Author Topic: Game Over : Pinterest pirates gets 100 million $ ! (Read 52888 times)

qwerty · « **Reply #75 on:** May 19, 2012, 18:37 »

I've got images pinned without any watermark from commercial websites (that I assume paid for them).

They're locational / travel shots. I've seen similar things before where people use google images to find a shot and then just paste it into their blog post.

I don't have the time to police this stuff. I'm better off spending my time producing more photos than chasing $1 sales missed.

I'm not saying they should be able to do this or I'm happy. I can see it as another tool to find images and take them/ use them for free.

antistock · « **Reply #76 on:** May 20, 2012, 09:05 »

Quote from: WarrenPrice on May 19, 2012, 09:56

And there (the bold statement) is "The Spin." What is good for the Agency is good for the contributor.

pure rubbish.
whoever follows the development of the SEO industry is aware that free links and FB/digg/stumble/twitter sharing are a thing of the past after google's operation Panda and operation Penguin scr-e-wing overs the search engine rankings.

ask any decent SEO professional how to rank higher and the answer is about buying advertising space, buying tons of paid links, paid blog and magazine reviews, and eventually tens of thousands of paid links in social networks (for what they're still worth).

thinking that a stock agency could ever go "viral" because they add a sharing button says it all about their marketing department and their bogus online marketing strategy.

sorry guys, viral marketing is a thing of the past and it's unthinkable a multimillion dollar agency should bet anything on it.

we're in the hands of agencies who have no fu-cking idea how to push sales for our products and yet they keep lowering our royalties with the excuse their marketing costs are rising.

one more good reason to dump DT and the other muppets.

WarrenPrice · « **Reply #77 on:** May 20, 2012, 09:21 »

.never mind.

djpadavona · « **Reply #78 on:** May 20, 2012, 09:28 »

Quote from: antistock on May 20, 2012, 09:05

pure rubbish.
whoever follows the development of the SEO industry is aware that free links and FB/digg/stumble/twitter sharing are a thing of the past after google's operation Panda and operation Penguin scr-e-wing overs the search engine rankings.

This is incorrect. First, Panda was over a year ago and it is old news. And Panda did not attack social media linking. Its main effect was to diminish long tail keyword targeting by smaller entities, and unfortunately swung the pendulum in favor of large websites/businesses.

The new update is Penguin. Google is on record as saying it takes a lot more cues from social media activity than it ever has before. Look up some of Matt Cutts' blog posts if you want to learn more, or read SEOMoz regularly where a lot of this information is talked about in depth. Choosing not to compete in social media, whether it is Twitter, Facebook, Google+, or whatever is to handcuff yourself. You don't have to do them all, but you have to have a presence on a major social media site if you want higher rankings.

The reason for this is simple. It is very hard to manipulate search engine activity. If people are talking about you, and linking to you, they are showing genuine interest in your content. The days of SEO keyword density analysis, etc are thankfully over.

djpadavona · « **Reply #79 on:** May 20, 2012, 10:12 »

Quote from: cclapper on May 19, 2012, 04:34

you are right. everything that is being done with social media is for the agencys benefit, not mine. there are tens of thousands of contributors on DT. my having the share button pulled from my images isnt going to much effect on that for DT, just as my leaving IS had no effect on how they do business. its about the principle. it is NOT ok for agencys to arbitrarily decide what gets done with my images without asking or providing an opt out. i am getting really tired of other people USING me and my property to make millions, while paying me less and less every day. I call bull$hit.

I love you Cathy, but you are mistaken and you are about to make a uninformed, poor business decision.

Each webpage is treated within Google as a separate entity which is influenced by the authority of the overall domain. For instance if I search for "stock photos" I see a list of major player agencies returned by Google. But if I do a search for "stock photo of people" in Google Images, I get a varied return from major agencies, minor agencies, and websites which have purchased stock photos on them.

