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Messages - EmberMike

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1
I'm guessing this is also scaring a ton of graphic designers

Nope. Not even a little.

2
General - Top Sites / Re: My first month with Freepik !
« on: April 26, 2022, 08:55 »

They are over 10 years old though, and played a major part in the devaluation themselves. A lot of the moves by SS etc. have been in response to the growth of sites like Freepik...

... They have a very long history indeed.

As I understand it, the version of freepik as we know it today was built in 2016. So to your point, there is some history there. But by 2016 a lot of other companies were already in their own "race to the bottom" in terms of pricing. I don't think that in 2016 any new company was influencing what istock, SS, and others were doing.


Freepik spent years as a warez site search engine selling stolen goods in exchange for a fee to remove their attribution to images they never had the rights to in the first place (including mine and I'm sure yours).


Honestly, I don't care. They're not the only one that started out that way. You might be a contributor at one of them.

3
General - Top Sites / Re: My first month with Freepik !
« on: April 25, 2022, 19:29 »

The problem is it's devaluing the value of photography across the whole market.

Is earning an extra 20 bucks a month worth it? If you were earning $2,000 a month from microstock agencies, would you still be doing this?

But it's not your fault. The whole perception of the value of photography started a while ago. It started with Getty, then free sites started with Unsplash, and so forth. And the latest assets to be hit are now videos...

Exactly, it started with the sites that for so many years everyone believed to be the good guys. Getty, istock, Shutterstock, etc. Freepik isn't any worse. They just don't have the history to leverage their reputation. Other companies did the work of devaluing images over many years. Freepik just joined the party.

I'll try anything that is an avenue of selling images to new sets of buyers. I'm not putting all of my work into it, but I'll try it and see for myself if it's worth the effort or not.


...(And btw, if you are getting a kickback for promoting these sites, can you please state so?)

I am not promoting them, nor would I benefit if I were. I just added an opinion to the conversation.

4
General - Top Sites / Re: My first month with Freepik !
« on: April 25, 2022, 08:45 »
I just signed up at freepik. I'm not too concerned with RPD, there are several metrics worth looking at when it comes to choosing which sites to work with. For me it's more about how much money am I making overall, for how much effort, and does contributing to that site devalue my work elsewhere. On the last point, I don't think it does. The freepik audience isn't the same as the SS audience or other typical microstock marketplaces. At least that's my impression of it.

Not everything is so black and white in this business. I can be a contributor at a place that isn't exactly great in terms of RPD and still get something out if it without selling my soul to the company. I can curate what i upload there, send just older work or less popular images. I can drop 100 images there and just see what happens. Don't have to go all-in right away.

At this point, is anything really not worth a try? It's not like things have been trending in a great direction anyway. Freepik isn't going to be the thing that breaks this business. It was being broken years ago by the companies that so many folks here still sing the praises of.

5
Illustration - General / Re: Are Vector Stock Crooks
« on: April 21, 2022, 20:16 »
Vectorstock were always crooks. They claimed to have tiered pricing but no one could ever get images priced more than 1 credit. They didn't care if it hurt contributors, they wanted volume, whatever the cost.

6

Wasn't it someone from iStock years ago that said money isn't what was going to make us happy?

7
General - Top Sites / Re: My first month with Freepik !
« on: April 21, 2022, 09:15 »
$0.07 per download. Cool.  ::)

8
Shutterstock.com / Re: Shutterstock just became iStock 2.0
« on: May 27, 2020, 11:06 »
There is one and only one reason to not base January rates on December earnings, and it's simply a cash grab.

That's what is so disappointing about this, that it's not a decision based on anything other than an easy opportunity to cut all contributors off at the knees for at least a month. High-earning contributors will bounce back to their regular rate by February, but not before handing over a huge chunk of earnings to the company in January.

And it's so easily changed, just set the system to calculate January rates based on December numbers. But nope, they won't do that.

Unbelievable.

I've struggled for years to hang on, to try and keep this thing going in some way. But it's over. Time to truly move on.

9
Shutterstock.com / Re: Shutterstock just became iStock 2.0
« on: May 26, 2020, 13:57 »
This is pathetic. So at the beginning of every year they get to make serious bank off of contributors backs by dropping everyone to the lowest pay level.

Unbelievable.  >:(

10
What about these small business loans that are part of the US economic aid package?

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/01/success/small-business-sba-loans/index.html

From that article:

"Who is eligible to apply?
Generally, any small business with 500 or fewer employees is eligible.
That includes sole proprietorships and independent contractors. It also includes nonprofits, veterans organizations and tribal businesses.
In certain circumstances, businesses with more than 500 employees also may qualify.
Applications will be accepted up to June 30. But the program is on a first come, first serve basis."


11
You had to be paying in to unemployment in order to collect the benefits of it. As I understand it, that comes from w2 pay deductions, 1099 earnings aren't subject to the deductions.

However if you were employed while also earning via 1099s, if your employment ended you could collect unemployment, minus what you earn via 1099. At least that's how it worked for me some years ago. I would have to fill out a web form every 2 weeks to get my unemployment check, and in that form I had to enter how much money I had earned from stock, freelancing, etc. They would deduct that amount from my unemployment pay.

