Quote from: Sammy the Cat on January 26, 2017, 19:36
Appalling?? It's only 2.5% no worse than banks or anyother financial outfit.

They have to make some money in order to offer a great service like that

yes, indeed, appalling -- in most of Europe, you get REAL forex rates for your foreign currency payments (Den Danske Bank, Creditanstalt Austria, Svenska Handelsbanken, Deutsche Postbank, Credit Agricole -- just to name a few). The typically anglo-saxon approach of greed and of ripping off the little guy makes Paypal seem "like other banks" in some places (UK, U. S. where no one has even heard about foreign currencies existing, pun intended)...

And what's that "great service" Paypal are providing, again?

In this time and age of Bitcoin, Litecoin, other Crypto currencies offering INSTANTENOUS and next-to-no-cost payments wordwide, who really needs Western Union, Paypal, or even the -- in fact -- slightly better Payoneer services?

It is easy to convert Paypal dollar (or any other) balances to bitcoins and on to a local currency using the right Bitcoin Exchange in your local country (local currency, bank account). You may even sell bitcoins over-the-counter and without needing wallet software when using localbitcoins.com in face-to-face transactions available in most cities that have Starbucks or Burger King. All of these options will save you all those -- truly -- annoying fees. (Feel free to PM me if you need URLs for a local exchange in certain countries, too wide a subject to include it here.)

Better still would be some stock agency actually offering Bitcoin payments in the first places. Curious to see when that will finally happen.

Bitcoin, Be Your Own Bank -- in case you guys still haven't heard about it...!

Quote from: Microstockphoto on March 26, 2016, 12:06
try to be a little bit more condescending

-- just encouraging people to THINK (but I was aware of this being highly unpopular before). Still, there are people even on this forum who know what I mean, so it's not just me...

Quote from: Chichikov on March 25, 2016, 15:20

Quote from: Hi Cliff(s)! on March 25, 2016, 14:49
wowww indeed -- even a refund for recent buyers!

Sorry, but if that alone doesn't sound too good to be true then what is? Where is the catch here? C'mon people, this still is Google, and they have never ever done anything for free without a hidden agenda (collecting our data, violating our Privacy, forwarding to Big Brother what's actually ours etc)...

Hope no one here is going to be too disappointed when the next whistleblower comes along telling us what really was behind this "change in policy" at Google.

There are still a few people in this world to know the difference between "Free Beer" and "Free Speech". Usually you're given the former so they can make you forget about the latter.

Why some people have to see the evil everywhere?

easy: that's because some of us are more awake than others. More boys-with-toys around here than journalists or ordinary grown-ups with at least some kind of a memory here, it seems.

You do know how long exactly it takes from a Google search to an unsuspicious-looking FBI van pulling up in your driveway on Long Island, NY when you're an outdoors enthusiast and want to buy backpacks and hot water bottles -- don't you?

So, sure you're totally free to dream on your innocent little life like a kid out there, but the above is a fact -- and it shows the kind of "friends" you have in Google :)

Also, as a photographer, you are aware of what metadata is? And you listen to the news every now and then, yes? And you are able to figure out what's 2+2?

(Or maybe you always have to wait for an Edward Snowden to risk his life and "do the math" for you...)

Quote from: Pixart on March 24, 2016, 20:28
That sounds great to me.  I used a trial version for a while and a couple of those tools were doing good things for me.

Quote
Good news are rare.
This is one
Thank you very much for the link

Quote
Wow! This is big. Thanks for the heads-up.
It's always good to have an extra tool in your tool-box.

Quote
etc

Quote
etc, yada-yada

wowww indeed -- even a refund for recent buyers!

Sorry, but if that alone doesn't sound too good to be true then what is? Where is the catch here? C'mon people, this still is Google, and they have never ever done anything for free without a hidden agenda (collecting our data, violating our Privacy, forwarding to Big Brother what's actually ours etc)...

Hope no one here is going to be too disappointed when the next whistleblower comes along telling us what really was behind this "change in policy" at Google.

