MicrostockGroup
Microstock Photography Forum - General => General Stock Discussion => Topic started by: stockastic on December 22, 2014, 13:03
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There's already a thread for our predictions for 2015. Most of them, including mine, are pretty much doom and gloom. This thread is for the hopes.
What would you like to see happen, in the image market (both stock and POD) in the coming year? What would constitute a real, acheivable, positive development in online image sales?
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I'd love to see one or more of the smaller sites with fair payment take off. Maybe someone like p5 could get their search working a bit better (maybe it already is for all I know, I haven't messed with it lately) and gain some traction. In fact w/ the ability to set price and 50% to the artist, P5 would probably be my choice of a site to take off. I'd like to see faster reviews there too, but faster sales are a much higher priority.
My real dream would be for buyers to recognize just how low the percentage to the artists is and move towards the sites that pay more fairly.
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The other thread is not inherently positive or negative. You can post your "hopes" there.
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I hope that Canva gets it's queue fixed. My portfolio (600+) has been uploaded there since last Summer with only 60 reviewed. I'm getting sales everyday, but they haven't even reviewed my best sellers yet.
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First thing I thought is P5 and Alamy get first places in Poll collumn... All I want is fair treating and satisfying pricing now.
Oh, and I hope I won't loose any more time on dozens of new dreamers - agencies with no money and no clients, promising miracles from nothing...
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awhile back i was heavy-handed with ss, because of their lack of transparency,etc. they have since then been showing signs of going back to be the #1 we made them for many years .
so, i am optimistic with ss. as for the others, wellllllll, there is really, as Mantis puts it in the ds thread, no others.
but i am all for a facelift with anyone, bigstock, alamy, whoever, so long as i read here that others are getting sales finally with them; then i will join that agency even if it has a stinky sounding name .
but for now, no matter how impressive their names are, i am , to quote sweet Shania, not impressed.
the ball is in their court , really. show me they have the stuff to get sales, and i will be there.
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The other thread is not inherently positive or negative. You can post your "hopes" there.
That thread is for "predictions". This is for "hopes". There can be quite a difference.
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The other thread is not inherently positive or negative. You can post your "hopes" there.
That thread is for "predictions". This is for "hopes". There can be quite a difference.
Lol, yeah, ok.
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I have no hopes for microstock. It's over for me.
What I do hope for is a better POD. FAA has a lot of it right (setting our own prices, reading IPTC, arbitrary image sizes) but total absence of inspection or curation has filled it with junk, and the only way they deal with that is to flood the search results with their big sellers. The site is also painfully dated and clunky in appearance.
I want to see a new, sharp-looking POD site that ONLY accepts quality, BUT doesn't enforce some narrow-minded ideas of 'art'. Just good photography, regardless of whether it's a hipster's art school project or a straight on photo of a barn.
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Hope sales continue the rise I have seen in the last 3 years. Hope I continue to find new outlets to sell my images outside the micro model. Hope my camera stops making mistakes
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No hope! Just emptiness and fog... And drums, I hear drums in the distance...
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Oh, and I hope I won't loose any more time on dozens of new dreamers - agencies with no money and no clients, promising miracles from nothing...
As SS big fan I got to say, only companies that invest in actual sales will win and have my hopes for. (Just check out their job boards and you will get the answers!)
All the others are just experimenting with our files.
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No hope here, only concreteness…
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I'd love to see one or more of the smaller sites with fair payment take off. Maybe someone like p5 could get their search working a bit better (maybe it already is for all I know, I haven't messed with it lately) and gain some traction. In fact w/ the ability to set price and 50% to the artist, P5 would probably be my choice of a site to take off. I'd like to see faster reviews there too, but faster sales are a much higher priority.
My real dream would be for buyers to recognize just how low the percentage to the artists is and move towards the sites that pay more fairly.
+1
In addition to P5, I hope featurepics takes off - easy uploading, fast, reasonable reviews, 50% commissions and no subs. This year was the best yet there, but still very slow behind the others.
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My real dream would be for buyers to recognize just how low the percentage to the artists is and move towards the sites that pay more fairly.
Sadly, buyers don't care about it and never will. All they want is quality, trust and low pricing.
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But mainly low prices unfortunately - that's why Walmart has been so successful. I'm not convinced they care about quality if something almost as good is cheaper - that's what allowed microstock to flourish in the first place.
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That all the agencies increase there prices by 1 or 2 cents
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I hope..........BIGSTOCK is unsuccessful with their penny video scheme
I hope..........DP folds
I hope..........FT management is excommunicated & Adobe creates a better buyer experience and enhanced partnership with suppliers
I hope..........P5 gets better traction as a still imagery outlet
I hope..........IS rethinks their video commissions and ups them to more reasonable rates
I hope......... I am able to meet my goal of creating 1,000 videos in 2015
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But mainly low prices unfortunately - that's why Walmart has been so successful. I'm not convinced they care about quality if something almost as good is cheaper - that's what allowed microstock to flourish in the first place.
Hmm... prime buyers do care about quality and liability too.
Glad to see SS is opening premier deals - http://www.shutterstock.com/video/business-solutions/ (http://www.shutterstock.com/video/business-solutions/)
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My hope is to move out of this shady microstock business.
