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Messages - PaulieWalnuts
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1
« on: February 14, 2024, 17:39 »
I sell both but have totally separate subjects for each. Some subjects sell well on PODs but not stock and vice versa. One of the problems with selling the same photos on micro and POD is price shoppers. I found that buyers price shop a lot more than I expected. If you have a photo on micro they can get for a couple dollars where they can use it to get a large print at Walmart for another few dollars, why would they spend a lot more money for a print at a POD? A lot of them wont so if your POD stuff isn't selling well one reason may be because they're using your micros for prints.
How well you do depends on your photos and how much demand there is. Also, different PODs have different buyers so you'll need to try different PODs to see which ones work for you. You'll see some people saying they do great on a certain POD and others will say it's a waste of time.
2
« on: August 23, 2023, 06:47 »
After years of watching my photos being stolen I've decided it's time to do something about it.
I'm trying out Pixsy with some solid smaller infringements to see the results.
For bigger infringements I've contacted a handful of IP attorneys and so far none of them have returned calls. The one attorney I was able to talk to said there was a conflict of interest so he couldn't work with me. Interestingly one of the attorneys I never heard back from was Ed Greenburg who has heavily marketed to creatives.
Anybody have an IP attorney based in the United States you can recommend?
How successful is Pixsy?
Too early to tell. I submitted several cases over the past week. It will probably take weeks or months for any results. I'll provide any interesting updates here.
3
« on: August 23, 2023, 06:18 »
Good luck to both of you. Planning to do the same soon.
Guys get back if you manage to do something about it.
I'll provide updates. Less theft benefits all of us.
4
« on: August 23, 2023, 06:16 »
After years of watching my photos being stolen I've decided it's time to do something about it.
I decided to do the same.
I can't recommend a US intellectual property lawyer. But surely there must be good lawyers who take on such cases. I wish that you find them.
A month ago, I started working with a legal organization specializing in copyright protection in Russia (Copydefend). Now they are investigating 79 cases of illegal use of my photos. Hope for positive results.
Best wishes for success! Let us know how it goes.
5
« on: August 21, 2023, 12:45 »
Nobody?
6
« on: August 20, 2023, 12:18 »
After years of watching my photos being stolen I've decided it's time to do something about it.
I'm trying out Pixsy with some solid smaller infringements to see the results.
For bigger infringements I've contacted a handful of IP attorneys and so far none of them have returned calls. The one attorney I was able to talk to said there was a conflict of interest so he couldn't work with me. Interestingly one of the attorneys I never heard back from was Ed Greenburg who has heavily marketed to creatives.
Anybody have an IP attorney based in the United States you can recommend?
7
« on: April 30, 2023, 19:43 »
I did real estate photography for one client for a few years until they decided to find someone cheaper. So I got out of real estate photography. To be profitable required fees nobody would pay and the people I would need to compete with were so cheap it wasnt worth my time. One of the more popular RE photographers in my area charges $100 to do a full house shoot including photos, video, and drone aerials. I did a financial analysis and I couldnt turn a profit at those fees.
I think a good idea would be to focus on higher end realtors that sell more expensive homes. They're more likely to have higher profit to pay a reasonable amount for photography. Lower end real estate agents are more likely to just use their cellphones and do the photos themselves to save money or use the cheapest photographer.
8
« on: October 25, 2022, 07:57 »
Shutterstock: Working together to lead the way with AI
Were excited to announce that we are partnering with OpenAI to bring the tools and experiences to the Shutterstock marketplace that will enable our customers to instantly generate and download images based on the keywords they enter.
As we step into this emerging space, we are going to do it in the best way we know howwith an approach that both compensates our contributor community and protects our customers.
In this spirit, we will not accept content generated by AI to be directly uploaded and sold by contributors in our marketplace because its authorship cannot be attributed to an individual person consistent with the original copyright ownership required to license rights. Please see our latest guidelines here. When the work of many contributed to the creation of a single piece of AI-generated content, we want to ensure that the many are protected and compensated, not just the individual that generated the content.
