You’ve Been Accepted

Congratulations!  You’ve been accepted at iStockphoto.com as a contributor.  Now read this article, so you know what your next step is.

1. Acceptance:  Go back and read your acceptance email.  Now, read it again.  This will be important later.
2. FAQ: Not suprisingly, iStockphoto has an FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions).  It’s called that, because a lot of people ask the same questions, so it’s likely yours is there.  You should go read the FAQ.  Read through all the FAQs, listed on the right.  Want to know what a lighbox is?  How to get paid?  It’s in there.  Because it’s something frequently asked.
3. Model Releases: Did you read the FAQ on model releases?  Good.  Toss that bit about “When do I need a release” out of your brain.  It’s old data.  Yes, we know you got a rejection for a non-identifiable face.  Instead read this iStockphoto article about when a model release is required.  Especially the bottom part about context.  In the future, when you have more than one release, you will need to stitch them together into one .jpg file to upload.  That’s how it works with multiple releases.
4. Filling your portolio:  You need to upload your content.  You can do that from the upload page at iStockphoto .  If you don’t upload content, you won’t sell any, so don’t come back in two years asking why your 15 images of feet aren’t paying your mortgage yet.
5. Keywording:  iStockphoto keywording is not the same as keywording on other sites, because we use a Controlled Vocabulary that requires disambiguation for terms with multiple meanings.  Read this iStock article, or this one by some guy.  Also, check out the sticky posts in the keywording forum.  You don’t want to be the one who can’t keyword “Birmingham” correctly.
6. Content Review:  You are non-exclusive.  Image review can take up to two weeks.  If longer, contact Contributor Relations.  There may have been a database issue.  You will get an email about whether it has been accepted or not.  No, content does not necessarily get inspected in the order it was submitted.  It gets doled out in batches to different people.
7. While You Wait: In the meantime, you should do some reading.  There are lots of iStockphoto articles to browse through, as well as the forums on the site.  I’m always in the forum.  Watch out for me.  I’m a terror.
8. Search:  Practice using the forum search box at the bottom of the forum page.  All the questions you are likely ever going to want to ask have already been asked and answered.  You can find the answers quickly by using the forum search or Google.  Including why your application images you submitted got rejected.
9. Initial Application Images:  Yes, your initial application images that you resubmitted for your portfolio likely ended up getting rejected.  You did re-read your email back in step #1, right?  If not, read this article about why your application images were rejected.
10. Status Information:  Your uploads and data relating to sales and such interesting things, are listed on your upload data page, here .  BTW, that page is sortable depending on what you click at the top.
11. Rejections:  We all get rejections.  If you want to hear why you might have gotten the rejection you did, pay a visit to the critique forum, where contributors and inspectors will attempt to point out what caused the trouble.  Please, please, please, read the sticky post at the top entitled “Read this First“, about how to post a 100% sized version of the image.  Do not rant in the main forum about how the inspectors are blind because your image is in focus, because history proves that it won’t be.
12. The Magic Button:  No, there is no magic button to make sales happen.  When your images are accepted, they are in the search results within 24 hours.  If someone wants your image, they will buy it.  You do not need to turn anything on.  You just need more than 5, 10, 15 useful images in a pool of 5 million.  No, no one is going to give you a list of things to shoot or create to be successful.  It’s up to you to pave your own path.  Read this article on getting noticed, by Ethan Myerson.
13. TGIF:  Yes, we use a lot of acronyms, so, speaking of Ethan, read this article.  You don’t want to be the person who posts in the main forum, asking “What is AOTW?”.
14. Control Panel:  There’s a link at the top of every page that opens your control panel.  There are some things in there you probably want to keep checked, like “Allow Subscriptions”.  Others, you may not.  It’s up to you.  If you “Allow prints”, then people can order prints of your content from iStockphoto, and you get a portion of those proceeds (when it is working).  If you “Allow extended licenses”, then people can purchase additional permissions from you, which get you more money.
15. Sales:  Congratulations, you had a sale.  No, you don’t get to know who bought it.  That’s part of the fun of selling royalty free imagery.  But you can keep your eyes open and post in the In Action forum when you see yours somewhere.
16. Woo Yay!: Getting your 1/10/100th download is fun, as well as your first $100 or your 100th upload.  The best place for these announcements is the WooYay thread in the Off Topic forum, or the blog on your iStockphoto profile.  Didn’t know you had a blog?  It’s a great place to put status updates like these.
17. See My Other:  People like to put links in the descriptions of the images linking to other similar images, as a sort of marketing banner.  Eventually you will notice this and want to do it.  And you’ll want to post that you can’t figure out how to do it.  See this tutorial, again from emyerson, on how to do this.

There you go.  You’re on the path to iStock success.  Well, not really, but hopefully you at least know where some information can be found.  Good luck!