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Author Topic: This boat is sinking. So why aren't we jumping?  (Read 33459 times)

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« Reply #50 on: February 24, 2020, 09:08 »
+1
If you no longer rely upon income from your microstock, you have jumped.   


marthamarks

« Reply #51 on: February 24, 2020, 09:15 »
+1
Rats abandon a sinking ship
We stay because we are not rats.
We will fight till the death (their death of course)
Which is why rats will rule the earth when we are gone ;-).

Yep. Along with the cockroaches.

Uncle Pete

  • Great Place by a Great Lake - My Home Port
« Reply #52 on: February 24, 2020, 09:43 »
0
Bluto:
Over? Did you say "over"? Nothing is over until we decide it is!

Yes, to all those who have resigned to the position I accepted some years ago. Whether that's 2 or 3 or 8 years ago. I'm only in this for the entertainment, challenges, inspiration or making ideas into images. Anything I make is nice to have, but I'm not going to expect much or depend on any of that income. That and I can still eat what I shoot and hope to offset the cost of my meal?

The grilled bratwurst I had for lunch at the races, has finally been paid for.  Uploaded   3/13/15 earned me $5.16 Plop and Shoot, natural Sunlight.


I just read my words from all those many moons back.  Boy, was I teed off.  I've since come to accept the fall.  The rise was too good to last, and too many copycats jumped in thinking they could steal our ideas and strike it rich.  They may not be swimming in cash like Scrooge McDuck (if there's a goddess in heaven they're not!) But they sure did screw up the search results and push down the work of the old timers (first time I've ever called myself that... yikes!)  Anyhoo, I've taken some deep breaths and decided to keep feeding the beast on my own terms.  I cut way back on my uploads and the work is far more enjoyable than it was at the peak.  All in all, that's a trade off I can live with.  The free fall in my earnings has leveled off, and I'm calmer now.  Life is too short to worry about dollars over all else. 

As long as I keep enjoying it, I'll stay on the ship, and if it sinks... well, I'll just doggy paddle over to the nearest island and reflect on what a nice cruise I had while it lasted.

You have always been good at record keeping, for your own work, observing the market and ethical effort, with hard work. If anyone is proof that the market has changed and not some wild conspiracy being the cause, you are that person.



Treading water or swimming against the current, drifting down the river on a lazy afternoon, in the Sunshine, never give up. However it's also good to see the truth, Microstock isn't what it was when we started.

« Reply #53 on: February 24, 2020, 10:30 »
+1
Stayers or jumbers, rats or humans, they will all be eaten by sharks around the ship.

Actually piranhas sound more suitable but i dunno if they exist in open sea :P

Piranhas are fresh water fish with an over rated reputation piranhas typically do not represent a serious risk to humans

Sharks however are a different kettle of fish  ;D
« Last Edit: February 24, 2020, 10:32 by Bad Robot »

« Reply #54 on: February 25, 2020, 06:03 »
0
This boat is sinking. So why aren't we jumping?

'cause we all hope that if enough people will jump, the ship will stop sinking and we, which did not jump will survive!

We forget to look that for each one which jumps ship, ten new jump in!

Btw I stopped uploading (jumped ship?) to all sites between '14 and '16, maybe earlier, and I still make about 100$ per month. The problem is that every now and then I think that I could upload something new :(!

Brasilnut

  • Author Brutally Honest Guide to Microstock & Blog

« Reply #55 on: February 25, 2020, 06:08 »
+2
Already made the transition to videos and any pics I do upload are just incidental

georgep7

« Reply #56 on: February 25, 2020, 07:19 »
+1
Great, now everyone is gonna be a videographer! Hahahah!

Just kidding! :) what is the future of video?

Reading back the full thread, here ais a sensitive coment, hope not offending anyone.

Things were simpler to talk back then?. The porn industry does appeared in the conversation without any political correctness police comments. Video industry will follow porn indusrty when adopt 4k. What a great and truthful statement. No artistic mambo jumbo! It is an industry all video related and technically connected.

 Speaking on porn industry, there is this same date as original thread date, documentary (i think series it was?) that explain what happened (and what we are now facing) with people knowing how to build a site, populate it with third party content and sell subscriptions remotely. Not putting name or link, it contains and some offensive content i think. You can easily find it in IMDB.

But:

Long before people here start protesting for low price or sub video sales, porn "agencies" offerred free previews to dl and see, use, or even make compilations and reupload and $2 for full video view. What was that? Creators content misuse from "agencies".
:/

Uncle Pete

  • Great Place by a Great Lake - My Home Port
« Reply #57 on: February 25, 2020, 08:40 »
+7
If you no longer rely upon income from your microstock, you have jumped.