In the spirit of compensating our contributor community, we are excited to announce an additional form of earnings for our contributors. Given the collective nature of generative content, we developed a revenue share compensation model where contributors whose content was involved in training the model will receive a share of the earnings from datasets and downloads of ALL AI-generated content produced on our platform.
We see generative as an exciting new opportunityan opportunity that were committed to sharing with our contributor community. For more information, please see our FAQ on the subject, which will be updated regularly.
I predicted this was coming earlier in this thread (bold part). Any compensation to us at this point is likely temporary until their legal team figures out a loophole or the copyright aspects of AI are more well defined. Or until AI generates a significant percentage of their income then they will not care at all about contributors. As soon as they figure out legally how to quit paying us they will announce some "good news". And this shouldn't be a surprise to anybody, it's okay for them to create and sell AI based content, but contributors aren't allowed to submit or sell any. It's all about control and money. Unless there ends up being some copyright ruling that restricts or prevents them from selling AI content, they will eventually have total control. So yes, AI is on track for making us redundant unless legal/copyright prevents it from happening.
9
« on: September 20, 2022, 21:30 »
Pictorem is one of the labs I evaluated for Shopify integration. They have a Shopify app that offers one of the best integrations I've seen because it creates one Shopify listing with multiple product and size variations in one listing. Most of the other apps all create a different listing each for canvas, paper, metal, etc. So unless you manually combine them you end up with a mess of what appear to be duplicate product listings. FAA's Shopify app creates multiple listings.
Beyond that, I wasn't impressed. I ordered canvas and photo paper sample prints. I think their production time when I ordered was 4 days and it's now 6 days. I finally got the prints a month later. Left a voicemail with support and never got a call back. Emailed support and finally got a response about issues with suppliers. Paper print arrived in a generic brown semi-rigid mailer and no other protection. No cellophane, wrapping tissue or anything else. And prices are about double the average cost I've seen. If that order had actually been for one of my customers they probably would have either been angry or cancelled the order.
High cost, slow production, low quality presentation, and poor support is a pretty bad combination.
Sounds like they're not much different than FAA - I wouldn't be surprised if they're using the same print vendors.
After following FAA's forum for a few years, I see the pattern. Usually, they do ok but since the pandemic, shipping costs have skyrocketed and (as many forum posters have pointed out) become wildly inconsistent. Usually the order is filled on a timely basis, but sometimes things go off the rails and I've seen forum posts from angry customers who got nowhere with customer service. Quality is usually ok, but sometimes it's a disaster, probably because FAA just found a lower-cost supplier.
Looks like Pictorem is a mixed bag. I'd just like to know if it has a future - will it get better, or just go away?
Pictorem's website makes them look like a high-end print lab but what I received was nowhere close to high-end. Seems they only have locations in New York and Canada but I'm not sure if they actually do the printing. The return address is labeled with the company Xitrade. They operate as both a print lab and a POD. Haven't tried the POD. But yes I'm also concerned about their longevity. It takes a ton of time to load products and/or integrate to something like Shopify and if they're unreliable or go out of business it's a waste of time. With FAA, I've found the overall quality of products to be good, production times are mostly good, and customer service is a bit hit or miss. One guy owns and built the entire platform. I think he's done an amazing job with it but at some point he'll probably decide it's time to sell it. Whoever buys it will likely do the usual cost cutting and wringing artists dry. FAA has a partnership with Getty so I'm guessing they'd be one of the top potential buyers.
10
« on: September 18, 2022, 16:24 »
If AI can make any picture you want why would anyone need agencies? You just buy the software and add any picture you want to your article. So it's not just the contributors losing here. It's also the agencies. They will be redundant, like us.
They will have curated work and customer service to help buyers save time and bypass the unusable garbage. However, at some point, the AI will have learned so much it may work so well that it does actually eliminate the need for an agency. It will just generate images based on what the buyer types in. As it learns patterns of what people buy, the images will get better and it will create more sellable work reducing the need for curation.
