do this, go to Window > Type > Paragraph.

 Using the same method, rotate the group by 30 degree to get the below.

Change all the numbers accordingly.

Now, you will have to rotate back the numbers to straight view. In order to do that, you will have to rotate them manually one by one using Object > Transform > Rotate. The below list may help you.

Hour 1 = 30 degree
Hour 2 = 60 degree
Hour 3 = 90 degree
Hour 4 = 120 degree
Hour 5 = 150 degree
Hour 6 = 180 degree
Hour 7 = 210 degree
Hour 8 = 240 degree
Hour 9 = 270 degree
Hour 10 = 300 degree
Hour 11 = 330 degree

After you have rotate them, you may notice that the alignment of the numbers and the clock are not accurate.

So, what you can do is to Expand the numbers into object. In order to do that, select all the numbers and go to Object > Expand. Once all your number is Expanded and Grouped, align them accordingly with the feature Window > Align. I believe you have no problem doing this, right?

To add the hands of the clock, draw the below. Yes, together with the blue circle outside the clock.

The usage of the blue circle is for you to rotate the hands. How you are going to do this is to Select both the circle and the hands - and Rotate them together.

My tutorial on how to draw a clock face ends here. If you have any question, please write in the comment :)

Below is an example of a vector watch I draw for IStockPhoto. For the details of pricing and number of downloads, please go to http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup.php?id=15216729