Quote from: Big Money on December 08, 2024, 10:21

Close down my indoor studio, sell my 50mp d SLR equipment and only shoot vids or images when I feel it with my iPhone and fish more often. Maybe put in a few hours a week processing when I cannot not fish due to poor weather.  I put in my 15 years in the is business thus done with it. Time to enjoy my life now...

Where do you catch fish and what kind?

Washington state--cascade mountains. Steelhead and salmon

500 a month is a very good number. I hope I can reach that one day.

Do you also teach a class an optional? class on stock photography on these cruises?

Would there be interest in that?

500 a month is a very good number. I hope I can reach that one day.

Do you also teach a class an optional? class on stock photography on these cruises?

Would there be interest in that?

none of my tours are described as photography, but we do spend more time in less visited places, and stay in central areas so there's  time for exploring.   many folk come to Istanbul a day or 2 early & i offer suggestions based on their interests.

https://cascoly-images.com/the-rest-of-istanbul-what-you-missed-on-your-1st-days-tour/

https://cascoly-images.com/exploring-the-other-mosques-of-istanbul/

We set up independent tours and also give free advice on traveling in Turkey on your own.

The river cruises are more expensive but enable you to visit many places in a short period of time, with both included walking tours and free time to explore/photograph

these travels are symbiotic - travel provides a varied portfolio and sales pay for more travel.

as far as stock photography, the general level of photography is selfies & snapshots and few know about stock - the few who do are buyers (most commonly known are 'Getty' and Shutterstock )

So Far this year, I upgraded my camera to Nikon Z50 II which is doing great for videos and images.

This camera is bad for video. No 120 fps in 4K and no 240 fps in HD.

All my plans for the year are broken.

I did not imagine that Adobe would abruptly break their relationship with creators and implement a random upload algo.

I am switching to video for Adobe, but it takes a long time for video to start selling.

The year started very well, January - April I had increases of 60-84% compared to the year before.
 
But my plan rests on files reinforcing each other. I upload small volumes, but it usually sells.

Now I have to deal with an algo roulette, which is beyond frustrating.

Nobody wins at this, but Adobe is doubling down that the creators are at fault.

Whoever is resposible for the random review mess is more important than the relationship with the creative community.

That is the most depressing part.

Will try to make an effort at istock and overall video, inclufing BB.

I guess this year is the Make istock great again year.

All my plans for the year are broken.

I did not imagine that Adobe would abruptly break their relationship with creators and implement a random upload algo.

I am switching to video for Adobe, but it takes a long time for video to start selling.

The year started very well, January - April I had increases of 60-84% compared to the year before.
 
But my plan rests on files reinforcing each other. I upload small volumes, but it usually sells.

Now I have to deal with an algo roulette, which is beyond frustrating.

Nobody wins at this, but Adobe is doubling down that the creators are at fault.

Whoever is resposible for the random review mess is more important than the relationship with the creative community.

That is the most depressing part.

Will try to make an effort at istock and overall video, inclufing BB.

I guess this year is the Make istock great again year.

Wishing you good luck with your changed plans, but I'm afraid not much can be done by now. You are trying to win in a dying market and you build your business plan trusting in agencies you've got no control over. Sure there are some topics where lots of content is still missing, but these topics don't decide content pricing. It is the generic content, which sells well on microstock and which faces the most competition from free AI - thus I think inevitably leading to price drops for all microstock content in future.

There are other and probably better possibilities for content creators to earn, be it selling stuff on Etsy or starting a Youtube channel. Maybe look into some of these to not depend on stock too much?

Quote from: cobalt on Yesterday at 01:20

All my plans for the year are broken.

I did not imagine that Adobe would abruptly break their relationship with creators and implement a random upload algo.

I am switching to video for Adobe, but it takes a long time for video to start selling.

The year started very well, January - April I had increases of 60-84% compared to the year before.
 
But my plan rests on files reinforcing each other. I upload small volumes, but it usually sells.

Now I have to deal with an algo roulette, which is beyond frustrating.

Nobody wins at this, but Adobe is doubling down that the creators are at fault.

Whoever is resposible for the random review mess is more important than the relationship with the creative community.

That is the most depressing part.

Will try to make an effort at istock and overall video, inclufing BB.

I guess this year is the Make istock great again year.

Wishing you good luck with your changed plans, but I'm afraid not much can be done by now. You are trying to win in a dying market and you build your business plan trusting in agencies you've got no control over. Sure there are some topics where lots of content is still missing, but these topics don't decide content pricing. It is the generic content, which sells well on microstock and which faces the most competition from free AI - thus I think inevitably leading to price drops for all microstock content in future.

There are other and probably better possibilities for content creators to earn, be it selling stuff on Etsy or starting a Youtube channel. Maybe look into some of these to not depend on stock too much?

May I ask you how do you imagine earning money on Youtube with stock video content ?

I wasn�t looking for advice, just genuinely curious about what you meant by monetizing stock videos on YouTube. Were you referring to creating content that teaches others 'how to make money with microstock', or did you mean publishing videos in the hopes of attracting a large audience?