12
This happened to me once, and it was a fairly easy fix of just having to show the duplicate income. I just matched up the earnings for each agency with the reportings in the 1099s and 1099k and the IRS cleared it.

As others have mentioned, try to stay below the threshold of PayPal's 1099k. I started using Skrill a lot more after my run-in the the IRS over this.

13
I quit Envato when they adopted a policy of treating every transaction as being directly between the buyer and the contributor, and asked us to take on the burden of tracking and reporting each and every sale by invoice. They wanted all of the tax benefits of removing themselves from the transaction, acting like they're not an agency, but then months later they announced that they're issuing 1099s as if they are an agency, leaving US contributors in a precarious situation of potential reporting discrepancies. The reward for years of contributing images and helping them grow their business was a slap in the face in the form of this convoluted tax scheme that dumped more work on us and put us at risk with the IRS.

They've always been all about themselves, everyone else is just a cog in their machine that they'll squeeze as hard as they can for every last penny. It's not surprising that they are also pretty terrible to new moms on maternity leave.

14
Lots of failures here. Failure of the "photographer" to take responsibility, to act honestly as an artist, to control their Alamy account (his wife was uploading to it), failure of Alamy to recognize an image that shouldn't have been available for commercial use without questioning its origin (it looked like a gallery image with wall placard), failure of the publication (what art director approved this without questioning the uncropped image), etc. What a mess.


15
Not too surprisingly, I have not yet received a reply to my email.  ;D


16
General Stock Discussion / We don't owe these companies anything
« on: October 31, 2018, 16:14 »
I sometimes get emails from random companies looking for new contributors. Some new company thinking they can break into the stock business (you can't, unless you have millions of dollars to invest in acquiring an existing company), or they're an existing company looking to expand or branch into a new market. This is about the latter.

I got 2 emails from a guy at a free stock image company (which is looking to expand into paid stock), followed by this third email (his name and the company name have been changed):

Quote
Mike,

This is my third and final attempt to contact you about selling your vectors on "Garbage Stock". It appears like you may be ignoring me... I hope that is not the case.

We are only selecting a few artists right now to join this program. We choose you and your portfolio because it is high-quality and you have a very high earnings potential from the data we are looking at. If we don't get you on board this week, we are going to have to go elsewhere. Please respond let me know if you wanted to be included asap.

Best,
Steve

I ignore these emails because, well, why bother. It's just another dead-end that will earn me nothing. Or, worse, will earn me almost nothing and earn the company a lot.

Now this email struck a nerve because of the attitude of "Steve", apparently being so bothered that I'm ignoring him and his enticing invitation that he sent to just a few people (yeah, right) to join his free-stock company that is now looking to sell images and cash in on their high traffic volume. So, for once, I decided to reply:

Quote
Hi Steve,

I was ignoring you, as I tend to do with the numerous offers I receive to join websites like Garbage Stock, but since you insist on pushing the matter, allow me to explain my choice to ignore your earlier emails.

Garbage Stock has been a haven for rip-offs of my work (and many other artists' work as well) for years. Cheap knock-offs of my designs are available for free on Garbage Stock as I write this. Garbage Stock also freely gives away copyrighted material, designs owned by companies, organizations, and, as mentioned, many other artists. Surely you are aware of this, it doesn't take much searching to find plenty of material on Garbage Stock that you have no right to sell or give away.

Sites like Garbage Stock have no real interest in helping artists, nor do you apparently care about the people who download stuff from your site (people think they're getting a license to use content but it doesn't apply if you had no right to offer than content in the first place).

To be fair, this is a common problem in the stock image industry. However most other companies do far more to combat it, including banning contributors from the site (something it appears Garbage Stock doesn't do, as "artists" found to be ripping off content might only get a few offending images removed from their portfolios, while being allowed to continue contributing content still today).

Lastly, I don't support sites built on a "free" model as the primary focus of distribution. All of that traffic you've built up has been on the backs of artists' free content, and the implied value (or lack thereof) of vectors to be something that should be available for free. Now that you've built up all of that site traffic from free content, you want to cash in. I won't be a part of that, nor will I provide the original work that Garbage Stock "artists" have been ripping off for years and giving away for free.

For all of these reasons, I am unable to support a site like Garbage Stock and I have no interest in being affiliated with the company at all. Garbage Stock has done plenty to damage the stock image business and I have no desire to reward your sh***y business model by contributing my work to your collection.

So yes, I was ignoring you, and trying really hard not to have to send this email to you. But since you appear to have been so hurt by my lack of enthusiasm to be a part of Garbage Stock, I figured I could at least explain why.

Thanks for the offer, but my answer is 'no'.

Mike

I'm posting this just to shed some light on a sentiment that I think has been common in the stock image business for a while and should have been killed off long ago. This idea is one that many of these agencies share, one that basically takes the position that they are offering us something wondrous and special, and we should feel privileged to even be considered as a possible contributor to these agencies.

