pancakes

MicrostockGroup Sponsors


Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - pancaketom

Pages: [1] 2 3 4 5 6 ... 87
1
Off Topic / Re: Selling on Fine Art America
« on: Yesterday at 13:36 »
My understanding is that it is worth it if you can drive traffic to your content on FAA. I just uploaded the 25 or whatever it is free images and have only had one sale in ~10 - 15 years. I think if you can't direct traffic there or have in demand content it is probably not worth the effort and cost.

Others may have a different take.

2
Surprise - big customers get to use our files for free for some uses (planning, mock ups, etc. ) with no watermarks so if they accidentally just go live with it nobody really notices.

The question I have for the people that got heaps of refunds, were your earnings for November oddly high (by about the same amount as the refunds)?

Pretty shoddy on the part of Getty all around.

3
Alamy.com / Re: Infringement use
« on: March 23, 2024, 16:01 »
More likely it was brought to the attention of Alamy in some fashion and then they had to pay for their previous illegal use.

For example someone was selling calendars and another user noticed their image in use and told Alamy, and then Alamy saw all 12 months were from Alamy, including one of your images and forced them to pay.

4
Small consolation that Getty eats 85% of the refunds.

5
Canva / Re: Trolley (Canva)
« on: March 19, 2024, 23:51 »
It looked like the last 2 payments from Canva (that went to Paypal) were processed through Trolley, so maybe we don't have to do anything? I looked on the Trolley page and it didn't seem to have anything appropriate to get paid. If it does need to be done by March 31, they sure haven't provided much guidance.

6
Alamy.com / Re: your biggest sale on Alamy? and when was it?
« on: March 16, 2024, 13:16 »
$$$$ sale, 2 years ago

Wouldn't you like to find that one in use? Seems like an installation on a business/commercial property or public site.

Thought crossed my mind more than once.  It says in usage field "Indoor, Wall Decor".  But old Canon 6D image was taken with is just 20 Megapixel, can't make very large print out of it.  So it's bit of mystery.   Perhaps it has some sentimental factor because of that "Trail adopted by John Tomlinson" table,  which is not there anymore. 

I fully expected it was a mistake and there would be a refund.  But it cleared within a month.  Interesting enough, photo was simple point and shoot, taken for documentation of my hiking exploits.  At the end I didn't even use it for hiking page

https://autumnsky.zenfolio.com/usa/san-diego/iron-mountain

Used different shot I thought was better (1st in gallery) which was uploaded for stock too,  never got even 10 Shutterstock cents.   So you never really know much in this business

I think I took almost that exact photo when I was there - not as good a sky though. I don't think I even bothered to upload it. This can be a pretty random business.

7
At the moment I keep bouncing between 3100 and 5200. 4000 files.

Hope to move further up again soon, this is frustrating. But for a port this size it is probably ok.

I hate to ask, because someone will think the rank numbers actually matter.

But, why do you hope to move further up? Rank means nothing, except for your own personal information, how you are doing, compared to others. If you are making money, and happy with what you do and earn, it doesn't matter what some irrelevant number says.

My rank goes up during the holiday season, down in January, back up in April. My earnings, as in money that goes into the bank, is all that counts.

Rank is apparently, number of downloads, not earnings.

yes rank is number of downloads,the most important thing,not earnings.

in my opinion the most important thing is the number of sales,earnings can go up or down,but the number of downloads cannot go down,that is the most important number,then comes the money. :)

by the way,my best rank ever is 3210.

If you don't think sales can go down in this business, you are either really good, really fortunate, or haven't been at this long.

8
Canva / Re: Magic Creator Payment is now completely zero
« on: March 13, 2024, 17:41 »
applies up 13%, exports up 12%, earnings down about 1%

So basically, our art gets used more and more - presumably benefiting Canva in some manner like more income or more market share or something, and we get paid less.

I still don't really know what applies or exports are. If I was getting even the lowly .10 from SS for these uses I would be making a whole lot more.