Each one of these pages is handled individually by Google's search ranking algorithm. Which should rank on Page 1? The same cues which affect the domain authority of the main website are all used on the individual pages. So if a social media buzz starts up around one of your images and the relevant keywords are "stock photo" and "people", you move up higher within Google Images. So yeah, it is important for you to have your images linked and talked about.

At this point, usually someone comes in and proclaims "Nobody buys anything through Google Images, blah, blah..."

I won't disclose our Google Analytics data, but I will tell you that Google Images is a very significant source of our SALES. Not visits, SALES. But if you don't believe me, read the blogs written by Dan Heller and QT Luong. Both make their living selling stock independently. Both share Google Analytics data from time to time. Both have noted that Google Images is one of their best sources of income. And these people are selling licenses for $100, $500, and higher. Obviously there are serious buyers searching within Google Images, not just people looking for a $3 image for their blog.

I am crossing my fingers that Dreamstime will allow an opt-out. This will serve the purpose of handcuffing all of the opted-out images within Google Images, and allowing mine to move higher. And since this is about making money ultimately, I won't cry for anyone who loses sales.

antistock · « **Reply #80 on:** May 20, 2012, 10:35 »

correct, djpadavona but after reading the mainstream stuff on SEOmoz, SEObook, and the whole mess of SEO blogs and forums you should had a look at black hat forums too you would notice even hackers are struggling to rank and increase sales at the moment, scrapers have been finally hit badly for instance and so many blog farms and pyramid networks, bots, and spammers using xrumer, scrapebox, ubot studio, etc

my feeling has always been that google couldnt give a sh-it about who's ranking well or not, their final goal is just to make it harder and harder to rank in order to force small and medium business to spend more in paid advertising.

and you know what ? they're right.
it's unthinkable to bet your success on google's unpredictable and unstable rankings.
if you want to be in the first page, you gotta pay.
and let me say it will also save you a lot of trouble.

if your product is priced correctly you can get a nice return on investment.
no need to mess with SEO, white hats, gray hats, blackhats, and do it all over again after every fart of Matt Cutts.

Terra Galleria is probably a unique case in this scenario, it's a very old site, well established, authority, bla bla bla.
but if he had to start all over again in 2012 he would be sandboxed and forgotten.

he's one of the few who benefited from the early web viral linking, something that is impossible to replicate today in such a massive scale.

things will eventually change when web searching will focus on local and regional things, but i can't see it happening at the moment, for every different keyword we have a bunch of 50-100 big sites dominating the search rankings, and all the others biting the dust, no matter if they're 100 times better than the cr-ap at the top.

take POD .. good luck ranking well and selling your images on your server unless you're getty or any big-4 micro agency or any other established POD site that spent millions to be where they are now.

AND .. to stay where they are now also in the future they plan a monthly and yearly budget for advertising, in many cases we're talking about millions of dollars, please enlight us how can you expect to beat the big guys with white hat SEO or other less known gray/black tricks .. small POD sites have no chance unless for whatever reason you make a scoop and you end up being linked in articles by NYT, WSJ, CNN, BBC, etc and by domino effect in 1000s of other smaller sites, blogs, forums, and social networks, and RIGHTLY SO, why should google/yahoo/bing rank at the top a site nobody is "talking" about ? are your travel images more authority than getty or corbis ? no, sorry, so you're sandboxed as that's the place you deserve.

antistock · « **Reply #81 on:** May 20, 2012, 10:48 »

SO, however we look at DT's genius idea of allowing pics to be pinned it's in the best scenario something that will barely scratch the bottom of the barrel...a few random links on facebook and twitter, a few pinnings on Pinterest, and so what ? yes maybe a few sales but it can't go far and it will cost DT yet another loss of reputation and trust by their contributors, and maybe even by few buyers, as a buyer i would not be amused by seeing pinning/fb/twitter buttons on a stock agency, it smells very bad of cheap charlie and fly-by-night.

antistock · « **Reply #82 on:** May 20, 2012, 10:51 »

what DT can do, considering they're selling the same stuff of their competitors, is at least take in consideration to improve their landing page and their layout !