Quote from: BelieveInStock on Yesterday at 08:41

May I ask you how do you imagine earning money on Youtube with stock video content ?

You should ask yourself that question. Look for examples, how do people with similar content or skills as yours get their Youtube channel monetized and start from there. Learn new skills if needed.

Personally I don't do any video at all and I'm still too busy with other topics (not stock, that's just side hustle with maybe 5 hours per month investment, which also includes this forum ). But in future I want to start doing video and will look into monetizing Youtube.

There are other and probably better possibilities for content creators to earn, be it selling stuff on Etsy or starting a Youtube channel. Maybe look into some of these to not depend on stock too much?

Is ETSY worth the time for a microstock contributor, if so selling what? I've heard POD is a waste of time with very low commissions and doesn't sell well.

Wishing you good luck with your changed plans, but I'm afraid not much can be done by now. You are trying to win in a dying market and you build your business plan trusting in agencies you've got no control over. Sure there are some topics where lots of content is still missing, but these topics don't decide content pricing. It is the generic content, which sells well on microstock and which faces the most competition from free AI - thus I think inevitably leading to price drops for all microstock content in future.

There are other and probably better possibilities for content creators to earn, be it selling stuff on Etsy or starting a Youtube channel. Maybe look into some of these to not depend on stock too much?

Totally agree with mike123 as well.  We can fool ourselves and hope, but MS is on deathbed.   Look at once mighty shutterstock,  whoever can make a payment once a year on Dreamstime is lucky and let's not even go into all this Adobe mess we are debating ad nauseam in other threads.   Proliferation of pocket cameras and smartphones in particular has placed initial nails in MS coffin;   AI is placing the last ones.

I have used the Adobe crisis to start my public blog about my personal weight loss on Medium. Now that I am building up followers, i will slowly start adding articles behind paywall. But i don't expect to get rich from it, it is more a project i wanted to start and slowly learn about monetizing writing, maybe small books, something to learn until retirement.

POD, blogging...again you are dependent on platforms and their algos. Medium had an excellent monetization reputation for writers until last September when they cleared out all the ai spammers who were abusing the medium algo with chatgpt articles, boosting each other with ratings and reviews...

And after that medium apparently cut the payouts overall and many voices left.

Now they are gradually coming back.

The best control is if you sell whatever via your own website.

BUT -  I used to have a webshop in my old life and my experience is you spend an endless amount of time answering lengthy questions from customers.

So I REALLY appreciate that with stock agencies I just have to worry about the products I offer and I never have direct contact.

I need a job that is flexible and mostly from home.

With my buyers hat I also think there is a huge and growing demand for good visuals. It will not become less. And I am not scared at all of ai.

My sales on adobe in principle are fine.

The problem is I feel blocked from expanding my port the way I think it works best and wish they would stop trying to micromanage me.

Like I said, i still have good growth, I just need to be able to get stuff up.

If my sales were falling it would be a different thing. But growth is actually better than expected.

I also wanted to create a youtube channel and named my youtube page the same as my blog. But after thinking more about it, creating good useful content is a huge time sink. And reading up on monetization of youtube channels I am not impressed.

I think putting that time into creating stock will earn me back much faster.

You have to sgart somehwere and building a stable income from pod sales, or calendars or writing books or a youtube channel..it is something that will take 2-3 years of invested time.

I have just come out from a "learning ai" phase.

Now I just want to increase production, especially video but also normal photos and see how much can I activate istock if i get 2k files online this year? can i even produce enough?

Every agency is its own market, at least for me what sells where is quite different.

I don't have growth every month on Adobe and 665 dollars is not enough to pay the bills, but it is still just 8k files. So I think I can still work it up to say 1200 from Adobe. that would be my target average. Maybe in 2026...


So with all the doom and gloom...I still have growing sales. Stock is not dead. I moan and complain a lot, but...

Well, people told me in Sept 2022 stock was dead and I could never grow a steady income. Here I am 3 years later and still have double digit growth. With only one agency.

When is the death of stock coming??

I still cannot support myself, but I am still doing stock only part time because of other obligations.

Also if you look at the Discord and many other groups there are still people with good sales and good growth.

Will work on my blog, would lovely to get written content monetized.

Good luck with your webshop. It is internet real estate you actually own.

I absolutely agree, we should discuss things and share information.

On pond5 I just read that an experienced pro video creator went from an income of 160k a year! down to 300 dollars a month.

That is truly crazy.

He specializes in weather and storm material. He says his business died because storm chaser hobby groups are all sharing their clips on social media and allowing news companies to use them without paying.

They invest heavily in gear and time and upload for no money, just followers and likes.

Perhaps some of them monetize their channels, I didn�t ask that.

But the speed of the drop is unbelievable.

I see the biggest opportunities in video, but I also see a lot of options in photos because so much content is missing.

If my test searches showed me everything is filled, it would be different.