11
« on: September 18, 2022, 16:19 »
There's a quickly diminishing amount of creative/artist jobs already and this will just accelerate the decline. Once this is perfected over the next 5-10 years stock agencies will adopt AI and have little need for contributors. Free money for them and less of having to deal with us. AI wont kill the industry but it will be a big shift much like macro to micro. People will need to adjust to the shift and find a profitable niche. Editorial cant be replaced by AI.
.....
it's not free if agencies create their own AI images - they have to pay the designers - much cheaper to rely on contributors to create, weed out, refine, keyword, etc
Well, cost depends on if the agency licenses an existing AI or builds its own. Eventually, AI will fully automate everything eliminating the need for contributors except for editorial. I would expect the AI to be cheaper but who knows. Hard to say the cost of AI development or licensing vs contributor payouts. Agencies will likely have curated stock AI images picked by staff, plus stock images generated by AI, and then virtual AI images created when a buyer types in search terms where AI just creates images on the spot. AI will learn over time buyer patterns and it will fine-tune creating new images that are more likely to sell. Eventually it will learn enough that the need for designers and contributors will diminish. At some point AI will keyword and curate images accurately. I hope we're at least ten years or more away from photo AI being fully mature otherwise this may really screw up my retirement plans.
12
« on: September 18, 2022, 08:34 »
There's a quickly diminishing amount of creative/artist jobs already and this will just accelerate the decline. Once this is perfected over the next 5-10 years stock agencies will adopt AI and have little need for contributors. Free money for them and less of having to deal with us. AI wont kill the industry but it will be a big shift much like macro to micro. People will need to adjust to the shift and find a profitable niche. Editorial cant be replaced by AI.
I wonder how many buyers will want images that are authentic and real versus artificial.
13
« on: September 17, 2022, 17:37 »
Pictorem is one of the labs I evaluated for Shopify integration. They have a Shopify app that offers one of the best integrations I've seen because it creates one Shopify listing with multiple product and size variations in one listing. Most of the other apps all create a different listing each for canvas, paper, metal, etc. So unless you manually combine them you end up with a mess of what appear to be duplicate product listings. FAA's Shopify app creates multiple listings.
Beyond that, I wasn't impressed. I ordered canvas and photo paper sample prints. I think their production time when I ordered was 4 days and it's now 6 days. I finally got the prints a month later. Left a voicemail with support and never got a call back. Emailed support and finally got a response about issues with suppliers. Paper print arrived in a generic brown semi-rigid mailer and no other protection. No cellophane, wrapping tissue or anything else. And prices are about double the average cost I've seen. If that order had actually been for one of my customers they probably would have either been angry or cancelled the order.
High cost, slow production, low quality presentation, and poor support is a pretty bad combination.
14
« on: August 30, 2022, 07:04 »
I am still trying to understand what is the advantage over using Photoshelter or Photodeck?
Photoshelter - I just dropped them after having a website for over ten years. I no longer have any confidence in their longevity. Long time ago they tried to launch an agency and abandoned it. Then they did a much advertised platform update (named Beam?) which seemed half baked. Then they shifted their business away from photographers/artists to chasing corporate clients with digital asset management. Then they went back to chasing photographers/artists so I'm not sure if DAM is still a core part of their business. Then a few years ago they made a highly promoted announcement of massive platform updates. During this time my sales went from okay to nothing. Their platform isn't overly customizable and the user interface is a cobbled together bandaged mishmash of UI designs from different time periods. Now they seem to only spend time on writing posts on their blog which I really dont care at all about. They just seem to be struggling to find their way as a business but that's only my perception.
Photodeck - My main website is with them and overall I'm happy. It's a small UK based company so there's always a concern with them deciding to exit the business. However, they post somewhat regular updates about new functionality they've added. Platform is highly customizable, SEO capabilities are reasonably good and I get decent traffic and regular sales. Performance is very fast and the user interface is well organized and intuitive but probably leaning a little more toward techie than the bubbly friendly UI of Shopify. The licensing options include prints, RF and RM. I totally customized the RM configuration to meet my needs. I get a mix of higher dollar RM licensing sales and print sales. They also have a handful of print integration partners for automated fulfillment. Overall a very nice website platform for artists who are a bit more into customizing.
