I don't get it. Does it mean DT will offer only those images free to buyers which are kept in free section by "contributor himself" or DT may include even those image to Stockfreeimages.com which we contributors have not offered as free to DT

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on March 16, 2012, 07:46

Here's another way to look at it.

I haven't bought antivirus software in probably 10 years. Why should I? There are dozens of free ones that are good enough. I'm guessing there are millions, or maybe even tens of millions of people, who feel the same way. If there were no free options my choice would be pay, or go without antivirus software. If antivirus was no longer free a good percentage of those people would buy it. Some won't, but using 10 million new sales as an example, multiplied by $30 for the software, equals $300 million. That $300 million would be divided up among all the software companies.

The same thing applies to us. If it wasn't free people would need to pay, or do without. And that new money would get divided up among us. Free takes away from all of us.

Or they would pirate the software and people would download it illegally. Same goes for images. Free isn't something some people will do without. If it isn't given, they'll take it.

What? So because people steal stuff we should offer it for free? Maybe we should start stealing cameras from the local electronic stores and maybe they'll start offering them for free. Photoshop gets pirated and they're still charging for it the last time I looked. Why is photography the constant target of free entitlement?

I don't get it. Does it mean DT will offer only those images free to buyers which are kept in free section by "contributor himself" or DT may include even those image to Stockfreeimages.com which we contributors have not offered as free to DT

I had the same doubt and did a few searches. None of my pictures are on the free site, and free pictures are more or less those already in the free section on the main site. So at least we are reassured that it's a voluntary decision.

Quote from: digitalexpression on March 16, 2012, 10:49

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on March 16, 2012, 07:46

Here's another way to look at it.

I haven't bought antivirus software in probably 10 years. Why should I? There are dozens of free ones that are good enough. I'm guessing there are millions, or maybe even tens of millions of people, who feel the same way. If there were no free options my choice would be pay, or go without antivirus software. If antivirus was no longer free a good percentage of those people would buy it. Some won't, but using 10 million new sales as an example, multiplied by $30 for the software, equals $300 million. That $300 million would be divided up among all the software companies.

The same thing applies to us. If it wasn't free people would need to pay, or do without. And that new money would get divided up among us. Free takes away from all of us.

Or they would pirate the software and people would download it illegally. Same goes for images. Free isn't something some people will do without. If it isn't given, they'll take it.

What? So because people steal stuff we should offer it for free? Maybe we should start stealing cameras from the local electronic stores and maybe they'll start offering them for free. Photoshop gets pirated and they're still charging for it the last time I looked. Why is photography the constant target of free entitlement?

Has there ever been a point you didn't miss? I was not saying it was OK simply pointing out the enormous flaw in your argument. To suggest if people can't get it free they would see no alternative but to buy it is ludicrous. Digital cameras are everywhere. Anyone can take photos and even if most of it is crap by your standards as you said yourself, many people don't care. Good enough is good enough. Deal with the fact that there will always be people looking to get freebies.

I'll bet real money you're going to miss that point too. Go ahead get even more upset, I'm done with you.

We need to get our heads out of the sand.

There are many, many people out there who start and end their image searches by looking at sites that offer free pictures, pure and simple.

All this talk of educating these people... really?  Are you going to go door to door and try to convince them they are being bad?

How better to "educate" them on the merits of paying for better images than to set up a site offering free images and give them glimpses of how they could get much better images if they could just part with a buck or two?

This type of approach is probably the only hope for converting people who have no intention of buying.  To "show them the light" you have to talk to them where they're comfortable... and building a site offering free stuff (assuming it's marketed well, has good SEO, etc.) may be the best bet for this.

I think everyone's real fear is that today's paying customer will see this and decide to download free shots instead.  That is a real risk, and I would hope Dreamstime and any other microstock planning such a move has a plan to prevent cannibalization as much as possible.  But the larger risk is to ignore the growing masses who would never even consider microstock.  We all hate it, but the buyers of tomorrow are being trained to never pay for images.  To simply try to wish the problem away will ensure microstock's demise in the long run.

Quote from: gostwyck on March 16, 2012, 07:54

Quote from: sjlocke on March 15, 2012, 20:03

Morons.  Goes to show none of them care about you/us.

Who? DT or the thousands of individuals who have contributed content to the free section?

A bit of both. I have contributed to free image of the week promos at sites (I don't think it's ever done anything for personal sales but I think it's a reasonable way for contributors to help the sites). I have never and would never contribute anything to a free section. Once my images are old enough, anything DT wants to consign to the free section will be deleted. I don't do free images and think that anything of sufficient quality to pass inspection shouldn't be offered for no charge.

By and large the difference in quality between the freebies on DT and the paid images is pretty obvious. If someone wants to offer images that didn't meet inspection standards at no charge, then in general that doesn't seem to be any more competition than Flickr with a creative commons license already is.

