|
MicrostockGroup Sponsors
This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.
Messages - mino216
1
« on: May 05, 2025, 12:53 »
mino216 - it was more of solution to the exessive spamming - will people pay for more space just to host 100s of the same photo? But if it's been tried then no guess it's not an solution.
They will probably not. But the problem is that such a site will also miss a lot of images of photographers who do not spam which will make it less attractive for buyers as well from an opposite reason (for example, I would not upload there). Your solution is sometimes used in few sites, usually for real products with these photos, not so much for digital licences. But then you cannot expect microstock volumes of sales (but also not their low prices). I prefer relatively stable income from microstock, not some crazy high licence once a year, if any. Better photographer than me, who have better images, more appropriate to be sold through these channels, can have different preferences.
2
« on: May 05, 2025, 07:59 »
Fair enough on my comment on stock business model - points taken. I guess agencies would have to provide and bake in marketing, sales, customer service into the price for hosting your content, which would have course increase hosting costs to contributors.
They already do. This is what is covered in their commissions. No need to reivent the wheel. See the Shutterstock. Their revenue was 242.6M, net income 18.7M. There is not much space to increase payment for contributors if it should survive financially. For example, cost of revenue is 101M (majority of this will be probably payments to contributors, maybe covering others), 53M was sales and marketing (that mean all relationships with buyers), 20M product development (website and so on), 58M to general and administrative. It is not so easy as it seems. These other costs (administrative, sales, marketing, IT infrastructure,...) will not disappear so easily. Maybe it can optimize them a little bit more but I would not expect miracles. And even in your model, you would still have to pay these things. You can pay them through the commission as of now, hosting prices (your solution) or by yourself (also your solution if even more extreme). I would prefer commission as the easiest and most predictable option (hosting would cost you money even if you will not sold anything). Now, you pay only in the case you have sold something.
3
« on: May 05, 2025, 04:42 »
Just floating an idea - I wonder what would happen if rather than upload and agencies take a cut, contributors pay the agencies to host their work with full commissions going to the contributor. Just a thought - don't know if it's been tried before.
You would die of the amount of work, time and money you would have to invest. What about advertising, making deals with other companies, what about lawyers? Not only in these deals but in some copyright problems, you never know when someone would like to take down the images because of some ridiculous reason that their "thing" is on the photo (and that is the better option, lawsuit is the worse one). Would you really like to deal with every single issue that can emerge? No, thanks. That is suicide. The agencies are huge "bumper" for you. Will not save you everytime from every problem, but still it is a huge help in majority of the cases. For example, there are 1700 people employed in Shutterstock, you really do not want to do all their work on your own.
4
« on: March 02, 2025, 02:52 »
Very interesting. With the first editorial video that I submitted under the new system, they accepted 'shops' as a keyword but would not accept 'shopping.' However, they did accept 'shopping center.'
This is not anything new, Shutterstock uploading system works like that for eternity. It always removed "ing" version of the words unless it had some more distinguished meaning. The only way was to put that into the phrase. I was never able to put "shop", "mall" and "shopping" to one image, it always had to be "shop" and "shopping mall" otherwise only "shop" and "mall" will survive but "shopping" was deleted.
5
« on: February 19, 2025, 05:19 »
The same here. Fortunately, it is still possible to get there using the keyword tool.
6
« on: January 25, 2025, 03:16 »
It is not working well in recent days. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not.
7
« on: October 26, 2024, 11:45 »
Web interface not working for me, FTP is OK. Nevertheless, the unsuccessful web images appeared several hours later, though.
8
« on: October 04, 2024, 05:32 »
Does anybody know if Pond5 is still paying European contributors from Ireland? It is Shutterstock sub-brand now and Bigstock seems to be paid through Shutterstock, so I would assume Pond5 will be paid through Shutterstock now as well but I want to be sure. Thanks.
9
« on: August 08, 2024, 11:50 »
I understand it that you set the price and then it will be moved to apropriate tier according to what you have set. For example, if you set below 40 usd (29, 35, 39, does nit matter), it is going to be standard and will be for 29 usd for example. If you set higher, it will be premium for 59 usd even if you set 41 or 79 usd. I have made the prices
10
« on: January 30, 2024, 13:30 »
But they won't need the images again. The AI places don't care, because they don't need to use the images again. Just like what they scraped from the Internet. Once the image has been used for machine learning, it is not being used again.
What I'm saying is, the six year license is for training, not use. Once the training is done... we get nothing.
