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Messages - Jo Ann Snover

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1
I feel there is STILL something wrong( despite negative earnings). I am missing ALL the sales from US on my iS earnings graph in February ( I see them in pdf ). How about you?

I just tried out the stats features in DeepMeta4 (it's in beta but that part is working). It needs the text file version of your stats (not the PDF) and then produces much better graphs than anything on the Getty ESP site. It also handles refunds correctly - i.e. shows that they are refunds rather than just muddling them with new sales.

https://deepmeta.creativ.zone/


2
Hi Matt,
Went to check now and I have 500+ downloads, and 30+ uploads in 2023.
However, I did not get my redeem code. I went to double check my upload approval, and most of them occurred in January, even though the files were uploaded  early December.
Is this supposed to be like this? Do I not qualify because of that?
I thought the rule was "images uploaded in 2023". :(

https://helpx.adobe.com/stock/contributor/help/royalty-details.html

From the above (emphasis mine):

"An active contributor is an Adobe Stock contributor with at least twenty (20) submitted and approved qualifying assets in 2023."

3
Curious why still the views, interactions and downloads have not been updated. Probably because it will reveal a huge discrepancy.

Kelvin Jay's post on this was that it's a separate technical problem, only affecting some contributors (mine haven't updated either). Someone will resolve this next week...

I have, effectively, a report on all my February downloads from the royalty statements along with payment. I'd rather be missing the list with pictures of the downloaded files than the payment :)

4
Regardless of the explanation there is a problem, I never go under $150 a month and feb it shows $5 for the month. I do not believe my warnings can drop like that and iStock owe a lot of money to a lot of people for February. Everyone should raise a ticket.

If you had royalties of $155 for February and refunds for $150 (from all those November licenses that were refunded), that'd leave you with $5 net. Your earnings probably didn't drop (if you exclude the refunds)

Getty's charts are useless and are incorrectly showing your percentages of February's total sales. They are tallying the negative refunds with the positive sales and presenting the net result. In my case they stay Premium Access was 31% of my February total, but it was actually 40% if you just count the royalties for February and not the November refunds.

When you look at your royalty statement (the PDF), do you see a bunch of licenses that are negative numbers?

Look in the Getty forums - Kelvin Jay has provided a statement and said there's no need to raise a ticket as they know about the problem. I doubt ticket responses will provide anything useful as an answer :)

5
In addition to the comments above about how outrageous this vague explanation is, I noted (and posted about it in the Getty forum) the strange wording about  "...low-resolution image use...". What exactly is that and why is it free?

And the icing on the cake is not notifying contributors ahead of time about this mess. Did they think we wouldn't notice?

I had to modify my spreadsheet where I track this stuff to correctly count downloads as only those items where the sale amount is >0 as bundling (in my case 10) refunds in with the licenses really makes a mess of the totals, RPD, etc.

Unfortunately Todayis20 makes the same naive assumption :)

6
Adobe Stock / Re: Custom License $0.30?
« on: March 18, 2024, 19:25 »
...- There are several tiers of custom sales - certainly different products on the buyers' side - and all sales within the same group/product come in for the same amount. So, the commissions can't be based on whatever currency the respective buyer pays in, but on US prices in US dollars.

- Those commissions either decline or increase over long periods of time (weeks and even months) and they do so solely in one direction - there aren't any ups and downs - cent by cent and day by day.

There has been discussion about these "custom" royalties in another thread. You can read the other posts in that thread as well, but I think the gist of the puzzle about the royalties we see is that there are "Pro" plans (enterprise customers) which include unlimited stock downloads

https://www.microstockgroup.com/fotolia-com/i-see-many-$1-40-royalty-per-photo-sale-this-year-anybody-noticed-too/msg598710/#msg598710

Mat had said in a different thread that the nominal "price the customer pays" for these downloads is calculated daily for all users of that particular plan. We then get 33% of that.

There appear to be several tiers of these unlimited plans as the royalties cluster around the $1.xx mark or the $0.3x mark. Today's royalties were $0.96 and $0.35 (for the custom section). These plans aren't new, but when I looked at the pages advertising them recently, I was pretty galled to see customers advised this was a way to lower their overall stock spend!

https://www.microstockgroup.com/fotolia-com/i-see-many-$1-40-royalty-per-photo-sale-this-year-anybody-noticed-too/msg598710/#msg598710

Mat has been asked repeatedly about whether there is any floor for these custom royalties, and each time he has repeated that we get 33% of what the customer pays (whether that's a constructive price or an actual payment).

Unlimited download plans are never a good deal from the contributor's point of view

7
...  So, it's not that simple to guess what's really selling on somebody's portfolio.