The new site, vs. free images on DT itself, seems to be little different beyond the URL. The one thing they didn't do though is provide a portfolio link on the paid site from the image on the freebie site. You can see other free images by that person and similar paid images. I think there should be a portfolio link for the contributor to make it easy for someone to find them (in the unlikely event they actually did want to buy credits).

Not agreeing or disagreeing; just pointing out that many of my images rejected at one site may be accepted and sell very well at another.  Finding them for FREE at DT is not a good thing.

Also, if it isn't good enough to sell, it might be better to avoid having a "poor quality" image representing the entire portfolio of an artist.  Better to delete than display a crappy example of my portfolio.

I think.  

DT's existing free section (on the DT site) has images that by and large I think are substandard. DT (and other sites) have rejected images of mine that I think aren't even close to substandard - at DT the biggest issue is a crackpot similars policy. Perhaps I should rephrase slightly to say that images that would get rejected a the majority of the top and middle tier sites don't represent any competition beyond what's already out there.

I wouldn't want any poor quality image of mine on a free site for just the reason you state, but it doesn't hurt me as a contributor if someone else chooses to do that. I was talking from the point of view of us as a group of contributors and what agency actions hurt us or help, in general. The issue of what helps or hurts an individual contributor is often different.

Quote from: digitalexpression on March 16, 2012, 12:43

Quote from: gemmy12 on March 16, 2012, 12:39

Quote from: microstockphoto.co.uk on March 16, 2012, 12:29

Quote from: gemmy12 on March 16, 2012, 12:06

I don't get it. Does it mean DT will offer only those images free to buyers which are kept in free section by "contributor himself" or DT may include even those image to Stockfreeimages.com which we contributors have not offered as free to DT

I had the same doubt and did a few searches. None of my pictures are on the free site, and free pictures are more or less those already in the free session on the main site. So at least we are reassured that it's a voluntary decision.

Obviously. If DT start donating our royalty free images as free then what would we do ? We can not even pull out all of our images because of their 6 months restriction.. lol i hope this is not the case. Let it not be a start of competition b/w agencies for donating free images what DT has probably started...

DT can't offer images for free that are in contributors portfolios without consent. That would make them guilty of copyright infringement. You still own the images you offer for sale on DT. If you find one of those for free on this new site you can file a law suit against DT. Don't worry,

You obviously have not followed Dreamstime's logic on this subject. 

Really? How did Dreamstime get to decide the law? They may take consent from simply not responding to an email but they don't just offer up photos as free without consent of some kind. If you tick the button that says if your pic doesn't qualify it can be offer for free then that's consent. If there are no sales after 4 years and they send you an email to say you can either re-keyword, donate or delete and you ignore that email, that's consent. Don't ignore emails and delete your images if you don't want them offered as free. They can give my photos away as long as they continue to pay me royalties for each download but they cannot, by law, decide that my photos are now free without my consent.

Quote from: loop on March 16, 2012, 12:56

Quote from: digitalexpression on March 16, 2012, 12:36

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on March 16, 2012, 12:09

Quote from: digitalexpression on March 16, 2012, 10:49

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on March 16, 2012, 07:46

Here's another way to look at it.

I haven't bought antivirus software in probably 10 years. Why should I? There are dozens of free ones that are good enough. I'm guessing there are millions, or maybe even tens of millions of people, who feel the same way. If there were no free options my choice would be pay, or go without antivirus software. If antivirus was no longer free a good percentage of those people would buy it. Some won't, but using 10 million new sales as an example, multiplied by $30 for the software, equals $300 million. That $300 million would be divided up among all the software companies.

The same thing applies to us. If it wasn't free people would need to pay, or do without. And that new money would get divided up among us. Free takes away from all of us.

Or they would pirate the software and people would download it illegally. Same goes for images. Free isn't something some people will do without. If it isn't given, they'll take it.

What? So because people steal stuff we should offer it for free? Maybe we should start stealing cameras from the local electronic stores and maybe they'll start offering them for free. Photoshop gets pirated and they're still charging for it the last time I looked. Why is photography the constant target of free entitlement?

Has there ever been a point you didn't miss? I was not saying it was OK simply pointing out the enormous flaw in your argument. To suggest if people can't get it free they would see no alternative but to buy it is ludicrous. Digital cameras are everywhere. Anyone can take photos and even if most of it is crap by your standards as you said yourself, many people don't care. Good enough is good enough. Deal with the fact that there will always be people looking to get freebies.

I'll bet real money you're going to miss that point too. Go ahead get even more upset, I'm done with you.

