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Messages - targoszstock

Pages: [1] 2
1
General - Stock Video / Re: How bad is it for the rest of you?
« on: January 25, 2021, 07:39 »
My micro earnings used to be in the thousands of dollars per month. Now I earn enough for a family of four dinner at McDonalds. And I'm not talking the fancy stuff. Dollar menu.

My ss earnings used to go over a thousand dollars from time to time. This January my ss total is $2 (four $0.5 video sales).

No Happy Meal for my kids ; )

2
Shutterstock.com / Re: Shutterstock just became iStock 2.0
« on: May 26, 2020, 12:18 »
Break even for video is the sale number 5310  :-\

Spreadsheet with some numbers you might be interested in

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1I-wNMUw8ITyNtCnsjiMUYCQQ0hEdlvCBDyTtJuxEgDk/edit?usp=sharing

3
After sending an overdue payment notification email every day for the last week or two, I did receive the payment.

No reply to contract termination emails.

4
No reply to contract termination emails either.

Is there any way to delete the portfolio since they are not doing it when told to do so?

5
Same here. My payment is overdue for many months now. No replies to emails.

6
I did, and all I could find was discussions related to logos, and trademark copyright issues when creating stock content. Not when licensing content for logo.

I will do the search one more time.

If any of you has the link to that discussion I would appreciate if you would share it.

7
Do you have any experience with such requests?

Any usual price range for custom logo license?

8
General - Stock Video / Re: Revostock Payments
« on: July 09, 2015, 04:34 »
After few prompts for payment I got my $200. Half of it was owed since December.

Until they are 100% on track with payments I am going to deactivate my portfolio.

9
iStockPhoto.com / Re: ESP problem....
« on: July 03, 2015, 07:06 »
23,976p - error, 24p - ok

For me the problem was the frame rate. They say 23,98 is ok, well I uploaded 23,976p and I got an error, so I re-uploaded same file rendered as 24p and all was fine.

10
General - Stock Video / Re: Revostock Payments
« on: June 18, 2015, 05:52 »
I have similar experience as You guys. Revo delayed my payment so I asked for it and I got it real quick. Now however my payments are overdue again, and my request for payment got no reply for a month or more. Today I send an other one, we will see hoe this one goes.

I have to say I am quite frustrated with a company that can not spare my share of the money they got from the client!

I decided to deactivate my entire portfolio. When they are back on track with a 100% of their payments I will consider doing business with them again.

11
How about deactivating entire iStock portfolio, and re uploading everything, as well as the new files in 720p resolution only. This way your full HD content elsewhere does not get undercut by iStock pricing.

What do you think?

I have checked with iStock, there is no way of deactivating only full HD and leaving the file with lower resolutions online. You have to deactivate the file itself, and than re upload it in lower resolution.

12
Same here

16/09/2014 9:48 PM MDT    HD 1080 (mov)    Regular    $4.92 USD

13
Shutterstock still has 5 web size for $79 and 5 HD for $369

My stupid mistake, sorry. I always saw prices in USD, as it turns out now I see in Euro ; )

14
I think the price is $28,4 (based on real live sales people are reporting) - $65 each. James has calculated the $90 based on one credit price, when buying video file you get a cheaper 6 credit pack. So here is how it looks right now:

15% = $4.26 - $9.75 (that's what I get)
16% = $4.54 - $10.40
17% = $4.82 - $11.05
18% = $5.11 - $11.70
19% = $5.40 - $12.35
20% = $5.68 - $13.00

15
It seems to me for the amount of work you put in you are no better off.

I didn't do it to make more money, I did it to diversify and sabilize my income. I consider the transfer to be definitely worth it. Than comes the question how would my portfolio perform if I stayed. John, you are just the person to ask, how did your 5000+ files perform in 2013?

Amount of work? It is not that bad, check out my todays blog post if you like.

If you are making the same amount like you did when you were exclusive and reached this goal in less than 18 months, I am very impressed.

There wasn't a gap and then a build up. Well maybe a little. Check my early charts. March is still my bme but I am consistently getting closer.

Your files havent been online that long and many will certainly still find new customers and havent reached their peak yet. At the video masterclass, simonkr shared that in his experience the second year was the financially strongest for his files and then things would slow down until they stabilised on a certain level.

I think your experience is a major indication that going indie is financially a very solid option for video. So now you have a  loyal following of buyers on many different agencies, not just one and can build your portfolio in peace. You also have a much better chance of all files getting their day in the sun and being noticed by the different best match systems. You can sell editorial videos. You can select your own prices on pond5. etc

In short, unless doing video is a part time thing or you simply prefer working with just one agency, indie looks like the better financial option for video.

And you no longer have to worry which of the sites is moving up or down or if your agency will regain the position lost as market leader.