i mean, it really looks bad, old, not sexy, and not inviting.
it's one of the uglyest among the micro agencies.

please hire a skilled designer, it will be money well spent !

cathyslife · « **Reply #83 on:** May 20, 2012, 10:57 »

Quote from: djpadavona on May 20, 2012, 10:12

Quote from: cclapper on May 19, 2012, 04:34

you are right. everything that is being done with social media is for the agencys benefit, not mine. there are tens of thousands of contributors on DT. my having the share button pulled from my images isnt going to much effect on that for DT, just as my leaving IS had no effect on how they do business. its about the principle. it is NOT ok for agencys to arbitrarily decide what gets done with my images without asking or providing an opt out. i am getting really tired of other people USING me and my property to make millions, while paying me less and less every day. I call bull$hit.

I love you Cathy, but you are mistaken and you are about to make a uninformed, poor business decision.

Each webpage is treated within Google as a separate entity which is influenced by the authority of the overall domain. For instance if I search for "stock photos" I see a list of major player agencies returned by Google. But if I do a search for "stock photo of people" in Google Images, I get a varied return from major agencies, minor agencies, and websites which have purchased stock photos on them.

Each one of these pages is handled individually by Google's search ranking algorithm. Which should rank on Page 1? The same cues which affect the domain authority of the main website are all used on the individual pages. So if a social media buzz starts up around one of your images and the relevant keywords are "stock photo" and "people", you move up higher within Google Images. So yeah, it is important for you to have your images linked and talked about.

At this point, usually someone comes in and proclaims "Nobody buys anything through Google Images, blah, blah..."

I won't disclose our Google Analytics data, but I will tell you that Google Images is a very significant source of our SALES. Not visits, SALES. But if you don't believe me, read the blogs written by Dan Heller and QT Luong. Both make their living selling stock independently. Both share Google Analytics data from time to time. Both have noted that Google Images is one of their best sources of income. And these people are selling licenses for $100, $500, and higher. Obviously there are serious buyers searching within Google Images, not just people looking for a $3 image for their blog.

I am crossing my fingers that Dreamstime will allow an opt-out. This will serve the purpose of handcuffing all of the opted-out images within Google Images, and allowing mine to move higher. And since this is about making money ultimately, I won't cry for anyone who loses sales.

And I love you too Dan. If you believe in this, then you are free to make your choice. I will make mine whether you think I am uninformed and making a bad business decision or not. It's MY choice. And I certainly don't expect you to cry for my lost sales. And I will be very happy for you when you are making millions off of your images because you are using social media. Go ahead, prove me wrong. When I see it, I will think about changing my decision.

When my images were on istock and showing up many many times on google images, my images were being stolen all over the place. Since I've pulled my images at istock, they barely show up in google images. Since that same time, my sales have almost doubled on shutterstock, and up until a couple of weeks ago when DT decided to start manipulating their searches, I was doing OK there (my sales on DT are going to dwindle regardless of whether the Share button is there or not. With the Share button there...sales will dwindle AND my images will be stolen more). Without social media, without even uploading any new material.

The fact of the matter is I am not a social media fan. I don't spend hours and hours a day on it. So far, I see my images being stolen from it. I see my sales increasing on sites that DON'T use it that way. I'm a small potato in a big sea of big fishes and sharks. I admit I don't know everything and I admit that I don't care. Some of my images are good, sellable stock...most of them are crap. I am not a full-time stock photographer. I used the money I made from microstock to purchase equipment and learn about photography so I can use that skill in my full-time career. When it's over for me, it's over. When sales dwindle down, from whatever reason, I will delete my images and move on to something else. There are hundreds of thousand of photographers out there who have more money than I do, who have more skills than I do, who have the money to travel, who have the business saavy, and who create way better stock images than I do. I accept that.