Shopify - Just setting up my site now. I want a platform I dont need to worry about spending a ton of time on and then them going out of business. And I want more traffic and sales. My Photodeck site gets decent traffic but I seemed to have hit an SEO wall where I'm not able to increase traffic any further. As a test I did a bunch of Google searches to see which art websites showed up toward the front. After getting past the big sites, usually next up were independent artists with Shopify websites. The Shopify user interface is very slick and intuitive with a ton of apps you can add for SEO, customer live chat, stock licensing, and even fully automated POD fulfillment such as through Printful. With Printful, Printify and other POD apps, customers can place orders and you dont need to do anything. The Shopify order automatically goes to Printful and they print and ship.
Smgmug - Tried it for a while and didn't like the platform and had zero sales.
Thank you Paulie for your description and experience.
I also was with Photoshelter many years and left them. I have a similar thought of them like you described. I am now with Zenfolio but also not so happy. I went with them because the unlimited video but the clips get so compressed that they cannot be sold . I also find their site not intuitive neither the selling option so I will ditch them for sure.
I was thinking of Photodeck. Like their options, they seem quite fast. I though they were french. Yes they are a small company and the risk the close door is always there but as you say they seem committed as the post regular updates and improve their service. Also they don't take a cut of your sales like Photoshelter or zenfolio does.
You got me really intrigued with shopify. I know many people use it, and it seems it is the independent port for many small sellers. I thought it was much more complicate to sell many thousands of items (photos) there. Specially as I need RM because I am RF exclusive so selling as RF is not an option for me. I also thought that once you got all the extras and complements of shopify it would end much more expensive every month than Photodeck. Is this your experience?
Yes Shopify has a lot of possibilities for extra costs. There are free apps that have upgrade options that have a cost. Then there are apps that don't offer a free version. Adding a bunch of fee based apps can increase costs a lot. But, the apps can add a lot of value where Photodeck doesn't really offer apps. There are apps for everything. Live chat, SEO, email marketing, and a lot more. Here's the app store https://apps.shopify.com/Here's an overview of selling stock photos on Shopify https://www.shopify.com/sell/photography
15
« on: August 27, 2022, 14:39 »
Today I had the chance to try out DALL E and I started out by describing some of my bestsellers and see what my AI generated "competition" would be.
I can now safely say that it is how I thought: We are really really still FAR away from having to worry about AI generated photos replacing us.
With today's exponential technology advances, "far" is probably five, maybe ten, years at most before the technology is ready. I hope it doesn't start to become mainstream for at lest another 15 years.
16
« on: August 23, 2022, 15:49 »
Any chances of getting regular stock sales on these sites (Photodeck, Shopify, Smugmug, etc.) by organic traffic only, without doing any promotion (ads, social networks, blogs, etc.)?
Photodeck has good SEO in my experience. If you know SEO, how to structure SEO content, and have something unique buyers need, you'll get organic traffic. For me it's mostly Google with a distant second being organic social media sharing. If you just take your ports from the micros and dump them in something like Photodeck or Shopify, I doubt many, or any, sales would come from this. I separated my ports. The stuff I have in micro is totally different from what I have on my personal website. The prices on my personal site are macro-level starting at $100 and going into the thousands. I make fewer sales but one sale can equal months of micro sales.
17
« on: July 08, 2022, 20:32 »
I am still trying to understand what is the advantage over using Photoshelter or Photodeck?
Or Smugmug?
I think personally I would prefer a place that is officially an agency, lets me set my own prices and upload whatever I want, but does all the billing under their own system with the customer, so I just get my monthly summed royalty.
I was thinking of maybe using my pond5 exclusive account for a specialized theme for photos and videos. But I just learned that only video is treated exclusively.
Most important I need a defined subject with at least 1000 files.
And if they are good enough, they should probably go to higher end agencies, like stocksy.
But I will follow your project with interest.
The advantage of a shop would be if it can be integrated into my own website, so that longterm people bookmark my site without being dependent on an agency.
