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Messages - cobalt
Pages: [1] 2 3 4 5 6 ... 173
1
« on: Yesterday at 18:07 »
Fantastic news! Thank you for letting us now!
2
« on: Yesterday at 04:02 »
That is horrible.
Please contact Mat.
Adobe should have a much more professional system, especially for reliable and proven producers.
To have us at the mercy of an invisible department you cannot talk to is crazy.
It is terrifying to be cut of abruptly from your income.
3
« on: April 20, 2024, 11:04 »
It was the easiest money I ever made, and it was a lot of fun.
Fantastic people as well!
4
« on: April 20, 2024, 07:41 »
If you want to put your mind at ease, why not write to Mat?
Hundreds of files instead of perhaps 20 a day, is really unusual.
However, because of the way Adobe has been blocking ports, I can understand that producers are now scared to contact Adobe.
There really should be a more professional way in dealing with this problem.
Not sure what I would do, but if I usually had 20 sales a day and then suddenly 400 files get downloaded in 10 minutes, all for the same price, so probably the same client, I think I would want to know if I can safely payout the money.
Of course, please let us know what happens if you contact Mat directly.
I hope the sales are legit and you can enjoy your special downloads day.
5
« on: April 18, 2024, 20:58 »
for me the slowest months are july august, especially in Europe many companies close down for 4 weeks. business teams is probably the best money maker, but you no longer need people in suits. you can do messy tech start ups. which is probably even more difficult to get it right than the classic penthouse glass office. anything with real people needs great models, many hire professional actors. or you need a photographer who is really, really good at getting natural expressions out of normal people. you can try doing people teams with ai. it is also something i want to learn this year. but the more people in the image, the more mistakes. i had such high hopes for my ai flower illustrationswell, maybe better to do abstract people instead 
6
« on: April 18, 2024, 10:35 »
I started contributing in 2013 when I left my istock exclusivity. Uploaded my best files and had some good sales, but then basically stopped doing stock for 10 years, at least I hardly uploaded to Adobe.
I had around 1400 files in 2022. Started to upload again seriously in September 22 and then when ai was accepted made a big push with that last year.
Now I have around 4400 files.
When I started uploading again, it was all my old photo bestsellers that started being active again, the ai files took many months to get taken up by clients.
This year my main focus is adding ai illustrations. Because I have no algo track record, the uptake is very, very slow, but I think longterm it will be worth having one more medium.
Next month I will start doing normal photo/video shootings again, also because I need content for other agencies.
I will probably need 12k files to have much better balance.
But overall I guess I should not complain.
If the content is needed, then my sales rise very, very fast. But when the event is over, the drop is just as quick and very brutal.
Now down to 6700 weekly rank. Highest I ever reached, but only for one day, was 250.
The "average" seems to be around 3200. But with very, very wild swings.
7
« on: April 18, 2024, 08:53 »
For marketing purposes alone I can see many customers using only real photos and no ai.
If I had a food magazine, I would insist on real food and cooking only.
Medical needs theme - only real people and real situationsetc..
Doesn't really answer the question - if you cannot distinguish real photos from Ai created images, why should you inists on using real photos? Yes, AI suck at most medical content right now (though I have sold AI images of medical conditions already) and food is hit or miss, but I have sold many AI food photos as well. I even once posted a link here to a site with Asian recipes - all images were AI created. (And most looked very weird. Obviously the creator of that site did not care)
But AI is only going to get better in the future. So why should someone inists of using a real photo "just for the sake of using a real photo", when there is no difference in the end result?
Why use a real photo when, at some point, the people buying and reading the food magazine will not be able to tell whether real photos or AI images were used? Especially if AI images were so much cheaper and faster to create? I don't see the advantage from the publisher's point of view.
If it was my food magazine I would make an important point that everything we print or write about is real content. It would be a major point for us. There will be other magazines that don't care and that is their choice.
8
« on: April 18, 2024, 08:49 »
I have been doing ai practically every day for 18 months now.
Programs for creating pictures using artificial intelligence are paid. How much do you pay per month and how much money do you get from selling pictures created in these programs?
this year I pay on average around 60-100 dollars a month. Last year was a lot more. I now use programs on and off, one month this, one month that. I always pay for commercial use. in total I have paid over 4000 dollars over the last 18 months. i think of that as a learning investment. i probably could have saved a lot of money if I had started directly with midjourney. But I tested several different platforms and only started with midjourney this year. I broke even some time last year and now make a lot more than what I am paying for using the software every month. It is like paying for any other software or studio or computers. Longterm I think prices will also come down, because the ai companies are all competing with each other.
9
« on: April 18, 2024, 06:10 »
So, the number of sales per week didn't actually increase, but revenue nearly doubled since I started to price my bestsellers much higher to $149/HD and $199/4K from $74/HD and $149/4K. On Pond5, I think if you want to make money, you got to price your clips at decent level and can push it higher for your bestsellers. Buyers don't buy them because it's cheap. Those cheapo buyers just pay $10/month and download on cheapo sites or get subscription plans on SS or AS. My RPD is about $95 now since I started this high price strategy. Some folks are pricing their clips at $25/HD and $27/4k and get like $10 for a download. I think they're making a big mistake. I'm surprised to see the number of high price HD sales is the same as regular price HD sale. Only 707 clips out of my 30k clips are set at higher price. So, the popular bestselling clips have pricing power we may be underestimating.