After 4 years I've had more then enough of these agencies, manipulating our reviews/exposure/sales/earnings to max out their profit while reducing ours. Besides that there's always some deal popping up to screw us even more. Thanks to all you guys on MSG for keeping us updated on these matters. This is the only reason I still check this forum on a regular basis.
We might as well call ourselves digital prostitutes, and cheap ones I might add!
Good luck to all in 2015, noobs and vets, pro's and hobbyists!
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My hope is I will not hold on to false hopes and just do it. :P
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The other thread is not inherently positive or negative. You can post your "hopes" there.
Hopes and predictions are inherently different though. I predict there is no hope.
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And I hope my predictions don't come true. :)
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My hope is to move out of this shady microstock business.
;) actually there is a better way to make money viz write a book, produce a movie about money-laundering in the microstock market. could be nominated for 2016
Best Independent Movies Award
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1. I hope enough contributors stop contributing to stock as a whole so that demand outweighs supply and prices start going back up.
2. I hope the average royalty stock websites pay contributors goes up past 50%.
#2 wont happen unless #1 happens. I believe #1 is already happening but has a long way to go before the supply stagnates enough.
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1. I hope more sites will shift to a Stocksy pricing bracket
2. For 50/50 commission split on top tier sites (dreaming... i know :P)
3. We can pull our fingers out a create an exclusive co-op that will reign at pole position
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It's going to be a lot tougher for noobs to get their own portfolios rolling enough - newer uploaded content just isn't selling as well as it did 5 years ago. So this, to me... is a good sign. It means a lot of discouraged hobbyists and part-timers will quit early on, and the competition will include those more experienced and established stock artists that have been submitting for years. But who knows?
There is still plenty of money still to be made if you're producing images with high commercial value, quality, and proper keywords/tags. I personally still think I'll be selling microstock full time at least for the next 5-10 years. I said that back in 2008, and so far so good; right? Made it 7 years. They were talking doom and gloom for microstock back in 2008 like crazy. Ignore the naysayers.
The one good thing about this business is that if and when the sales dry up, it doesn't just happen overnight. It's a slow progression. You'll still have some sort of passive income coming in from your slowly dying sales, if you ever have to switch gears and change up your career or employer.
Keep your expense budget nil, your overhead low, work with what you've got, improve your craft and polish your style constantly. This is now a game of working hard just to maintain if not slightly improve your current sales levels.
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I hope one of my photos will sell for $1M and I can quit microstock :-)
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awhile back i was heavy-handed with ss, because of their lack of transparency,etc. they have since then been showing signs of going back to be the #1 we made them for many years .
so, i am optimistic with ss. as for the others, wellllllll, there is really, as Mantis puts it in the ds thread, no others.
but i am all for a facelift with anyone, bigstock, alamy, whoever, so long as i read here that others are getting sales finally with them; then i will join that agency even if it has a stinky sounding name .
but for now, no matter how impressive their names are, i am , to quote sweet Shania, not impressed.
the ball is in their court , really. show me they have the stuff to get sales, and i will be there.
Agreed!
No point leaving our media files to occupy some data base for PR stunt purpose only. Companies that don't invest in sales/marketing will never succeed.
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I'm changing my hope.
I hope to grow my direct sales so well that I no longer need to post in hope threads.
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Everyone's situation is different. We all know what we need to do in order to get by.
Let's say (for example) you are a successful stock artist earning $100k a year (gross) off of your images (on a large portfolio, after many years of hard work, submitting to many agencies). This is a passive income, and totally unreliable. It could rise, but more than likely it will fall from this point forward. You notice that by year 2 your income has dropped to $85k. Year 3, you're at $70k. Year 4 comes in around $58k, and so on, and so forth. If you know that you need at least an income of $50k a year to get by, pay all of your bills... then you'd better start looking for another source of income.
At the same time, let's say you now go out to work for corporate America once again, for the benefits, the 401k, and the lack of certain stresses. Now you could still be earning $45-50k that year off of your passive, residual stock imagery income, and adding that to your new dayjob salary of $50k+. So now you're making 6 figures again, and the only you're working a 40 hour work week for "the man". Heck, you just got a raise, especially if you were working an average of 40 hours a week for yourself. Only difference, is the commute, and maybe the stress level.
The "worse case scenario" I see for the industry, as a private contractor, really isn't not that bad. If you don't have the cajones to be able to adapt to changing market conditions in business, then you probably shouldn't be working for yourself in the first place. It takes a lot of hunger drive and determination to venture out as a freelancer in the first place. For those of us that did, we need to remember the original fire that we had which motivated us in the beginning.
What do you guys think? I think I might wait until I can only afford to eat ramen and canned beans for dinner, then I'll go start looking for another job ;) anything is better than working for corporate America again.
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I'm changing my hope.
I hope to grow my direct sales so well that I no longer need to post in hope threads.
i go for that, PaulieWalnuts. lately during the seasonal end of year party soiree i got approached by a few ppl of different fields of art (painter, actor, dancer, cook, recipe designer,etc) all saying what you say (direct sales with their own homepage in fb or whatever) and offered me to do the photography.
it seems that they all have their hopes to fly solo as well after expreincing bad employers or just feel they had enough to be told when to come in.
the others who made that jump before them say they are doing well on their own, so maybe this is the way to go now.
i guess networking is essential to success too, if we can get out there to enough soiree to meet these other professionals,huh???