I agree : )

Dose your sales include Getty?

Getty? I had less than 10 sales over there ever, and only one in 2013. That is for the content iStock put there on my behalf. iStock says I have one file over there. I found three. iStock says all is well... an other reason I left.

One more question: do you supply getty separately? If not, why not apply and make them one more of your agencies/webshops to work with.

I guess then you would have them all covered, wouldt you?

Isn't getty exclusive only?

16
It may also be worth pointing out you have an average of 16 sales a month at IS, so your experience may be very different to someone with higher sales.

Both of you are photographers. I suppose in your world about 20 sales is close to nothing. For non exclusive videographer with my portfolio size and type I think this is an average. That being said there is no two identical portfolios, so there is no two identical experiences.

Umm... maybe I did something wrong but I can not find any solid numbers of information in your blog that would allow me to make any conclusions if you are on a positive or negative trend overall.

"my overall income seems to be making up for the iStock loss. It is growing slowly but steadily, just as my portfolio is"

"over the last three years I was able to maintain pretty much a steady revenue per image per year"

This is the most solid information you can get. I hear people complain they are making less and less. I was able to keep the same level of average income per image (footage actually) as I have been making before going freelance. Since my portfolio is growing, my overall income i growing as well.  If your experience is or will be as mine, you know exactly what to expect. If I were thinking of dropping my exclusivity right now I would consider such insight much more valuable then "oh I am making 200$ more" which is useless if you do not take into account portfolio size and growth.

The most recent post only has a single chart without any legend explaining what the chart actually means. And the last "real" information seems to be dated from March 2013.

"The column graphs from my early posts tell the short term, monthly basis story. If you need perspective, my suggestion is to make a spreadsheet with your income for every given month since the beginning of your microstock adventure. Then make the calculation how much did you make for the past year out of each months point of view. This is how it looks for my iStock sales only"

I realize this may seem a little confusing to some. The column graphs which you call a real information were not good enough for me, that is why I was looking for a different way of putting the data together.

If I were to put such a chart with my overall income together it would just keep going up as the istock chart is going up to a point where I dropped exclusivity. It would look like this because - you should probably know the answer by now - my portfolio is growing.

Hope this helps.

17
"Final words"?? The only words I see here are an advertisement to drive traffic to your blog. Maybe you could just tell us? Since you felt it was important enough to start a topic about here?

There is a number of articles at my blog that tell my story of dropping exclusivity. The most recent one is in a way a conclusion. I believe all the information I shared exceeds in volume the appropriate forum post size.

I always felt the place for an article is a blog or a web page. Forum on the other hand is a place created for discussion and sharing opinions.

Therefore, as initially intended, I Invite everyone to share their doubts, questions, thoughts and experiences on the subject of dropping iStock exclusivity on this respective forum.

A good place to start the discussion is referring to all this somewhat private data and experience I have freely shared on my blog.

I posted similar posts in the past. Sharing my experience was welcome with appreciation. I am surprised this is not the case.

19
As announced over a year ago in this topic http://www.microstockgroup.com/general-stock-video/blogging-my-experience-on-dropping-istockphoto-exclusivity-contract/ I have dropped iStock footage exclusivity contract. If you are curious how did it work out for me, please visit my blog targoszstock.blogspot.com

20
iStockPhoto.com / Re: About exclusivity...
« on: November 29, 2013, 09:20 »

22
Garry Schyman - Praan (Life) [Wedding Episode 103]


You think I can find an acoustic royalty free version of this song? Where to look?

23
Yes, these are video stats only.

You say stagnant, I say stable - on a level that IS came close three times only.

I believe my last months of IS exclusivity were a rollercoaster as it was throughout all the years. By accident it only seems to be a trend. I bet if I stayed exclusive i would have a month with quarter the income very soon, as it has happened in the past.

Other than that, these IS statistics have some getty sales within. I will redo the chart someday to separate them from the dark gray bar. My portfolio is still available on getty, just no more sales.

24
this may be a moot question, but has anybody done better financially by dropping exclusivity? i have not seen an overwhelming yes.

This may not be so obvious when you look at my sales statistics, however if you take average income over several months, and portfolio size in to account, I am doing definitely better.

25
(...) I want to hear the experiences from members that have quitted the iStock exclusivity and started to work with other agencies.  I want to hear your experiences, sites you've submitted, if you're making much more money than you're doing as exclusive at iStock, size of portfolios, best sellers sites, how long did you take to reach the same income you were doing as exclusive at iStock, are you making more, and so on.


As usual with my posts, going back to the subject and main question.

On my blog http://targoszstock.blogspot.com/ i post exactly what you were looking for. If you have any other questions feel free to send me a targoszstock gmail : )

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