There are still a few people in this world to know the difference between "Free Beer" and "Free Speech". Usually you're given the former so they can make you forget about the latter.

Quote from: 7Horses on October 16, 2011, 14:11
As newbie I've started submitting to canstockphoto and 123rf about the same time. On Canstock I've 59 pictures in portfolio on 123rf 48. Sales on CS just around 0   ???. Sales on 123rf 9  :D. Does any newbie had some sales on CS ???

I had only good things to say about CS when I started out: I even had my very first sale ever through that agency -- surely something to remember ;)

That was back in 2014. Since then, I have kept uploading. Very few consecutive sales since, so I can confirm it seems very slow on CS now.

CanStockPhoto might want to actually get in more buyers, pitch the agency and artists' work to editors, bloggers, newspapers etc to increase actual sales. Basically, that's the same thing every single one of us needs to do, ideally when selling independently -- unless, of course, we're work-shy or freeloaders or wimps, and for that very reasons stay in this microstock business and with these microstock "agencies" who, more often than not, take 70% as a "commission" (it should be the other way round): the agent is supposed to have 30%, else it's not a commission.

(Similarly, a 120% interest rate -- or tax, as the Swedish used to have earlier -- would not be an interest rate (or tax) but a rip-off or plain theft. Everyone outside those "agencies" -- or European governments of various flavours -- knows that.)

On that note, i e commission levels, CanStockPhoto seems to be one of the better agencies taking "only" 50%.

They ought to work at their overall performance though and actually be able to make sales happen! An agent not selling is not actually an agent either...

Quote from: ribtoks on September 26, 2015, 16:22

to make it more usefull, convenient and quicker than existing tools.

(...)

• keywording capabilities as well as setting additional XMP/IPTC metadata (title, description, author)
• uploading images to Stock Agencies' FTP hosts (keeping encrypted list of credentials)
• keywords suggestion based on Shutterstock API or local library
• search through loaded images by any metadata (keywords, description, title)
• ability to upload vector (eps/ai) files with images with same name (useful for illustrators)
• automatically zip vectors and previews if needed
• checks for potential problems before upload (insufficient resolution, missing metadata etc.)
• spell checking

happy to see this one coming out: finally a nice one!! Currently working with several command line tools (which is about okay) and online "solutions" (which is not). It's great to see that we do not have to bend over backward to Adobe and similar outfits (or run emulator stuff etc) just in order to make keywording and EXIF manipulation etc a tat easier.

Thanks for you work, will check it out as soon as I fixed a bunch of dependencies on Debian/GNU Linux (Linux Mint), details attached as footer below (general update didn't fix it and didn't touch the "old" libQT packages).

-- Cliff

-----
xpiks depends on libqt5concurrent5 (>= 5.2); however:
  Version of libqt5concurrent5:amd64 on system is 5.1.1+dfsg-5.
xpiks depends on libqt5core5a (>= 5.2.0~alpha1); however:
  Package libqt5core5a is not installed
(...)
etc...

Quote from: noodle on January 09, 2016, 07:33
No reason whatsoever to feel bad
If someone theives work and sells as their own, they pay the consequence. Period. We all know the rules when we sign up
I wish all theives get their just desserts

-- me too.

Don't feel bad, you did the right thing, @Minscer -- although I don't get it either what all the "secrecy" is about.

Quote from: nadavgs4 on January 09, 2016, 09:08
I can get nikon d3300 or t5i (700d) canon.
I heard nikon got a little better IQ because of the big sensor and resolution but the canon got more tools like AE Bracketing and bigger buffer that make it kinda more proffesional i think.
Video is not interest me, i buy the camera for stills ONLY so all the advantages that reffer to video isnt important to me.

Sent from my GT-I9500 using Tapatalk

The D3300 has, IMHO, indeed most things going for it in the video department (incl 60fps and stuff) at a very good price point.