You can filter portfolios if you know the way to edit the URL - in other words Adobe doesn't provide the UI but the features are there. So your portfolio in download order:

https://stock.adobe.com/contributor/203855208/blvdone?&order=nb_downloads

The genAI images in your portfolio in download order:

https://stock.adobe.com/contributor/203855208/blvdone?&order=nb_downloads&filters%5Bgentech%5D=only

8
...3 out of 52 photo/image sales today were $0.36.  But I'm not worried.  It's only 2 cents less than $0.38 and still more than 3x the $0.10 you get on Shutterstock on 80% of photo sales there.  Also, 33 of 52 sales today so far are either $1.02 or $0.99.  That's impossible on Shutterstock.

Today's "custom" numbers are $0.35 and $1.01; I guess yesterday's download total was large :)

I do appreciate the $0.99 and $0.66 subscription royalties that help keep the overall RPD up, but the concern is watching new lows for "custom" royalties in 2024

9
An update on the prevalence of the $0.36 "custom" royalties. In Feb 2024 there were two of those. In the first week of March, there have been 11. They were non-existent before Feb 2024

I assume that one of the plans with unlimited stock assets has seen a growth in the number of items downloaded and that's why the royalties are going down. Sort-of takes the fun out of seeing more downloads...

10
https://petapixel.com/2024/03/07/recreating-iconic-photos-with-ai-image-generators/

None of the copies are great, but they're clearly more than "inspired by" the very famous images they were trained on.

11
Dreamstime.com / Re: $100 payout minimum is a flat-out theft.
« on: March 07, 2024, 16:30 »
...  It's a flat-out theft of our money.

No. It's not.

I completely understand the frustration with the too-high payout threshold - although it was what everybody used back when DT, iStock, CanStock, Shutterstock etc. started.

You signed up with the site when these payment terms were clearly stated - no changes, no subterfuge. Making totally false statements about the agency doesn't help anyone.

I have no idea how DT is still puttering along - it's a shadow of its former self - but during the pandemic, when the loathsome Pavlovsky was cutting royalties at SS, Dreamstime gave a small bonus to contributors. They're not going to make anyone rich, but they are a decent agency.

For a while, Fotolia allowed you to request a payout below the threshold but would then charge a fee, which seems very reasonable as they have to process the payments and that takes someone's time. They need to have some way to avoid getting drowned in nuisance requests.

I've been getting paid regularly by them, but the days of getting a monthly payout from them (for me) are long gone. I think they should drop the payout level and institute payout on account closure with a (small) fee to cover the payout if it's below the minimum. I don't expect that they'll be rushing to do that though :)

12
Canva / Re: Trolley (Canva)
« on: March 06, 2024, 21:06 »
I'd never heard of Trolley (or Payment Rails, its former name) before your post, so I was curious. I don't supply Canva, so I have no specific knowledge about their setup. It appears to me, based on this review and looking at Trolley's site, that the fees are for the companies who set up Trolley to be their payment platform for employees or suppliers, not for those receiving money from the platform.

https://www.jibble.io/us-hr-software-reviews/US-payroll/trolley/

There are references to being able to make payments to a bank account or to a debit card, but I couldn't find anything specifically saying that recipients of Trolley payments don't pay fees. There were complaints about onboarding being cumbersome - I think that means adding new payees to the system :)

Assuming there aren't any recipient fees, the reviews seem to say this makes a ton of sense for a company sending out payments worldwide - and in local currencies (no idea if Canva will be using that capability)

13
...Did this happen last year too or just January 2024?

Read a few posts above.

Back on the topic of "custom" royalties getting lower in 2024, this morning I had one for 36. (Reminder that I had been tracking "custom" royalties lower than 38, my minimum subscription royalty. I am in the US, thus no tax-related deductions apply)

Taking a wild guess, there's a new "Pro" subscription including unlimited AdobeStock downloads where the rate is set daily based on usage. Earlier this week I had seven 37 "custom" royalties in total.

Edited to add that I found a page describing the Creative Cloud "Pro Plus" plan - it's an enterprise subscription that includes unlimited access to the entire Adobe Stock library - including videos & music. In listing the benefits of this plan it says:

"Lower your organizations total stock spend"

I can see the appeal of that pitch - to the buyers. But to contributors, encouraging the biggest spenders to spend less on stock, means we're just the bait on the hook for CC subscriptions that we don't see any share of.

I know we all know this, but 33% of eff all is eff all...

14
..."The royalty rate remains at 33% of the price paid by the customer. The rate paid by the customer varies based on the plan."...Much less complicated than being concerned if I just got a 36 sub or a 37, 38 or 39 custom. ... It's a mix.