Shopify seems to have an SEO advantage with Google so I'm giving it a try to see what happens. Like with any personal website, success lies in getting your own traffic and having something unique buyers want. Photoshelter - I just dropped them after having a website for over ten years. I no longer have any confidence in their longevity. Long time ago they tried to launch an agency and abandoned it. Then they did a much advertised platform update (named Beam?) which seemed half baked. Then they shifted their business away from photographers/artists to chasing corporate clients with digital asset management. Then they went back to chasing photographers/artists so I'm not sure if DAM is still a core part of their business. Then a few years ago they made a highly promoted announcement of massive platform updates. During this time my sales went from okay to nothing. Their platform isn't overly customizable and the user interface is a cobbled together bandaged mishmash of UI designs from different time periods. Now they seem to only spend time on writing posts on their blog which I really dont care at all about. They just seem to be struggling to find their way as a business but that's only my perception. Photodeck - My main website is with them and overall I'm happy. It's a small UK based company so there's always a concern with them deciding to exit the business. However, they post somewhat regular updates about new functionality they've added. Platform is highly customizable, SEO capabilities are reasonably good and I get decent traffic and regular sales. Performance is very fast and the user interface is well organized and intuitive but probably leaning a little more toward techie than the bubbly friendly UI of Shopify. The licensing options include prints, RF and RM. I totally customized the RM configuration to meet my needs. I get a mix of higher dollar RM licensing sales and print sales. They also have a handful of print integration partners for automated fulfillment. Overall a very nice website platform for artists who are a bit more into customizing. Shopify - Just setting up my site now. I want a platform I dont need to worry about spending a ton of time on and then them going out of business. And I want more traffic and sales. My Photodeck site gets decent traffic but I seemed to have hit an SEO wall where I'm not able to increase traffic any further. As a test I did a bunch of Google searches to see which art websites showed up toward the front. After getting past the big sites, usually next up were independent artists with Shopify websites. The Shopify user interface is very slick and intuitive with a ton of apps you can add for SEO, customer live chat, stock licensing, and even fully automated POD fulfillment such as through Printful. With Printful, Printify and other POD apps, customers can place orders and you dont need to do anything. The Shopify order automatically goes to Printful and they print and ship. Smgmug - Tried it for a while and didn't like the platform and had zero sales.
18
« on: July 05, 2022, 22:36 »
Unless something has changed since I got mine, if you plan to sell the photos for any reason, Part 107 is required. Without Part 107, you are limited to recreational use only.
Retesting/renewal used to be in-person only at a test center but now can be done online.
19
« on: June 30, 2022, 13:22 »
I'm in process of setting up Shopify to sell prints through an automated print on demand app like Printful or Printify. Currently working through some obstacles.
20
« on: June 14, 2022, 08:00 »
Pond5 was a standout for me performing well until the take over. Now down over 2/3's.
I designed my whole life around stock. It's beyond discouraging and clearly the bottom has not arrived. Yet one company treats us well. Why don't the rest?
#insanity
Ten years ago I was hoping the bottom would come soon.
21
« on: May 07, 2022, 22:44 »
I just closed my Etsy account but not because of fees or lack of sales. In fact, kind of the opposite.
The fees are fine. Less than eBay, and less than agencies (up to 85%!) and then set their own prices. Even less than designer resource agencies who take about 30% but at least let you set your own price.
But the problem is, when your sales start to take off, you are faced with a new kind of problem: buyers. Some of them are wonderful, kind, understanding people, but about 10% are absolute nutcases. They don't read your listings, they mistakenly buy the wrong thing, they expect you to answer their messages immediately (even within an hour is too long for them), they don't take responsibility for their own mistakes, everything is your fault, and they are so full of anger. You do all the right things, you explain everywhere throughout the listing, in both pictures and words what this listing is actually for. But they don't read the listings!
Normally with enough time and patience, you can work through these problems, but I just had 2 in a row, and I feel like I've been hit by a sledgehammer.
The point is, you have to 'man your messaging' 24/7. The more sales you make, the more of this stuff you have to deal with.