9
remember the ranking has nothing to do with $, only download numbers, and it seems to be compared to everyone else, so you need a lot less downloads in a low week - say xmas to new year - than you would on a good week to get the same rank.

10
Fun fact - shooting the things that AI does poorly helps train the AI to do it better. eg hands, bananas, etc.

11
various sites have tried different schemes to charge more for some images than others. As I recall they were based on the number of sales (DT) if you were exclusive to that company (IS) price selected by the photographer (P5) or the size of the image (more than one site). In most if not all cases they dropped the schemes because the buyers didn't like it. AI would be another way to differentiate, but especially as it gets harder to tell AI images from non AI images that would get harder to justify.

I do think that there is room for a site that takes Jo Ann's idea - "real photos of real people doing real things in real places"

12
since the rankings are based on download numbers it makes sense that there will be a lot of people sharing ranks, especially at the middle of the bell curve for download numbers. There probably aren't that many people getting over a few 100 images a week (see previous post for how many), but in there are probably a lot of people getting the exact same number of downloads in the 10-50 range.

13
Canva / Re: Notice of violation emails
« on: February 29, 2024, 22:58 »
Re: culled previously approved images, if you go to creator hub > my items and select rejected from the pull down menu middle top (defalt is "all status"), you can see which files have been deactivated. No reason is provided but at least you can see which files were retroactively "rejected" as they show up under this filter.

I'm not sure I'm looking in the right place because Canva has one of the least intuitive sites and you can't even just go to a url to find something because of all the check boxes but it appears what you describe just shows the rejected images, which include about the last few hundred I submitted before I gave up on their blanket no reason rejections. I searched on rejected this year and the image reported as a violation a few days ago was not listed, so it still doesn't seem that there is a way to tell what has been post-accepted rejected unless you keep track of and look through every image or they send you an e-mail. I guess it is good to know the threatening language was applied to all removals and it is nice to know what is removed rather than just seeing the total number of assets in the port dropping.

Danny, if you are going to remove a category of images from your database in your audits - for example 100 dollar bills, maybe you should flag all 1.8 million of them and then remove them all at once instead of slowly and apparently randomly picking your way through the database.

14
I live in California and make nowhere near those numbers (not in the most expensive area, but houses aren't cheap here either). fortunately I own mine and have years of experience living very cheaply - at either end of the income spectrum there lies a leisure class.

15
Canva / Re: Notice of violation emails
« on: February 28, 2024, 15:14 »
I got one today for an image of US money (100$ bills). None of my images show complete bills that could be used for counterfeit, but whatever. They have been deleting images without notice for years, so for some reason they gave notice for this one.

edited to add - I decided to do a search for "100 dollar us bill" and it returned 1843146 photos, including what looks like straight scans of bills - which probably is illegal - so they have a bit more deleting to do.

16
Adobe Stock / Re: What's your weekly ranking and how many images?
« on: February 26, 2024, 10:46 »
The other thing is the weekly ranking is for that particular week, so a week with major holidays might have a lot less downloads required for a higher ranking. based on my not scientific looking at it over the last year sales on Adobe have been going up faster than my own sales which are going up. I haven't followed the path of the AI though or uploaded all that many images.

17
Shutterstock.com / Re: Shutterstock steals sales. Control purchase
« on: February 13, 2024, 19:19 »
They say never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence. If the way they record sales is anything like how they improve the contributor experience then I have no confidence in them.

That said, I find it hard to believe they are regularly not reporting sales. If so, they are opening themselves up to serious consequences, it would be nice to see some good independent auditing though. I think they are taking such a large percentage of every sale legally according to their rules, it seems weird they would have to cheat when the setup is already so tilted in their favor.

18
Shutterstock.com / Re: Shutterstock steals sales. Control purchase
« on: February 11, 2024, 21:21 »
That's a huge scandal if it's true!!!

I have almost 10k videos at Pond5 and sell 1 YES just one in 14th days. Last month I have two sales! If Shutterstock does that than Pond5 do taht to. At Adobe I sell around 20 videos a day. On Shutterstock maybe 1 or 2/day. Pond5 2/month.