To think that everyone with a camera can do easily decent (just decent, not great) stock photos is very candid. But then again, that's what I used to think before getting in microstock. Yes, amateurs can get a decent, let's say, landscape photo by chance, but not much more.
The problem is that some of these free photos at SFI o what's its name, are decent. I'll keep that in mind as a costumer, for projects without budget, but I'll go on buying at istock when needing professional stuff.

Did I say that? Did I use the English word for decent? I thought I used the word crap. What language am I communicating in? Hello. That seems like English to me. How is it so many people completely miss the point? I don't know why I bother. You say something, some newton takes it the wrong way and there's a fight. nice website.

Well, you were implying that people wouldn't care using crap instead of decent images. Sorry if I didn't meet your standards, professor.

DT's existing free section (on the DT site) has images that by and large I think are substandard. DT (and other sites) have rejected images of mine that I think aren't even close to substandard - at DT the biggest issue is a crackpot similars policy. Perhaps I should rephrase slightly to say that images that would get rejected a the majority of the top and middle tier sites don't represent any competition beyond what's already out there.

I wouldn't want any poor quality image of mine on a free site for just the reason you state, but it doesn't hurt me as a contributor if someone else chooses to do that. I was talking from the point of view of us as a group of contributors and what agency actions hurt us or help, in general. The issue of what helps or hurts an individual contributor is often different.

The comment wasn't aimed at you or what you said; I just quoted you as a segue into what I was going to say anyway.   

I don't think that giving images away for free is a good policy. You might think that submitting a couple of images for free can make no harm, but just as in microstock it is all about numbers. When ten thousands upload 10 free images than you have 100 thousands free images available. Those numbers really can affect sales.

Quote from: ruxpriencdiam on July 02, 2012, 18:10

Quote from: bobbigmac on March 15, 2012, 23:48

Because most of the microstock agency's free image offerings are akin to red-diesel (agricultural grade), yes it'll 'do the job', but it's not going to be good for your engine

Not true!

The only difference is they add red to it so they can differentiate between the two and charge tax on the regular undyed diesel other then that they are the same and it doesn't hurt your engine.

how many types of "clients" there are in micro(stock)?
- the ones who stole (leaving watermark or removing it, google)
- the ones who will get the free pics and leave (ex: new bloggers without any budget)
- the ones that might pay for it but would appreciate it for free
- the ones that will pay for it and use it in unproper ways
- the ones that will really respect the agencies/contributors licenses etc

that said if we give more and more our work for free it will certainly damage us, yep those are the crappy "potential buyers" but if they haven�t got them for free they would perhaps pay for it, if not, thats their problem

even if serious buyers/designers could get our pictures for free they would love it, so lets not give them a/that chance

I was talking about the diesel fuel!

Otherwise i would have quoted the whole thing.

Quote from: digitalexpression on March 16, 2012, 12:36

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on March 16, 2012, 12:09

Quote from: digitalexpression on March 16, 2012, 10:49

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on March 16, 2012, 07:46

Here's another way to look at it.

I haven't bought antivirus software in probably 10 years. Why should I? There are dozens of free ones that are good enough. I'm guessing there are millions, or maybe even tens of millions of people, who feel the same way. If there were no free options my choice would be pay, or go without antivirus software. If antivirus was no longer free a good percentage of those people would buy it. Some won't, but using 10 million new sales as an example, multiplied by $30 for the software, equals $300 million. That $300 million would be divided up among all the software companies.

The same thing applies to us. If it wasn't free people would need to pay, or do without. And that new money would get divided up among us. Free takes away from all of us.

Or they would pirate the software and people would download it illegally. Same goes for images. Free isn't something some people will do without. If it isn't given, they'll take it.

What? So because people steal stuff we should offer it for free? Maybe we should start stealing cameras from the local electronic stores and maybe they'll start offering them for free. Photoshop gets pirated and they're still charging for it the last time I looked. Why is photography the constant target of free entitlement?

Has there ever been a point you didn't miss? I was not saying it was OK simply pointing out the enormous flaw in your argument. To suggest if people can't get it free they would see no alternative but to buy it is ludicrous. Digital cameras are everywhere. Anyone can take photos and even if most of it is crap by your standards as you said yourself, many people don't care. Good enough is good enough. Deal with the fact that there will always be people looking to get freebies.

I'll bet real money you're going to miss that point too. Go ahead get even more upset, I'm done with you.

To think that everyone with a camera can do easily decent (just decent, not great) stock photos is very candid. But then again, that's what I used to think before getting in microstock. Yes, amateurs can get a decent, let's say, landscape photo by chance, but not much more.
The problem is that some of these free photos at SFI o what's its name, are decent. I'll keep that in mind as a costumer, for projects without budget, but I'll go on buying at istock when needing professional stuff.

Do you know what the actual difference is between amateur and professional? Not having a go at you, honestly, but if you knew the actual difference, you wouldnt make that statement.