It's true that the 33% is uncomplicated, but contributors need to watch changes in agency pricing as well as what their royalty rate is. My primary reason for watching the mix of prices (as opposed to just the monthly total compared to last year) is that when agencies start competing on price with other agencies, unless there's a huge influx of new business - not just a shift from one agency to another - contributors lose out.

Remember that Adobe Stock is a tiny pimple in Adobe's large business. I'm guessing that they want to show growth in their subscriber numbers (along with new sources of revenue derived from AI wonderfulness) to keep investors happy. Various plans include stock assets in the monthly price - including those "Pro" plans where there are unlimited downloads where our royalty fluctuates daily based on usage by subscribers to those plans.

Cheap stock content could be, effectively, a marketing lure and/or discount plan for building up or retaining subscribers to the Creative Cloud plans. Erosion of the price the customer pays even as our 33% remains unchanged is not good for contributors.

33% from Adobe Stock is a lot better than 15% from Getty/iStock, but some months a handful of very high price sales can bring the Getty RPD close to that of Adobe Stock.

I want to take the temperature of the water in the pot in which we're all slowly cooking :)

15
A new value for a "custom" royalty today - 37 cents. I'm hoping this doesn't mean an increase in very low royalties (below my 38 subscription royalty).

For the royalties discussed by the OP, what was $1.4x fluctuates daily, but is mostly $1.03 recently. But in addition to those there are other "custom" royalties which, with a very infrequent exception, never went below 38. The infrequent exception (which started a couple of years ago when the Pro plans did) was 33 - typically one or two a month at most.

I had three 37 "custom" royalties this morning. :(

16
Rights managed licensing is essentially what you're after. Once upon a time that was common, but royalty-free licenses are now dominant almost everywhere.

Where there is unusual or unique content there might be some opportunity, but that will depend on the kind of work you produce. Unless it is radically different from what's available at royalty free-based agencies, it's not a realistic approach in today's marketplace

17
Shutterstock.com / Re: Is Shutterstock dead?
« on: February 21, 2024, 10:50 »
Shutterstock's quarterly report will be out tomorrow.

Very mixed bag, but their stock is down this morning (more than the overall market). Depending on which statistic you focus on you could talk up the successes or bemoan the falling short. Can't fathom why they are highlighting targets for 2027 - unless it's to distract from less desirable things between now and that glorious future :)

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/shutterstock-nyse-sstk-misses-q4-121001195.html
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/shutterstock-inc-sstk-reports-mixed-123416222.html

In their statement section on Q4 FY 2023 financial "highlights" everything was a decrease from Q4 FY 2022!. Fewer subscribers and fewer paid downloads too (35.4 million vs 42.5 million)

https://investor.shutterstock.com/node/13506/pdf

18
Interesting article co-written by a journalist and a law professor about where the fair use argument has succeeded - and failed - in prior cases. The key issue, IMO, is that things that might be fair use by an individual for personal use, or researchers for academic use are not so if done by a for-profit company for commercial use.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/02/why-the-new-york-times-might-win-its-copyright-lawsuit-against-openai/

After a discussion of why Google won its case about building a search engine for books, including that it was built to be unable to produce no more than snippets, the article says:

"Ultimately, the fate of these companies may depend on whether judges feel that the companies have made a good-faith effort to color inside the lines. If generative models never regurgitated copyrighted material, then defendants would have a compelling argument that it is transformative. The fact that the models occasionally produce near-perfect copies of other peoples creative work makes the case more complicated and could lead judges to view these companies more skeptically."

19
I thought the consumption of generative credits had already started, but in looking around my account to see where it told me how many I had, I found a link to this page which tells a different story

https://helpx.adobe.com/firefly/using/generative-credits-faq.html

"Note: Starting January 17, 2024, we will begin enforcing generative credit limits on select plans, including but not limited to Adobe Firefly. Your plan-specific information will be available on your Adobe account management page, where you can review your generative credit allocation, usage, and experience when you exhaust your generative credits. Check back here after March 1, 2024, to learn when credit limits will apply to other plan types."

The screenshot shown in the FAQ doesn't match what I see in my account and I don't see any information about credits used or remaining

Most confusing FAQ page I've seen in a while. My translation "It depends...check back later'


20
Adobe Stock / Re: 2023 Adobe Stock contributor bonus plan details
« on: February 18, 2024, 15:34 »
This sounds like good news - but I'm puzzled about the need to check during the week to learn if we qualified. Is there something other than total downloads and being active (20+ accepted assets in 2023)? Unless the US is no longer included in the acceptable countries, I think I'm good :)


21
Adobe Stock / Re: Adobe have updated their terms of use
« on: February 17, 2024, 15:37 »
The very long link you posted had some strange behavior - a screen saying if I didn't accept the terms of use I'd be unable to continue using Adobe apps and services!