At Shutterstock and Adobe I have 10k videos too..

Try deleting all your videos on Adobe Stock and un-publish all your videos on Shutterstock.  Your buyers may know you sell the same clips much cheaper on Shutterstock and Adobe Stock.  And price your videos at reasonable price on Pond5, $49-89/HD and $99-199.4k.

That might be a good idea - until SS makes all of p5 content available for subs sales.

19
iStockPhoto.com / Re: DACS at iStock
« on: February 05, 2024, 18:01 »
They've been doiing it for a few years: there's a clause in our contract which can be interpreted to let them do it without an opt-out, though like so much in the contract - which is very wide in their favour - very narrow in ours, I for one didn't foresee this.

Only Exclusives? I get my DACS claimed through Alamy. They would be double dipping? I don't know, but it seems odd and confusing.

I'd certainly rather get 40% than 15% of my DACS

20
I don't know how the search works exactly, but if it is sorted just by DL #, then as long as the image has the keywords it will show up in the search in the appropriate position based on total DL #.  Maybe none of the DLs came from that keyword. Also images that have been around for many years are more likely to have a higher # of downloads. Based on my own images many of the "most popular" sorts of searches are not actually ordered by the total number of downloads.

21
Dreamstime.com / Re: Any tips for good keywording on Dreamstime?
« on: February 01, 2024, 11:48 »
DT keywording is a little weird because they break multiple word keywords into single words, but I would say keyword for adobe with embedded keywords with the most important first and then send it to DT and anywhere else. Pics on DT seem to take ages to get any traction if they ever do. My sales are slow but fairly steady - and sadly almost all .35 subs there.

I still seem to do fairly well on DT compared to most - this January was my worst month there in at least a year and I was under 1/10 of Adobe with a larger DT port (less than 2x Adobe)  Usually I make quite a bit more than 1/10 of Adobe on DT. It certainly is not a great earner, but they haven't had any "exciting" news for a long while and they even boosted pay for a bit because of Covid.

22
General Stock Discussion / Re: model releases without wittness
« on: January 29, 2024, 12:54 »
When I started out in 200x I think all the sites required a witness signature. I mistakenly thought I didn't need to witness my own signature to submit pics of me, and was soundly rejected.

I have no idea what they want now though.

23
General Stock Discussion / Re: best agencies
« on: January 26, 2024, 19:47 »
SS was a great earner and a clear #1 for me until 2018 or so. I expect most who have been at this for a long time either has IS or SS as their #1 all time.

Maybe for Europeans the Fotolia / AS combo is higher.

24
Adobe Stock / Re: How have your sales been this week?
« on: January 22, 2024, 17:13 »
the week starting Jan 15 was horrible for me, I have nearly made as much so far this week (monday afternoon). Hopefully it was just a one-off.

My sales are low enough that it probably isn't statistically very relevant, but it is painful to have such a poor showing, as the general trend on Adobe has been good compared to everywhere else.

25
Dreamstime.com / Re: The Dreamstime levels system
« on: January 22, 2024, 12:07 »
I haven't looked at the fine print, but basically all images start at level 1, if there are no sales after a certain time (6 mo?) thye drop to level 0. For sub sales - which are 90+ percent of all sales at DT it makes no difference anyway, but for other sales the cost goes up with higher levels and more importantly the % that the artist gets from sales of higher level images goes up with higher levels. For a while higher level subs sales cost more sub credits and paid higher, that is no longer the case.

The reason that they say a variable number of credits is because the cost varies based on the size of the image they sell. Also the $ amount is highly variable because the cost of credits varies wildly based on how big of a credit pack is purchased - and if it is purchased with a discount.

The # of sales to go up a level has dropped a lot through the years, but any benefit from this has been more than offset by the change from 50% for the artist to much less - 25% to 45% now.

https://www.dreamstime.com/sell-stock-photos-images

Pages: [1] 2 3 4 5 6 ... 87

Sponsors

Mega Bundle of 5,900+ Professional Lightroom Presets

Microstock Poll Results

Sponsors