Macro Stock / Midstock > General Macrostock
I believe in quality.
alno:
--- Quote from: Josephine on November 07, 2016, 13:21 ---A good portfolio makes good money, a bad portfolio goes empty. A bad portfolio means out-dated images which do not meet the demand of the market. The consequence would be, produce better images or leave the business and not to waste valuable time with complaints, petitions or weird accusations.
--- End quote ---
So what's wrong with signing couple of petitions and making decent content at the same time?
"Better" is not the same to "better selling" by the way.
Pauws99:
""Better" is not the same to "better selling" by the way".......actually in the context of Mstock being a business I think it is ;-).
Zero Talent:
--- Quote from: Josephine on November 07, 2016, 13:21 ---A good portfolio makes good money, a bad portfolio goes empty. A bad portfolio means out-dated images which do not meet the demand of the market. The consequence would be, produce better images or leave the business and not to waste valuable time with complaints, petitions or weird accusations.
--- End quote ---
I also believe in quality, but not in $0.02 royalty for a quality photo
Jo Ann Snover:
Quality is such a vague term in the context of licensing stock. If a buyer finds it useful - or lots of buyers find it useful - then saying it's low quality but sells a lot seems pretty daft to me. Assuming that work that doesn't sell doesn't meet market demand assumes that the market got to take a look at the work and decided not to buy it. That's not always what happens. Good, current, saleable work can and does languish sometimes.
I've been selling stock a while and have seen sales for images take off or sink as changes in search results occur on a site (easier to see when collections were smaller). Not seasonal images, or outdated technology or fashion; just a sudden shift in what ends up on page one for default search results. I'm not the only one who's seen this - you can find oodles of discussions of overnight changes.
Reality is that search position isn't the only thing that determines sales, but it's a huge factor. You can't flog cr#p by putting it on page one, but if there are several perfectly usable images in a certain category, the one up front in the search results will typically sell better.
But the idea that quality images (whatever those are) will just float to the top is wishful thinking, IMO. Good images in an underserved niche have more of a shot than those in an oversupplied category (over 3 million hits for Christmas background on Shutterstock for example), but filling the first page with spammed garbage helps no-one (I doubt that stuff actually sells as it's mostly much less good than what you see in a popular search) and hurts both buyers and ethical, honest contributors.
It's true that contributors don't and can't control the search engine, but can fuss if there are bugs an agency hasn't noticed or horrendous unfairness of some sort. Fussing without leverage generally doesn't work (that's the big stick part of walk softly and carry a big stick).
The bigger the agencies get, the less they need any one of us - they're more worried about getting and keeping buyers than contributors at this point (especially SS with their apparent disinterest in what's in the collection as long as the numbers are big and growing). So it's harder than it was to influence them.
You could choose to avoid dealing with complaints or petitions, but I think there's bucketloads of data from the last decade and a half that thinking all you have to do is produce better images and sales will come isn't going to work out.
Pauws99:
--- Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on November 07, 2016, 15:18 ---Quality is such a vague term in the context of licensing stock. If a buyer finds it useful - or lots of buyers find it useful - then saying it's low quality but sells a lot seems pretty daft to me. Assuming that work that doesn't sell doesn't meet market demand assumes that the market got to take a look at the work and decided not to buy it. That's not always what happens. Good, current, saleable work can and does languish sometimes.
I've been selling stock a while and have seen sales for images take off or sink as changes in search results occur on a site (easier to see when collections were smaller). Not seasonal images, or outdated technology or fashion; just a sudden shift in what ends up on page one for default search results. I'm not the only one who's seen this - you can find oodles of discussions of overnight changes.
Reality is that search position isn't the only thing that determines sales, but it's a huge factor. You can't flog cr#p by putting it on page one, but if there are several perfectly usable images in a certain category, the one up front in the search results will typically sell better.
But the idea that quality images (whatever those are) will just float to the top is wishful thinking, IMO. Good images in an underserved niche have more of a shot than those in an oversupplied category (over 3 million hits for Christmas background on Shutterstock for example), but filling the first page with spammed garbage helps no-one (I doubt that stuff actually sells as it's mostly much less good than what you see in a popular search) and hurts both buyers and ethical, honest contributors.
It's true that contributors don't and can't control the search engine, but can fuss if there are bugs an agency hasn't noticed or horrendous unfairness of some sort. Fussing without leverage generally doesn't work (that's the big stick part of walk softly and carry a big stick).
The bigger the agencies get, the less they need any one of us - they're more worried about getting and keeping buyers than contributors at this point (especially SS with their apparent disinterest in what's in the collection as long as the numbers are big and growing). So it's harder than it was to influence them.
You could choose to avoid dealing with complaints or petitions, but I think there's bucketloads of data from the last decade and a half that thinking all you have to do is produce better images and sales will come isn't going to work out.
--- End quote ---
Excellent thoughtful post as ever
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