As development progresses for the picNiche contributor toolbar, which reads basic earnings/portfolio data from the various microstock agencies, I face a dilemma, and I need your help to resolve it 🙂
I regularly receive requests to retrieve more information from the microstock agency websites, the most common are for data to generate detailed RPI (return per image) figures, to generate monthly earnings reports, and to analyse the image topics which perform best/worst for the contributor, all of these cross-agency. Along with other requests to allow for better portfolio management, charting and analysis….
Direct Link: Microstock agencies: Help me to help you!
Tags: agencies, analysis, collaboration, collaborative, data, development, growth, help, information, microstock, photography, picNiche, portability, services, sharing, stock, study, third-party, together, working
picNiche Blog 
January 20, 2010 at 9:08 am
PicNiche is a fantastic tool and anything that can help enhance the information for microstockers such as myself can only be of benefit for all participants in the chain.
Sadly I have no sway over the agencies bobbigmac but I just want to show my support for you and PicNiche. Some of my best performing uploads were produced using the information provided by PicNiche and I couldn’t imagine operating without it.
Great work and I sincerely hope that your able to achieve even more with this request.
January 20, 2010 at 6:04 pm
I would like to thank PicNiche for what has been already achieved. I use the tool every day to focus my projects, so any improvement will be fantastic.
If there was any way I/we could help to improve the system, I/we would no hesitate.
Thanks for a fantastic site.
Antonius
February 2, 2010 at 12:32 am
In advertising you have to present the idea from the buyers point of view.
A skill that is not easily applied or recognized. If artists knew exactly what the clients wanted we would have the subject ready for them = more sales. (period)
I work full time and take grad classes. If a topic does not get over 300 score on PicNiches, I don’t invest the time in making the imagery.
Providing This info would pay off for the stock pic companies. The one that provides CSV….show how providing this information is directly reflected in their sales. Present the idea from the stock co point of view. I find this information critical as it is now. THANK YOU!!
April 28, 2010 at 5:46 am
[…] This is the really tricky part, and I discussed this aspect in detail a few months ago on the Microstock agencies: Help me to help you! […]
May 26, 2010 at 4:48 am
[…] Contributor APIs with the new picNiche Agency-Kit By bobbigmac A few months ago, I outlined the issues faced by agencies and contributors when trying to improve the way the submission process works in my post: Microstock agencies: Help me to help you!. […]
August 16, 2010 at 4:41 am
Hi folks,
I have just stumbled onto this site.
It sounds to me that the wider the participation… the greater the benefits for all.
The project sounds good…. what is the down-side?
Cheers… Ray.
August 16, 2010 at 4:50 am
Heya Ray
It’s a pretty big subject, when I introduced the agencyKit to the agencies I sent them this more detailed info:
https://picniche.com/agencykit/Benefits_of_Providing_a_Contributor_API.html
If you’re interested in reading more, that’s a good place to start 🙂
In brief, it costs an agency to setup an API, and it looks like it’s only likely to happen when the cost of people grey-hatting their site (screen-scrapes etc) is more than the cost of setting up an API.
A lot of agencies bang-on about how they have an api, which in reality means they have a buyer-api which is just a thin wrapper to their search code. Very few agencies have yet to provide any API-based service to their contributors.
Cheers
Bob