For you big entrepreneurs who want to play the game, go for it! I wish you all the success in the world. Truly. For me, I don't want the Share button on my images on DT. I should at least be able to make my own decision about my own images. That's really all I'm asking.

antistock · « **Reply #84 on:** May 20, 2012, 11:09 »

Quote from: cclapper on May 20, 2012, 10:57

For you big entrepreneurs who want to play the game, go for it! I wish you all the success in the world. Truly. For me, I don't want the Share button on my images on DT. I should at least be able to make my own decision about my own images. That's really all I'm asking.

it's not just that, it's also a matter of principle : we join an agency because the agency is promising to make SALES.

and to make serious sales i expect an agency to invest a sh-itload of money on advertising, which is something i can't afford at the moment and for why i agree the agency should take a cut bigger than mine in each sale.

if i had to pay someone to spam social networks with random links and pins, there are many other better and cheaper ways, and if it worked so good anybody would be doing it since a long time, which is not the case.

cathyslife · « **Reply #85 on:** May 20, 2012, 12:40 »

I wonder why when sjlocke thinks this is a bad idea, he's making a good business decision. But when I make a decision to not participate, I'm uninformed? Can anyone explain?

lisafx · « **Reply #86 on:** May 20, 2012, 13:40 »

Quote from: cclapper on May 20, 2012, 12:40

I wonder why when sjlocke thinks this is a bad idea, he's making a good business decision. But when I make a decision to not participate, I'm uninformed? Can anyone explain?

I don't think it's personal.

FWIW, I know jack squat about SEO, social media, or any of the other complex marketing concepts being discussed in this thread. I find that both sides of the issue are being presented very well and thoroughly. I've gotten a lot to think about from you, Dan, and antistock.

Whether this works for DT and its contributors remains to be seen. However, I agree with you 100% that they are OUR images, and we should get a choice whether to participate or not.

digitalexpressionimages · « **Reply #87 on:** May 20, 2012, 14:51 »

Reading this thread I got curious, started doing some image searches for my material and on the third search found one of my shots, on pinterest, sans watermark, sourced from cartoonsandcomics.co (whom I presume licensed it) and re-pinned 11 times.

Not sure how I or any stock agency could possibly benefit from that as there's no indication how anyone would go about buying the image legitimately.

drugal · « **Reply #88 on:** May 20, 2012, 17:25 »

Quote from: antistock on May 20, 2012, 11:09

Quote from: cclapper on May 20, 2012, 10:57
For you big entrepreneurs who want to play the game, go for it! I wish you all the success in the world. Truly. For me, I don't want the Share button on my images on DT. I should at least be able to make my own decision about my own images. That's really all I'm asking.

it's not just that, it's also a matter of principle : we join an agency because the agency is promising to make SALES.

and to make serious sales i expect an agency to invest a sh-itload of money on advertising, which is something i can't afford at the moment and for why i agree the agency should take a cut bigger than mine in each sale.

if i had to pay someone to spam social networks with random links and pins, there are many other better and cheaper ways, and if it worked so good anybody would be doing it since a long time, which is not the case.

None of that needs a cut bigger than yours... but go on encouraging them, very smart. you ppl excell at working against your interest, than whining as if the resulting situation is someone else's fault, pure brilliance. I think thats by far the most important moral of threads like this that you should be contemplating, forget pinning this and that.... : )

WarrenPrice · « **Reply #89 on:** May 20, 2012, 18:52 »

Drugal needs a "share button." It's a shame to keep all that knowledge isolated in MSG Forum.

pancaketom · « **Reply #90 on:** May 21, 2012, 01:39 »

Quote from: digitalexpression on May 20, 2012, 14:51

Reading this thread I got curious, started doing some image searches for my material and on the third search found one of my shots, on pinterest, sans watermark, sourced from cartoonsandcomics.co (whom I presume licensed it) and re-pinned 11 times.

Not sure how I or any stock agency could possibly benefit from that as there's no indication how anyone would go about buying the image legitimately.

That is where I see the problem, not with watermarked images pinned from the stock sites - so that if you click on them you are taken to where you can buy them.