I think it's about time we call this stuff what it is: a scam. Companies like this one will make it sound like such a wonderful deal, they'll entice you with their website traffic and promises of "earnings potential". But they've built their business on free content, so what kind of earnings potential could they possibly be concerned with when it comes to what the contributor gets?

Sure this is a rant. But I hope it's also a bit of a cautionary tale for anyone here who is maybe somewhat new to this business and gets these emails and offers. There a lot of snakes in the stock image world. You don't owe them anything, not your images, not your support, not even a reply email.

But if you do send them a reply, post it up here, I'd love to read it.  ;)

17
Just so I understand the logic...

At Pond5 you can set your own prices, as long as they conform to some standard that they have determined. They want to remain "artist-friendly" by allowing you to set your own prices, but not so friendly that they really support the option to set your own prices.

Fixed pricing or artist-adjustable pricing. Pick one, Pond5. I don't even care which way you go, but giving people grief for using the pricing features you built into your system is dumb.

If it's that big of a problem for you, set fixed prices and be done with it.

18
GraphicRiver is garbage. I deleted all of my stuff over there.

Creative Market is better for this kind of stuff.

19
What a horrendous precedent to set. Anyone can now use any photo they want, and simply claim "I didn't know it was copyrighted," as a legitimate legal defense. I have no doubt people will be doing exactly that more often now, and citing this court case in their defense if they get sued.

20
Off Topic / Re: Not applauding is treason?
« on: February 06, 2018, 19:37 »
You must stand for the National Anthem. You must applaud for the President when he speaks.

Welcome to the Democratic People's Republic of America.

And in today's news, he wants military parades.

It's just a matter of time before we are issued a list of acceptable haircuts for all men in the country. Considering the source, I can only imagine they'd be heavy on the comb-over and recommended paired with an orange spray-tan.

21
Off Topic / Re: Not applauding is treason?
« on: February 06, 2018, 10:00 »
You must stand for the National Anthem. You must applaud for the President when he speaks.

Welcome to the Democratic People's Republic of America.

22
General Stock Discussion / Re: Zack Arias on unsplash
« on: February 06, 2018, 09:57 »
Zack is the man. I got hooked on his whole vibe towards creativity, art, photography, etc., from some videos he did a bunch of years back and an interview he did with Chase Jarvis. Super cool guy, and right on with his views on Unsplash.

How long do you think it will be before some opportunistic model figures out that they can troll photographers just like copyright trolls? Find a local photographer on Unsplash, offer free modeling services, agree to have photos posted on Unsplash (just make sure you don't sign a release), wait until the photos get used commercially, then sue photographer and the end user.

23

I know this isn't necessarily what happened here but as a related FYI, Shutterstock does have many ways of detecting suspicious activity and will close accounts without warning. I started out on SS as a vector contributor but later wanted to purchase a subscription to license photos for various design projects. I reached out to SS about it just to make sure I wasn't crossing any lines by being a contributor and a buyer at the same time. They warned me then that if I used my subscription to download any of my own images, my account would be closed.

They take this stuff very seriously. There's too much real fraud going on every day, so their zero-tolerance policy may seem harsh but it is there for a reason.

When in doubt about anything you're doing, just reach out to them and ask before you do something that could jeopardize your account. SS is very willing to answer questions before you do anything risky, but they won't be forgiving if you just go ahead with some scheme to increase sales without checking with them first to see if it's ok to do.


24
The business has kind of gone full-circle for me. Stock was a cheaper answer for people looking for vector graphics, icons, logos, badges, etc. Now stock is so common-place and recognizable, people don't want stock because they see the same stuff everywhere. I have clients who I design trade show graphics for who are coming to me saying "We need to do a custom photo shoot, we can't show up and have the same image as one of our competitors." 10 years ago it was "Custom shoots are dead, stock is great!"

I expect that trend of more custom work and less stock income to continue. I still submit to stock a little, but at some point (maybe within the next year), I'll have to just stop altogether because it's not worth it anymore. Being a vector guy, the cost of production for me is minimal. I use the same hardware and software I'd need to have for custom design work, so there's no added expense there. But if I were a photographer, and I had to invest in shoots for microstock, I'd have quit by now for sure. I can't imagine it's cost-effective for very many people anymore to sink money into this and have high hopes of a return on that investment.

25
The hatred towards Getty started long before microstock. Microstock just created a new opportunity for Getty to show their true colors to a new audience. In the traditional stock world, there are plenty of people who regard Getty with the same contempt that many microstock artists do, and plenty who left Getty because of the mistreatment they received.

Microstock was better off without Getty getting involved. Everything they touched here turned to garbage. They wrecked istock and closed great sites like StockXpert, sites where contributors used to make good money. When they have this history of doing things that almost always hurt contributors far more than they help us, it's not hard to see why there is such negativity directed towards them.

Add in the disparaging comments they've made over the years, as well as perpetuating lies and myths about the industry to keep contributors earning as little as possible (like the myth that paying contributors more than 20% is impossible), and you've got a pretty good picture of a culture of greed and deception that has done nothing but hurt the stock image industry as a whole.


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