What if I never did?  ;)

Microstock paid for these:


and this:


I'm not sure I ever made a real profit, like a business would through legitimate bookkeeping, expenses against gains? I'm pretty sure I never got any useful income from Microstock, because I used money for discretionary spending. AKA squandered it on equipment and scotch.

I think there are many others who never relied on income from Microstock. Can't jump ship, if you never got on it?  ;D



« Reply #58 on: February 25, 2020, 13:37 »
+2
Great, now everyone is gonna be a videographer! Hahahah!

Just kidding! :) what is the future of video?


Maybe motion design (lot less competition than videos) and movie quality videos (but you must have some knowledge
also about compositing and color grading)
I'm focused on motion design (2d and 3d) and scientific/medical animation.
Time will tell :)

marthamarks

« Reply #59 on: February 25, 2020, 16:08 »
+2
If you no longer rely upon income from your microstock, you have jumped.

What if I never did?  ;)

I'm not sure I ever made a real profit, like a business would through legitimate bookkeeping, expenses against gains? I'm pretty sure I never got any useful income from Microstock, because I used money for discretionary spending. AKA squandered it on equipment and scotch.

I think there are many others who never relied on income from Microstock. Can't jump ship, if you never got on it?  ;D

You and me too, Pete.

Over all these years, I've bought almost all my photo gear with stock earnings, which I then plowed back into more photo gear. :)

One other thing paid for by my photography is a lovely bright-yellow teardrop camper that I use to get out into nature, close as possible to the birds and critters I love to (non-lethally) "shoot."

I have the luxury of doing this and hope to continue another 8-10 years.

« Reply #60 on: February 25, 2020, 16:34 »
+1
If you no longer rely upon income from your microstock, you have jumped.

What if I never did?  ;)

Microstock paid for these:


and this:


I'm not sure I ever made a real profit, like a business would through legitimate bookkeeping, expenses against gains? I'm pretty sure I never got any useful income from Microstock, because I used money for discretionary spending. AKA squandered it on equipment and scotch.

I think there are many others who never relied on income from Microstock. Can't jump ship, if you never got on it?  ;D
Or as George Best famous Irish soccer player said "I spent most of my money on women and booze and squandered the rest". I'm guessing only a tiny proportion of contributors ever had this as their sole or even main source of income.

PaulieWalnuts

  • We Have Exciting News For You
« Reply #61 on: May 05, 2020, 23:19 »
+5
This boat is sinking. So why aren't we jumping?

Blast from the past. Most people dont jump. They stay in the boat and stop rowing while tons of new enthusiastic people jump in to grab the oars.  :)

« Reply #62 on: May 05, 2020, 23:41 »
0
This boat is sinking not because of breakdown, but it's overloaded. So the key is to not be picked up too many new passengers and meanwhile some of the oldest to continue jumping.

Horizon

    This user is banned.
« Reply #63 on: May 06, 2020, 00:48 »
+4
Uncle Pete is right micro-stock have paid for much throughout the years. I have not uploaded since 2018 but my income is almost the same today. The horrendous quantity factor especially on SS and Adobe have sort of killed off any incentive I'm afraid.

PaulieWalnuts

  • We Have Exciting News For You
« Reply #64 on: May 06, 2020, 06:19 »
+1
Uncle Pete is right micro-stock have paid for much throughout the years. I have not uploaded since 2018 but my income is almost the same today. The horrendous quantity factor especially on SS and Adobe have sort of killed off any incentive I'm afraid.

I haven't uploaded in about three years and my income is one-third of what it was at last upload. Need to get out the hamster wheel. But yes microstock, and photography as a whole, has paid for a ton of stuff and brought a lot of happiness for which I'm grateful.
« Last Edit: May 06, 2020, 06:23 by PaulieWalnuts »

« Reply #65 on: May 06, 2020, 07:10 »
+2
Image part of microstock is over-saturated now and there is fierce war. The video market has almost no competition. If you search for keywords such as car on SS, you get millions of images, few thousands in videos and further filter it for 4k and non-editorials, the result is in thousands. The myth of Russia, Ukrain and Thailand based contributor's dominance in microstock market is also busted with hard-core numbers.
I spent good amount of time if location has an advantage for contributor. It has an edge but none if there is no business sense.
Top 3 contributors on SS are : 1st is from Kazakhstan, 2nd is from Canada, 3rd is from Russia and I do not see Thailand in top 10 list anywhere.  Yes 4th is from Britain.

We have to operate it like business. You have to look at gorodenkoff, google it you will get everything. He is able to run it like business and has team of people.

Finally, look at the microstockrank site. The numbers are till Jan 2020 but those numbers speak a lot of value.

My graded plan is working, moving slowly from image to videos. Right now doing 4k. and for future, upgrade the video camera and move to 8k and put yourself at right angle. 

Another interesting statistic is : Each of 90% of total contributors has less than 1000 images/videos on sale. 20% of 10% are ruling the game.