The problem is from some random site that by pinning it is saying they own the rights and are allowing others to use it. The more it gets re-pinned and then inserted in blogs the more it becomes an orphan work that is just used for free - seemingly legitimately - from pinterest. The only parties that benefit at that point are pinterest and the people using it for free.

drugal · « **Reply #91 on:** May 21, 2012, 03:02 »

Quote from: WarrenPrice on May 20, 2012, 18:52

Drugal needs a "share button." It's a shame to keep all that knowledge isolated in MSG Forum.

It is shared. It's on that thing called teh internets.

rubyroo · « **Reply #92 on:** May 21, 2012, 04:07 »

I've had a look and here's a scenario that I've just observed:

1. An article on a well-known company's website has (one assumes) a legitimately purchased stock image to head it's article.

2. The 'Pin it' logo is there to allow others to 'pin' the article on their board.

3. When the member clicks the pin, the stock image appears on their board as the link to the article.

So in this case the intention of the original 'Pin-it' does not appear to be to proliferate the image, but to profilerate a link to the article. What I'm not clear on is who/what determines that the image becomes the proliferated link, rather than (say) the article's title. Is that the fault of the image buyer for making that choice, or is that a default action from Pinterest's site?

If the buyer makes that choice themselves, I wonder if they purchased a license that allows for such indeterminate proliferation.

grafix04 · « **Reply #93 on:** May 21, 2012, 05:30 »

Quote from: rubyroo on May 21, 2012, 04:07

I've had a look and here's a scenario that I've just observed:

1. An article on a well-known company's website has (one assumes) a legitimately purchased stock image to head it's article.

2. The 'Pin it' logo is there to allow others to 'pin' the article on their board.

3. When the member clicks the pin, the stock image appears on their board as the link to the article.

So in this case the intention of the original 'Pin-it' does not appear to be to proliferate the image, but to profilerate a link to the article. What I'm not clear on is who/what determines that the image becomes the proliferated link, rather than (say) the article's title. Is that the fault of the image buyer for making that choice, or is that a default action from Pinterest's site?

If the buyer makes that choice themselves, I wonder if they purchased a license that allows for such indeterminate proliferation.

I have to assume that you haven’t read their terms?

Quote

1. Sharing Your Content

a. Your content. Pinterest allows you to pin and post content on the Service, including photos, comments, and other materials. Anything that you pin, post, display, or otherwise make available on our Service, including all Intellectual Property Rights (defined below) in such content, is referred to as “User Content.” You retain all of your rights in all of the User Content you post to our Service.

b. How Pinterest and other users can use your content. Subject to any applicable account settings you select, you grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, sublicensable, worldwide license to use, display, reproduce, re-pin, modify (e.g., re-format), re-arrange, and distribute your User Content on Pinterest for the purposes of operating and providing the Service(s) to you and to our other Users. Nothing in these Terms shall restrict Pinterest’s rights under separate licenses to User Content. Please remember that the Pinterest Service is a public platform, and that other Users may search for, see, use, and/or re-pin any User Content that you make publicly available through the Service.

Quote

8. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Pinterest and its officers, directors, employees and agents, from and against any claims, suits, proceedings, disputes, demands, liabilities, damages, losses, costs and expenses, including, without limitation, reasonable legal and accounting fees (including costs of defense of claims, suits or proceedings brought by third parties), arising out of or in any way related to (i) your access to or use of the Services or Pinterest Content, (ii) your User Content, or (iii) your breach of any of these Terms.

http://pinterest.com/about/terms/

Scary!

Only the copyright holder has the right to 'pin' their images and by 'pinning' them, they allow others to 're-pin', share and USE their images (for free). In your scenario, a buyer who purchases a license, does not own the copyright and therefore is not allowed to 'pin' the image. The problem is, 'pinners' don’t read the terms of service. They read what's written on the website which is misleading and they assume they are free to 'pin' anything they like on the internet. When something is 'pinned' there, it's perceived to be in public domain and others believe they are free to use it, in any way they want to use it (for free). This is the problem.