That said, Nikon is the manufacturer and an original innovator from way-back in the day that came up with a lens mount that's been so revolutionary and, hence, good enough to be left unchanged since 1957. Also, Nikon has less vendor lock-in when it comes to peripherals, accessories etc than Canon (Canon does not support anything that's not either Canon-proprietary or Microsoft-proprietary -- very last-millenium approach, this time in a bad way)...

The array of DX lenses from Nikon is great IMO, and often very affordable compared to other brand names.

AFAIK, you can have the D3300 for a lot less than the other ones you mentioned, so if you're on a budget that's a point to take into consideration too.

HTH...

-- Cliff

Quote from: Cider Apple on January 08, 2016, 19:32
I've been wondering about selling video too. I only do video and have over 5000 clips so to get them all online I would need something like 3TB of hosting.
I've looked at Symbo but they don't have anywhere near enough storage and are pretty expensive. The only other option could be to buy Ktools pro for $299 lifetime cos and host it on something like godaddy as it has unlimited storage and bandwidth.

Does anyone else have experience on uploading your large video ports on any of these services?

Cheers

have you tried or thought of trying Nimia? They give you different options, from just storing/hosting for your own Port or agency-style uploads. Check it out here: http://bit.ly/1kVU9Kq, might provide all (or some) of the features you need.

-- Cliff

Quote from: canbedone on January 08, 2016, 12:41

Quote from: alijaber on January 08, 2016, 12:30
For me DT was a huge waste of time and effort, I've disabled all my videos there (I didn't know how to close my port).. Also closed my port at IStock (few sales with humiliating percentage of profit to contributors)

Thanks for your reply

I just wonder why disabling videos.....I think they at least can only give you some bucks more (even if few).....if you disable them the revenue is zero for sure. Am I wrong??

the whole disabling issue -- it sure depends how you look at it.

First of all, although I like DT much (!!) better than most other agencies, I must say that video sales are much slower there than photo sales. DT works nicely for the photo portion of my Port. Video clips, on the other hand, aren't hot sellers at DT, maybe they haven't managed to get themselves out in front of video-buying audiences for some reason.

Now for deletion, you would destroy the time and work invested when uploading, tagging, keywording -- so, yes, one might be tempted to keep video clips up. It also might seem like you can "advertise" your clips while keeping them alive. You won't get any Search Engine or "Google juice" for your own indi showcase website or similar from doing so. Also, some fear that your own clips on DT would "compete" with your own clips somewhere else if they left them "up", and this is sure *visible* when you do a specific Web Search for a specific clip of yours where the DT clips would rank right around the other hits making the overall impression fussy to visitors (potential buyers of your clips); but then again, the *real* competition situation is not likely to arise with clips rarely in an agency where they rarely sell...

On the balance of things, I chose to keep them "up" on DT too as I would like to see if the overall video situation may improve there in the future. Maybe DT could do something or work some magic to get our clips in front of the -- much rarer anyway -- video-buying audiences.

If you're just starting out with video, you may want to give it a shot and test them yourself with a limited amount of time invested to keep your "risk" low.

-- Cliff

Quote from: Herg on July 17, 2015, 11:19

Would this do the job ? It seems highly rated

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Epson-Perfection-Scanner-ReadyScan-Technology/dp/B00ECBRW5E/ref=cm_srch_res_rtr_1

pretty sure, it would! Myself, I am using the Epson Perfection V370 which is totally sufficient, and results get accepted by all the common agencies without any hiccups.

Your preference for Epson is reasonable, they are IMHO great and support all Operating Systems (I mean really OS-es as in Win-Mac-Linux, and not Win3-Win-7, Win-8 or Win-10 all of which are only flavors of one-and-the-same Microsoft stuff of some lawyer-son, Bill Gates or what he calls himself, who is abusing young girls in India as guinea pigs for his dirty "foundation's" vaccines mania)!

If you want to avoid unnecessary vendor lock-in, then you also want to make sure to avoid Canon like the plague (they're still using the same old driver set that's around since the 1990s and wasn't so great on my Win95 back in the day either)...