Horizon

    This user is banned.
« Reply #66 on: May 06, 2020, 13:48 »
+3
08stock08!  sounds promising and its good you have a plan! I guess most of us who's been in this business long enough also had plans and agendas but it seems that when putting it into works most agencies especially the big ones always find ways of wrecking any plans and voila you're back to square one! :)


« Reply #67 on: May 06, 2020, 14:52 »
+2
08stock08!  sounds promising and its good you have a plan! I guess most of us who's been in this business long enough also had plans and agendas but it seems that when putting it into works most agencies especially the big ones always find ways of wrecking any plans and voila you're back to square one! :)

You are right. Currently struggling with unplanned situation arising from Coronavirus. Waiting to get it over and resume the work. As long as the right volumes are pushed to agencies, we are good. Nothing to worry about. Money will also follow soon.

« Reply #68 on: May 06, 2020, 23:09 »
+1
Image part of microstock is over-saturated now and there is fierce war. The video market has almost no competition. If you search for keywords such as car on SS, you get millions of images, few thousands in videos and further filter it for 4k and non-editorials, the result is in thousands. The myth of Russia, Ukrain and Thailand based contributor's dominance in microstock market is also busted with hard-core numbers.
I spent good amount of time if location has an advantage for contributor. It has an edge but none if there is no business sense.
Top 3 contributors on SS are : 1st is from Kazakhstan, 2nd is from Canada, 3rd is from Russia and I do not see Thailand in top 10 list anywhere.  Yes 4th is from Britain.

We have to operate it like business. You have to look at gorodenkoff, google it you will get everything. He is able to run it like business and has team of people.

Finally, look at the microstockrank site. The numbers are till Jan 2020 but those numbers speak a lot of value.

My graded plan is working, moving slowly from image to videos. Right now doing 4k. and for future, upgrade the video camera and move to 8k and put yourself at right angle. 

Another interesting statistic is : Each of 90% of total contributors has less than 1000 images/videos on sale. 20% of 10% are ruling the game.

how/where are you seeing who the top contributors are? and you do you mean by volume? or sales?

« Reply #69 on: May 07, 2020, 00:33 »
0
Image part of microstock is over-saturated now and there is fierce war. The video market has almost no competition. If you search for keywords such as car on SS, you get millions of images, few thousands in videos and further filter it for 4k and non-editorials, the result is in thousands. The myth of Russia, Ukrain and Thailand based contributor's dominance in microstock market is also busted with hard-core numbers.
I spent good amount of time if location has an advantage for contributor. It has an edge but none if there is no business sense.
Top 3 contributors on SS are : 1st is from Kazakhstan, 2nd is from Canada, 3rd is from Russia and I do not see Thailand in top 10 list anywhere.  Yes 4th is from Britain.

We have to operate it like business. You have to look at gorodenkoff, google it you will get everything. He is able to run it like business and has team of people.

Finally, look at the microstockrank site. The numbers are till Jan 2020 but those numbers speak a lot of value.

My graded plan is working, moving slowly from image to videos. Right now doing 4k. and for future, upgrade the video camera and move to 8k and put yourself at right angle. 

Another interesting statistic is : Each of 90% of total contributors has less than 1000 images/videos on sale. 20% of 10% are ruling the game.

how/where are you seeing who the top contributors are? and you do you mean by volume? or sales?

You can see who are top contributors at SS on the site microstockrank . Add dot com at the end of microstockrank . By volume I mean, number of videos or images. You have to have material to sell.

Uncle Pete

  • Great Place by a Great Lake - My Home Port
« Reply #70 on: May 07, 2020, 09:14 »
+3
Image part of microstock is over-saturated now and there is fierce war. The video market has almost no competition. If you search for keywords such as car on SS, you get millions of images, few thousands in videos and further filter it for 4k and non-editorials, the result is in thousands. The myth of Russia, Ukrain and Thailand based contributor's dominance in microstock market is also busted with hard-core numbers.
I spent good amount of time if location has an advantage for contributor. It has an edge but none if there is no business sense.
Top 3 contributors on SS are : 1st is from Kazakhstan, 2nd is from Canada, 3rd is from Russia and I do not see Thailand in top 10 list anywhere.  Yes 4th is from Britain.

We have to operate it like business. You have to look at gorodenkoff, google it you will get everything. He is able to run it like business and has team of people.

Finally, look at the microstockrank site. The numbers are till Jan 2020 but those numbers speak a lot of value.

My graded plan is working, moving slowly from image to videos. Right now doing 4k. and for future, upgrade the video camera and move to 8k and put yourself at right angle. 

Another interesting statistic is : Each of 90% of total contributors has less than 1000 images/videos on sale. 20% of 10% are ruling the game.

how/where are you seeing who the top contributors are? and you do you mean by volume? or sales?