Here are some simpler links to the pages changed 16 Feb 2024:

https://helpx.adobe.com/stock/contributor/help/submission-guidelines.html

https://wwwimages2.adobe.com/content/dam/cc/en/legal/servicetou/Adobe_Stock_Contributor_Agreement_Addl_Terms_en_US_20240216.pdf

https://helpx.adobe.com/stock/contributor/help/ip-guidelines.html

I'm not a lawyer, but I think the reference to fully-paid license is to ensure there's no arguing about an essential of a contract - consideration

Regarding the editorial rules, you can crop and clone as long as you aren't making a material change. The illustrative editorial guidelines were last updated in August 2022: "Only post-process or crop if you can do so without changing the context or meaning of the content. "

Regarding the term about uploading or not removing works meaning you agree with pricing changes, I think they're trying to say that if you don't agree with changes, you have to remove your work (they don't say how quickly), not that if you remove one file 1 year after a pricing change that signals you don't agree.

The Feb 16 changes do talk about a 90 day notice we have to give Adobe if we want to remove more than 100 items/10% of our portfolio. I wasn't aware of that time constraint - is that new or did I just miss it? In section 6.2:

"You may remove any Work from the Website at any time, provided, however, that you do not remove more than 100 items of Work or 10% of the Work, whichever is greater, in any 90-day period without 90 days' prior written notice to Adobe. We may remove Work or terminate your account at our sole discretion without prior notice."

I'm guessing that the updateis to be extra clear about everything given the chaos engine that is 41+ million genAI items much of which is uploaded by brand-new contributors. Otherwise you don't know your Trid from your Foy :)


22
Investors appear to think Sora is a threat to Adobe's business (I think in general, not specific to Adobe Stock). Market hasn't closed yet, but ADBE is down over $35 a share today

https://www.investors.com/news/technology/adbe-stock-falls-as-openai-invades-its-turf/


23
iStockPhoto.com / Re: November Statements ready.
« on: February 16, 2024, 14:08 »
January statements are available (or at least I just noticed them)

24
I think I may have an explanation for why we're seeing lower royalties on custom licenses this month versus during January. In another thread about royalties, Mat Hayward said:

It should make sense JoAnn but there is still something I don't understand:
For what I can see the "custom license" earning for contributors is not really "fluctuating": at the contrary it decreases regularly from january 1st
It started with about 1,47$, then started decreasing and it had never went back to that price

I can't see a single sale with a higher amount than the previous ones.
It quite difficult to understand that the increase of use of this pro plan is so regular in 45 days from the beginning of year.

If I look at Jan 2023 vs Feb 2023, the royalties for the $1-$2 bracket had RPDs of $1.30 in Jan and $1.05 in Feb

In Jan 2024 I didn't see the $1.4x start with $1.47; I saw $1.40, then $1.43, $1.45, etc. I think the high was $1.48 on Jan 19th.

In Jan 2024 my last $1.4x sale was Jan 23 ($1.44); in Jan 2023 it was Jan 19th (and it was $1.41)

It's hard to know anything with certainty because we have next-to-no data to work with. All "custom" sales are marked alike, but it's the Pro plans for enterprise that have these royalties fluctuating based on use of the unlimited plan.

It's just my best guess looking at what data we do have

25
General - Stock Video / Re: Freepik Wants My Videos For A Price
« on: February 16, 2024, 13:41 »
I see this wrong logic from time to time in discussions. No, no one buyer will search for your image on other agency to buy it cheaper. Even if he want it's almost impossible to find it in the search straight away, as a whole this does not work. Selling in many agencies will only extend your income and competition between them and from there better commissions to the contributors. I'm in this business from 2007 and I'm full-time and I have experienced view on all this.

I agree that individual buyers will generally not search to find a specific image at the cheapest price. However, it does not follow that it's fine to supply free and all-you-can-eat low price agencies.

Over time, and in general (i.e. not for any particular contributor) Unsplash, pexels, the various free sections at agencies are all eroding anyone's ability to make a decent living licensing stock. It used to be that free images were of obviously lower quality than paid ones, but that's no longer true. In looking at uses of an image featured in another thread here there were many hundreds and all the credits I saw were for Unsplash and pexels, not iStock (where it originated).

I've been licensing stock images since 2004 and about the only constants have been agency drives to increase their share of the buyer's money and contributors ignoring long-term harms for short-term cash. Often the excuses of the form "it's all going to hades anyway, so might as well make a little money before it does" or "if I don't someone else will and then I'll lose out on both short and long term"

We are too diverse a group with too many divergent points of view (and many contributors who don't do the math often enough to see what's in their interest and what isn't) to balance out the agencies' power and self interest.

And Freepik's history is deeply unsavory. I wouldn't trust them further than I could throw them. And I'm not all that good at throwing :)

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