They will. They will create new AI models and these models will need the images once again. How do you want to do that without these images? The new models will increase amount of parametres, will be trained to do more stuff that the old model was not trained to, you need these images to train it on. You cannot just use the previous model that will miraculously use the previously trained information in a completely new algorithm with new features. You do not need it for fine-tuning the algorithm, but in the six-year period, there will be at least 3, maybe even more totally new generations of models trained completely from scratch.
11
« on: January 08, 2024, 10:54 »
For example, the Shutterstock's deal with OpenAI is for 6 years. After that, OpenAI has to licence the images again.
This means OpenAI will have access to new submitted photos for 6 years. After 6 years they will not get any new photos. There is no need to licence old photos that were already used to train their AI again.
They will need to licence them again, because they have licenced them for 6 years only. They have to retrain the system periodically including the old images. AI algorithms do not work so easily that you can just "add" the new stuff on something you already have. DALL-E 4 will use the same images to be trained on as DALL-E 3, it needs them again, and will have some new too. And if you do not have a licence to use the old images after X years, they will have to get the new licence even for the old ones.
12
« on: January 05, 2024, 16:49 »
I am surprised people kept thinking they would get infinite and regular payments for this. Once an AI is trained, it's trained, it doesn't need your images every month or every couple of months.
But it is totally obvious. Imagine yourself as Shutterstock. Would you offer these images forever? And never get any other money again? That would be financial suicide. You would offer them for some time period. The AI algorithms is developing as well, it needs more images, newer images,... you need to retrain the new AI model,... For example, the Shutterstock's deal with OpenAI is for 6 years. After that, OpenAI has to licence the images again.
13
« on: September 19, 2023, 14:09 »
Why do you think that? The income per image used for training on Adobe is much smaller than for selling a license for normale usage. In my case on Adobe is was less than a cent for an image. How am I supposed to earn more from AI training than from selling my real photo licenses in the future like this?
I have explained that in my post, have you not read it? Once again, you cannot say "The income per image used for training on Adobe is much smaller than for selling a license for normale usage" because YOU DO NOT KNOW what is the ratio between AI and normal images. If Adobe sells normal images (for example) for 1B USD and AI images for 10M USD per year, then AI images are earning you more if they are more than 1/100 of income of your normal images. Why should it be higher when the market is smaller? It does not make sense. How can Adobe pay contributors the same 1B USD for AI images per image per year if AI images have sold for 10M only during the same time period? If your normal images will sell for 1000 USD per year but AI images generated by system based on your images for 10 USD year (because the market is much smaller), why on earth should you get the same income per image per year when these images have not sold for such amount of money? I do not get it. Also, don't you think the market for AI image generatores will be saturated pretty soon? Do you think new AI engines will keep popping out for the next 100 years? Some of the AI engines like modjourney are already creating almost perfect results in almost every topic. Their demand for new images (apart from the fact that they do not pay us for training anyways!) for them is minimal. Therefore there should be payment for each sold image generated by such a system (which is a problem). I am not saying all these systems are OK for contributor. They might need new images every couple of years for some things like technology where appearance changes fast. But even if I popped out a million of new photos of new cell phones and electric cars each year and got paid for each image for training by Adobe I would still be making significant less than what I used to earn till now with what little money Adobe gave us for training. Therefore there should be payments for usage as well (as Shutterstock said it will comensate contributors).
14
« on: September 18, 2023, 16:29 »
Injustice for all, can you not see beyond your nose? I may be wrong but this is how I see it all unravelling in the near future...
AI is being used by the agencies to make contributors obsolete. Our images were being used to train AI and now we are being used to improve it by using AI. AI images will exponentially saturate the market and without retaining copyright to the new AI images, the agencies will remove us from the picture, keeping only the AI images which will dominate the market. New AI images will be genetated by customers at the prompt, adding more AI to the database. AI will be used to generate titles and tags. Soon they will not need human artists and photogtaphers at all.
Do not think so (even though I thought so as well in the past). Our role is changing (as well as for some other professions - AI is a tool for many of them, not a replacement). We are becoming the trainers of AI systems now at least in short and mid-term. There are some types of photographers which are going to be replaced more by AI (so their income from regular images will drop more but their income from AI training will increase) and vice versa.
15
« on: September 16, 2023, 18:21 »
would you sign an employment contract without knowing what you earn? Would you work for a month without knowing what would end up in your bank account? I maintain: no one does - but I may be off the mark.