Anyway, the reason why I've closed my shop is that I have to go away for a few months to work for my husband's business and I can't have all this drama going on in the background. I think I could have put the shop on holiday mode or something, but for now, it was just nice to close the whole thing for a while, and have some peace and quiet.
So this is what you pay the agencies for. Managing buyers. Food for thought, everybody!
PS. I loved being on Etsy and loved 80% of the whole 'selling direct/running your own little business' thing, but it can get you down if you have a bad week.
This is totally accurate. Oddly, for years I only had an occasional problematic client. This year I've had more problems than the past ten years combined. One buyer angrily messaged me that I sent him the wrong size print and the quality was horrible. After dozens of messages back and forth, turns out he received the exact size he ordered. And he based judging the quality of the print while it was still wrapped in plastic for shipping. I told him to take the print out of the plastic and he responded that it looked amazing. I just about lost my mind dealing with this person. This is one reason I like FineArtAmerica. They handle most of the customer service BS. The fees are starting to get a bit out of control though. I realize Etsy has lower fees than Amazon but they're definitely slowly working on increasing fees to catch up with them. And now with inflation, profits are getting squeezed.
22
« on: May 07, 2022, 22:28 »
My wife has been studying jewellery vendors on Etsy and has come across others who sell photo prints there. Some also sell digital downloads for around $2-$3 which can be used for printing photo backgrounds for food photography. I suppose that $2-$3 is better than 10 cents.
Art and print buyers are more willing to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars for the right printed photo. You should reconsider your approach otherwise art will just be a repeat of what micro did to stock photography. I'd rather sell one print for $50 than 50 for $1. Check out using drop shipping companies like Bay Photo, WHCC, or Circle Graphics.
23
« on: May 05, 2022, 07:11 »
Wow. Thanks for sharing this and your thoughts.
I am glad I have started to spend time more on my art photography.
Be aware that these stock sites also have their tentacles into art. I'm in the process of setting up a Shopify website and have stumbled on POD apps that have integrations into stock sites to use images. You can create a print, tshirt or whatever using images from Shutterstock, Getty and other sites. Not sure if there's any extra cost or what contributors are getting paid for this, but regardless our micro work is being used to create products and possibly being used to resell them.
24
« on: May 05, 2022, 06:53 »
Surely its manipulating and combining existing images into new ones? Its not generating images from scratch and those starting images have to come from somewhere.
The guy in the video seems to be saying it's not using existing photos to create the image. Maybe it's learning from existing photos and creating its own new version of what it thinks a staircase or a cookie is. Regardless even if that's true, it had to use existing photos to learn. So not only could this technology possibly eliminate the need for us, it also could be using our work to do so.
25
« on: May 05, 2022, 06:44 »
These look like they're generated from parts of existing photos. Possible infringement problems? I do agree this eventually will partially, but not totally, replace the need for photographers to produce stock photos. Then these stock companies will just license the AI and create their own images to bypass paying people.
ETA: I watched the full video. How else would it create something with Mona Lisa, Gollum, or Pinkachu without using an existing image of them? They claim to have safeguards from using things such as political figures. What about copyright? They had to have used bits of existing photos for eyeballs, cookies, etc.
Forget the "stock companies", if this works why would anybody need them at all?
For the same reason they need them now. Convenience and efficiency. Buyers who dont have the time to play with the AI to get the right image will look for something close enough in the database or the stock companies will have employees who create custom images for a premium price. The stock companies already have a huge amount of search data analytics to know trends of what buyers are looking for. They will probably have a combination of employees who create AI content and will also feed that data directly into the AI to generate images to add to the catalog. Plus they could just integrate the AI with their search engine and generate images on demand when buyers search. Either way, they would no longer need to pay us and will keep 100% of the sale which is their goal anyway. We need something like micro watermarking that cant be seen by the human eye but can be tracked to find whatever bits the AI is scraping from the internet. I think Adobe used to have something like this. Amazing technology but as a photographer, I'm glad I'm older and headed toward retirement. I'm sure this technology will create new money making opportunities for those who are interested in doing the work. It will also displace people like me who love taking photos outdoors and not spending more time in front of a computer.
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