Go for the V550 if you find a good price. As resolution always comes at a cost (file size), I have to confess that I rarely use the full-blown 9600dpi setting of the V370 (nor even more than its hardware resolution of 4800dpi very often). Agencies aren't overly enthusiastic about large files either. So the extra specs of the V550 may or may not be a deal breaker (or rather -maker) in your case. 35mm slides and the occasional 120 film scan work great on both models. I am even playing around with glass-plated negative antiques and old 16mm film clips on the V370 right now. For me, the lower-priced V370 model is therefore already a more-than-sufficient scanner for microstock..

-- Cliff

Quote from: photografix on December 31, 2015, 04:57

(...)
What kind of questions might you have and what price(s) would you be willing to pay?

Yuri Arcurs always had his own submissions manager. Being an (external) submission manager is exactly what you're proposing here, so it's good thinking and a legitimate idea, of course. Yuri Arcurs also has been paying substantial amounts to his assistant (no matter whether he has made him a partner or as an employee). From that PoV, there should be plenty of opportunities and potential.

Not being as much of "a business" as Yuri Arcurs, it may be more doubtful though whether or not Microstockers would come forward to hire someone for this and pay. The consensus from the other posts suggests similarly.

For me personally, it would depend on what exactly I want to achieve: for uploading large backlogs of images or tapping into that pile of "historic" shots or slides, it might be worth x-amount per image to me for being able to make it happen at all. Depending on shot quality (and hence selling potential, particularly these days with Sweatshop price levels all over the place!), I'm afraid I'd come down somewhere in the $.50 to $3.50 band per average image, maybe $4-$5 for my "better ones" as far as they can actually be processed by an outsider.

-- Cliff

sorry -- no proper Delete function for fixing typos here!!

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on December 30, 2015, 20:10
I have no idea what the guidelines for 1099s require (you can read them below, but I really don't know if what Envato's doing is OK).

Someone would have to challenge what they are doing in court to get them to change it. Given the costs of doing that, who earns enough there to want to spend the money on lawyers?

https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i1099msc/

leaving us with "only" the market to fix this mess (though the market ultimately is the more effective -- and better anyway-- "weapon")!

And exactly what are they getting right in Australia anyway?! Just take a good look at Symzio, Envato, and Freelancer (outisde microstock), let alone overall Aussie politics, e g when it comes to Freedom of the Press, to bending-over-backward for the U. S. empire, to persecution of their very own Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, or toward "finding Satoshi Nakamoto" (again)... Mostly !d!ots, seriously.

Seen enough, wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole.

-- Cliff

Quote from: Pauws99 on October 20, 2015, 07:47
Maybe cos its the biggest market in the world?

wishful thinking; I'm afraid -- even the U. S. acknowledged last year that the biggest market is now China, or did you only mean "biggest for media"...? The latter may still hold true, though it remains to be seen how long this situation will continue.

When and because "expanding to America" -- or rather the U. S., because there is no such thing as FATCA, excessive AML and similar "compliance" throughout the rest of America (these idiotic attempts at Freedom only exist in Empires like the U. S. or the EU-degraded Old Continent) -- means more burdens of compliance for all of us, I'd rather pass that entire Envato thing.

-- Cliff

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on December 30, 2015, 18:41
Potential contributors to Symzio should note a few key terms

And who gets to decide if the editorial tag should be there? If there are to be such draconian penalties, there need to be detailed guidelines as to what the Symzio agency's standards are for requiring an editorial tag. Vague handwaving about "appears to be editorial" just doesn't cut it.

Using "contributor controlled" as a marketing gimmick and having terms like most agencies that leave the contributor largely powerless seems to me to be contradictory.

Read the agreements very carefully to be sure you can live with them before participating.

indeed -- thanks very much @Jo Ann for pointing this out. Even if the FAQs may have been updated, this doesn't change much as of this writing.

One doesn't "clarify" stuff like that in some FAQs but one writes proper T&C in the first place! Please have this done properly, @Robin. Unless this is remedied, this is a huge red flag against using Symzio.

-- Cliff