Written by astoner on 31 March 2008
March was a pretty dry month for downloads, only got two from Fotolia. I was successful at getting a couple more pictures approved at most of the sites. I got some images approved on Dreamstime which is a new site for me. I’m really trying to focus on getting good images that will sell as microstock images. Everything I’ve been reading says you can’t really make any predictions until you get a portfolio of 100 images, so that’s my goal, especially for IStockPhoto.
My average portfolio size is currently 43 images, and that doesn’t include the sites I don’t have any images on yet.
Allen
Tags: downloads, microstock, Photography
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Written by astoner on 30 March 2008
Well Bentley over at RedWormComposting has inspired me, that and my boys bugging me to check out their worm bins. It’s actually been quite a while since I’ve checked out the boys bins so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was afraid they would be dried out and all the worms dead. What I found was the opposite, they were actually soaking wet, and almost decomposed down enough that the worms couldn’t get out of the standing water. And I was happily surprised to find some worms in the bins.
My older boy’s bin was the first one I checked out. The contents had settled down to about half the original size, but I quickly found some worms. The final count in this bin was 2 adults found and 7 juveniles, so they did reproduce some. I did see at least one cocoon, and I’m betting there were more but I wasn’t really looking for them.
The second bin was my younger sons. I was a little disappointed to only find two adults and no juveniles. I think this one may have just been too wet.
These two bins were in the small clear snack food containers so in the process of searching the bins I moved them each over to a bucket. The larger bin should enable the worms to hopefully find an area in the bin that is to their liking.
The final bin that I checked through was my bin which has been in a bucket the entire three months. I only found one adult, but did find 7 juveniles.
I may have set the bins back a little by my digging through them but hopefully they’ll all make a come back and continue to grow. My biggest concern is the bin with only two adults, hopefully there were some cocoons or small worms that I missed.
While doing my digging I did check on my main bin and found it quite active with LOTS of worms and much of the contents in the bin converted to worm castings.
Allen
Posted in Vermicomposting | No Comments »
Written by astoner on 24 March 2008
Well I finally got my email Welcome Back to Shutterstock, meaning it was time for attempt number four to get approved to what is widely considered the most profitable microstock web site. The selection of the first five photos was relatively easy, I was just going to use ones that had been approved previously. Counting my most recent fourth attempt the images have been approved 3/3, 3/4, 3/3, 3/4 and 4/4 time. Three of them have been approved every time and the other two have done well.
Three of the last five have been accepted at other microstock sites, here’s my favorite, it even has a favorable review on IStockPhoto. Unfortunately none of them were approved by Shutterstock.com so it will be another month before I can attempt again. Hopefully that will give me a chance to get some more photos that may get accepted.
My biggest problem appears to be ‘Poor Lighting’, which on some I can understand and control, but some of the outdoors one I think might be a little difficult to control. Over the next month I’d like to concentrate on getting some more marketable microstock photos which should hopefully assist in me getting approved at ShutterStock, to say nothing of getting more downloads at other sites.
Here’s a nice FAQ about ShutterStock which gives quite a bit of useful information.
Allen
Tags: microstock, Photography
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Written by astoner on 20 March 2008
It doesn’t look like I’m going to get much use out of this window unit much anymore this year. With today being the first day of spring there probably aren’t too many more cold days left to see how well this will work. And unfortunately I don’t even have it done yet. It looks like it will have to be used next year.
I’m also not sure that the unit isn’t too wide by about a quarter of an inch for the window. I haven’t actually tried putting it out the window yet, but by my measurements I may wind up shaving down the one side to get it to fit.
Allen
Tags: renewable energy, Sustainable
Posted in renewable energy | No Comments »