I hope Serban removes the 'pin-it' option from our files because he is breaching our copyright by having it there. Has Serban read Pinterest's terms of service? If he hasn't, that’s incompetence and irresponsible, and if he has, that's criminal!

grafix04 · « **Reply #94 on:** May 21, 2012, 05:42 »

Quote from: djpadavona on May 20, 2012, 10:12

I am crossing my fingers that Dreamstime will allow an opt-out. This will serve the purpose of handcuffing all of the opted-out images within Google Images, and allowing mine to move higher. And since this is about making money ultimately, I won't cry for anyone who loses sales.

And since you have 'pinned' your images there, according to Pinterest's terms of service, they are now in public domain and any user is free to use them (for free) and there's nothing you can do about it because you pinned them there yourself. I might just put your images on my website and blog. Thanks for the freebie from me and from behalf of the world wide web

Sean Locke Photography · « **Reply #95 on:** May 21, 2012, 06:13 »

Be sure to change the image link to benefit yourself, as there is no requirement for it to point at the original image. Might as well get full benefit from these free to use images!

cathyslife · « **Reply #96 on:** May 21, 2012, 06:56 »

Here's a link to the DT images being pinned.

http://pinterest.com/source/dreamstime.com/

ALL of those images being displayed with the watermark are copyright infringements. It doesn't matter whether the image leads back to DT to buy the image or not. The fact that it has been used in the first place is illegal, and both DT and the pinning are promoting the infringement by making it seem to be OK.

That's just wrong.

drugal · « **Reply #97 on:** May 21, 2012, 07:00 »

Quote from: grafix04 on May 21, 2012, 05:42

Quote from: djpadavona on May 20, 2012, 10:12
I am crossing my fingers that Dreamstime will allow an opt-out. This will serve the purpose of handcuffing all of the opted-out images within Google Images, and allowing mine to move higher. And since this is about making money ultimately, I won't cry for anyone who loses sales.

And since you have 'pinned' your images there, according to Pinterest's terms of service, they are now in public domain and any user is free to use them (for free) and there's nothing you can do about it because you pinned them there yourself. I might just put your images on my website and blog. Thanks for the freebie from me and from behalf of the world wide web

Since the internet has become fast and easily accessible to so many, the price of generic images (among many other things) has been on a curve to zero. This is one of the final steps before getting to that pricepoint of zero. You, yes You, endorsed this by creating oversupply by adding your content to mass sale schemes. Theres nothing you can do about it now... and if you think it can't get worse, you are - as always - wrong. They can, and probably will charge you for uploading to gain popularity.

grafix04 · « **Reply #98 on:** May 21, 2012, 07:32 »

Quote from: sjlocke on May 21, 2012, 06:13

Be sure to change the image link to benefit yourself, as there is no requirement for it to point at the original image. Might as well get full benefit from these free to use images!

You can too! Thanks for the tip

I can't see Dan's images on that link Cathy provided. Was he telling fibs about 'pinning' them or has he had a change of heart and removed them since his last post?

grafix04 · « **Reply #99 on:** May 21, 2012, 07:42 »

Quote from: drugal on May 21, 2012, 07:00

Since the internet has become fast and easily accessible to so many, the price of generic images (among many other things) has been on a curve to zero. This is one of the final steps before getting to that pricepoint of zero. You, yes You, endorsed this by creating oversupply by adding your content to mass sale schemes. Theres nothing you can do about it now... and if you think it can't get worse, you are - as always - wrong. They can, and probably will charge you for uploading to gain popularity.

Who says I think it can't get worse? It just did. It gets worse by the week. I'm sure they'll keep screwing us but that's your solution? You believe that since they're going to screw us further, since the market is so over-saturated with images and since commissions and prices are dropping, we may as well hand over our images to anyone for free? Awesome solutions! I will now give in and pin all my images on Pinterest. Thanks for your brilliant advice!

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Author Topic: Game Over : Pinterest pirates gets 100 million $ ! (Read 52888 times)

qwerty

antistock

WarrenPrice

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cathyslife

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lisafx

digitalexpressionimages

drugal

WarrenPrice

pancaketom

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grafix04

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