Ranked by number of photos/videos not sales. I'm 10757 th / 22,727 photographers  :) Says I have 4,708 as of January 26th. I have 5099 which means, I'm guessing, Vectors and Illustrations don't get counted?

Video tells a story, interesting to me.  5523 th / 14,192 videographer and I have no video. (I removed all of mine) If that's accurate, there are 8,669 artists on SS with Zero videos?

Lowest rank is 2 photos at 117,652 and 29,161 people have under 100 photos.

I didn't want to click click click to see how many have 1,000 images, which personally is starting to be serious effort. Around 4,300 people are over 10,000

Good reading!

« Last Edit: May 07, 2020, 09:17 by Uncle Pete »

georgep7

« Reply #71 on: May 07, 2020, 09:57 »
0
"microstockrank"

ooh! Nice! TubeBuddy for MicroStock!!

:D :P

« Reply #72 on: May 07, 2020, 10:46 »
+2
As long as the right volumes are pushed to agencies, we are good. Nothing to worry about. Money will also follow soon.

How inspiring.

Horizon

    This user is banned.
« Reply #73 on: May 07, 2020, 12:06 »
+4
Image part of microstock is over-saturated now and there is fierce war. The video market has almost no competition. If you search for keywords such as car on SS, you get millions of images, few thousands in videos and further filter it for 4k and non-editorials, the result is in thousands. The myth of Russia, Ukrain and Thailand based contributor's dominance in microstock market is also busted with hard-core numbers.
I spent good amount of time if location has an advantage for contributor. It has an edge but none if there is no business sense.
Top 3 contributors on SS are : 1st is from Kazakhstan, 2nd is from Canada, 3rd is from Russia and I do not see Thailand in top 10 list anywhere.  Yes 4th is from Britain.

We have to operate it like business. You have to look at gorodenkoff, google it you will get everything. He is able to run it like business and has team of people.

Finally, look at the microstockrank site. The numbers are till Jan 2020 but those numbers speak a lot of value.

My graded plan is working, moving slowly from image to videos. Right now doing 4k. and for future, upgrade the video camera and move to 8k and put yourself at right angle. 

Another interesting statistic is : Each of 90% of total contributors has less than 1000 images/videos on sale. 20% of 10% are ruling the game.

how/where are you seeing who the top contributors are? and you do you mean by volume? or sales?

You can see who are top contributors at SS on the site microstockrank . Add dot com at the end of microstockrank . By volume I mean, number of videos or images. You have to have material to sell.


Yes but this is only rank by volume and that means nothing. Rank of earnings would be much more informative!  you can have 100K files of virtually just everyday subjects earning almost nothing and then another guy who's got just 10K files with top notch content earning a fortune!

« Reply #74 on: May 07, 2020, 15:18 »
+1
Image part of microstock is over-saturated now and there is fierce war. The video market has almost no competition. If you search for keywords such as car on SS, you get millions of images, few thousands in videos and further filter it for 4k and non-editorials, the result is in thousands. The myth of Russia, Ukrain and Thailand based contributor's dominance in microstock market is also busted with hard-core numbers.
I spent good amount of time if location has an advantage for contributor. It has an edge but none if there is no business sense.
Top 3 contributors on SS are : 1st is from Kazakhstan, 2nd is from Canada, 3rd is from Russia and I do not see Thailand in top 10 list anywhere.  Yes 4th is from Britain.

We have to operate it like business. You have to look at gorodenkoff, google it you will get everything. He is able to run it like business and has team of people.

Finally, look at the microstockrank site. The numbers are till Jan 2020 but those numbers speak a lot of value.

My graded plan is working, moving slowly from image to videos. Right now doing 4k. and for future, upgrade the video camera and move to 8k and put yourself at right angle. 

Another interesting statistic is : Each of 90% of total contributors has less than 1000 images/videos on sale. 20% of 10% are ruling the game.

how/where are you seeing who the top contributors are? and you do you mean by volume? or sales?

You can see who are top contributors at SS on the site microstockrank . Add dot com at the end of microstockrank . By volume I mean, number of videos or images. You have to have material to sell.


Yes but this is only rank by volume and that means nothing. Rank of earnings would be much more informative!  you can have 100K files of virtually just everyday subjects earning almost nothing and then another guy who's got just 10K files with top notch content earning a fortune!

I do not think any agency will ever reveal how much each of their contributors is earning. This data is not available. You have some data which is usable. Such data is number of files in their ports. Contributors websites which also reveal what kind of structure they have. Like gorodenkoff has presence on SS and has the website as well. You get good data this way.

You have to avoid few things in this business. One is trying too much to walk path of idealism and producing piece of art. Produce what has commercial value. You need material to sell. Have enough to sell and let your customer decide what he wants to purchase from you.





 

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