My port.
https://www.pond5.com/artist/blvdoneprime
Your stats and work are very impressive. How do you grow your port with those numbers of clips because I recall looking some 6 or so months ago (maybe a bit longer) and there were like 16k clips. There's now nearly 30k clips. You do this full time?
I may be wrong, but if I remember correctly he said, he removed his non exclusive content from other places and added the files to his exclusive port. It is unlikely he produced 14k clips in 6 months.
10
« on: April 18, 2024, 03:29 »
For marketing purposes alone I can see many customers using only real photos and no ai.
If I had a food magazine, I would insist on real food and cooking only.
Medical needs theme - only real people and real situationsetc..
11
« on: April 17, 2024, 11:00 »
precisely that.
i spend a lot of time doing research, trying to find missing content, but I need to get the files live to see if it will actually sell.
It could be that a genre is empty because these files get no sales.
i wish I could upload higher volume of files, but it is usually 10-15 files a day, sometimes even less than 10.
anyway, back to research.
eta
they take illustrations and videos really quickly, so perhaps I should not be complaining so much.
12
« on: April 17, 2024, 10:26 »
I have been doing ai practically every day for 18 months now.
Maybe my prompting skills are useless, but getting something very specific is extremely difficult.
It is the main reason I am not worried about ai competition. If I cant get it right with daily use, how will a company have the time to go through endless variations and tests?
It is much faster to find a base file on a stock agency, also all legal stuff is cleared and thenmodify that file with ai for your specific purpose.
That is where I personally see the future, a hybrid agency ai workflow.
13
« on: April 17, 2024, 09:36 »
Thank you! For my 2-3 files in one session that is perfect.
14
« on: April 17, 2024, 09:28 »
49 dollars, no special deductions. together with balance carried forward I will get paid, just above 100.
15
« on: April 17, 2024, 08:58 »
.
16
« on: April 17, 2024, 08:12 »
Now it is getting really slow again.
Especially people seem to take ages. Maybe I should start doing winter people instead of summer people.
17
« on: April 17, 2024, 06:11 »
I have already passed my total income from april 2023, so perhaps i should not complain.
But the extreme drop after good high is always depressing.
18
« on: April 17, 2024, 03:27 »
The mobile phone also brought a new wave of producers.
And anyway there are a lot of options for very affordable stock production in many countries. You would think by now agencies would receive 100 million quality files a week, also because photography is one of the biggest hobbies on the planet.
But the inflow hasnt changed much and for ss it has even gone down by half according to their own numbers.
It will be the same with ai.
Lots of people do ai, but the majority will not upload to agencies.
And still there are huge gaps in all agency collections.
Because most producers never do any research.
19
« on: April 17, 2024, 03:14 »
fwiw i am down to pos 6580 Clearly I dont have enough of the right content for this time of year 
20
« on: April 16, 2024, 12:09 »
If Adobe was hoping to keep some of their algos secret, they need to come up with a better system to hide it from the msg detectives. 
21
« on: April 16, 2024, 02:43 »
That looks really interesting, thank you for sharing!
22
« on: April 15, 2024, 06:42 »
looking around various groups, i am not seeinng anyone who does normal photo video reporting less sales or blaming any loss in sales on ai.
if you do quality, needed work and as lonng as there is tons of content missing on all agencies, people seem to be perfectly fine.
what is getting more is a hybrid workflow, shoot with a camera, adapt and expand your own work with ai, create more variations, or just change the format, add some thinsg with ai or remove that would have taken ages in photoshop.
also just look at the ai stuff being uploaded, how much of that is actually targeting freshly needed content?
a lot just looks nice, but is either very similar to what is already there, i.e. "inspired" by sorting by downloads and copying the first 3 pages of a search...or it is endless backgrounds stuff that already exists anyway.
only a small group of people are using ai to really create needed content. but they are usually the ones also doing needed content with camera.
just my 2 cents
ai is a tool, like the camera or photoshop are a tool
23
« on: April 15, 2024, 04:53 »
@super like I said, the number of less than 2000 producers making over 1k a month on Adobe was a trust me bro thing, not a published reference or adobe quote. I didnt believe it at the time, because there are so many people doing well on Adobe just in Germany alone with large ports from the Fotolia days. Then people started sharing weekly positions in several places and I was suprised that not more people with larger ports had a high volume of sales. Obviously the ranking thing is biased as well. Especially in groups where people have your adobe alias and can look up your port, if you are really doing well, do people share their ranks? I am only doing it because I am restarting my stock journey and many people keep asking me if it is worth it. So I am sharing information freely, in the hope of learning something interesting myself. And I think we have learned a lot by sharing data. Obviously, dont find the idea useful, just dont do it
24
« on: April 15, 2024, 03:42 »
You are asking far too late.
There were huge discussions about this when Adobe introduced the ai collection 15 months ago.
Search the forum for the old threads.
By now everyone has formed their opinions and adapted their workflow. Some do ai, some dont, but overall sales dont seem to be affected, on the contrary sales on Adobe specifically are going up and some the ai firsttimers, especially those adding a lot of ai people, are making great money with ai.
If you really believe the stock agencies will close down because of ai, it is best to organize your work life accordingly.
25
« on: April 14, 2024, 10:01 »
You are right, sorry, that was February.
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