I am not saying it is necesirally a good thing. All I say is that you cannot say it is bad neither according to the numbers you get because you do not know if you are getting less per sale or more. The reason is... you do not know how many images were sold using the system trained on your images (in comparison with ordinary ones), so you cannot even make an estimate, how much you should get per image. So, if you do not know, what number you should get, how can you say it is low or high? You also do not know how many other images of that topic were used in the system for that photo... And that the "beneficial" could be, I do not see.
I do. It is a probability thing.
16
« on: September 16, 2023, 16:04 »
And the crumbs that we are given, are partially celebrated here! I dont get it!
I am just saying that you cannot say if these are crumbs or not because you do not know the numbers. I would say that this system can be even very beneficial for some type of photographers (for some topics).
17
« on: September 16, 2023, 13:50 »
We still hold the copyright, but they have taken an perpetual license to use our images and are paying us a one-time payment of an amazing $0.069 per image. At least that's the amount I got for each image. None of us would agree to something like that. But the way the agencies set it up, if you don't leave, you agree.
You have completely forgotten about one very, very, very important detail. Amount of sold images. 0,069 USD per image can be awful but also totally great amount of money. Let me explain, the following numbers are just for illustration of the concept. Adobe will sell ordinary images for 1B USD and AI images (images created by AI trained on our images) for 10M USD per year. So, in our example case, they will sell 100-times more ordinary images than AI images. It is obvious that one cannot expect the same revenue from AI images as from the ordinary ones if they sell 100 times more. So, if your yearly revenue is... for example 10000 USD a year from 10000 images, it is totally fine to get anything above 1/100 of that (100 USD) per year from AI images. So, the question is... do you really know what is the ratio between revenue from ordinary and AI images? I do not. Therefore, I cannot say if 0.069 USD per image is a lot or not. Can you?
18
« on: July 26, 2023, 11:19 »
I.e., say for 6 months you are at 10%. Then remainder of the year you are at 20%. The "average" rate is actually 15% (not 20%, which some ppl 'forget' about).
That is not entirely true. The fact is that the levels have different "size" (you jump very quickly in the beginning), therefore, you are in different levels for a different time period. In my case, I am at 15% approx. 3 weeks, than 5 weeks at 20 %, 8 weeks at 25 % and than remaining part of the year at 30 %. So, my average is around 27 %. Because of that, your average will be usually very close to the highest (or second highest) level achieved because you are going to spend the most time in it. Of course, there are some exceptions, for example, if you barely achieve Level 2. And there is another catch, all these 10c sales which do not change with a change of level.
19
« on: March 09, 2023, 17:00 »
This can happen if SS has deleted your image. The reason can be because of the trademark. Because my image was not suitable for commercial use anymore, it has dissapeared and was replaced by this blank stuff
20
« on: January 28, 2023, 16:34 »
OK does that make for better division of the target earnings? 
Thanks, that is much better and allows for deeper insights. Now, we can see that 40 % of all people are below 3 USD, which is not great. 60 % of all are below 10 USD and 75 % will fit below 20 USD. I assume that these number will rise significantly next term as Shutterstock introduced the AI tool in general search.
21
« on: January 24, 2023, 17:21 »
Next time, it will be better if each range is larger than the previous one and not all of them are using 20USD steps. In such a case, there will be a large number of votes in one "basket" but nothing in the others, especially in the larger ones. 20 and 40 USD is 100% difference but 280 and 300 USD is just 7%. It will be miracle that someone will fit there. 0,01-20USD basket is extremely big and we have not got much information (is everybody near 0,01 or near 20? That is a huge difference). It will be better something like 0-1, 1-2, 2-4, 4-8, 8-16,... or slightly rounded (like 0-1, 0-2, 2-5, 5-10, 10-25, 25-50, 50-100, 100-250,...)
22
« on: December 17, 2022, 08:38 »
Will these royalties be ongoing for Ai images licensed where our work was used for machine learning?
It is understandable. These are the images used to train various AI systems or for generating images using AI and that can include hundreds of your images. I cannot imagine how to present such information in any reasonable way. Probably majority (if not all) of your images were used to train some AI system. Every image can contribute, so this can represent thousands of various sales.
23
« on: December 05, 2022, 10:45 »
... What I wanted to highlight is the fact that a contributor should be eligible for a commision every time when the image created with that topic is sold. ...
how would you decide from the generator phrase which images among millions were used in the training set? eg "penguin in a top hat walking on mars'
once training is done, no images are actually accessed during the creation of AI images
That is a good question. You know what you have used for training each type of object (downloaded and fed to AI training system). I would assume it is going to be connected with keywords and training sets for them.
24
« on: December 03, 2022, 07:30 »
I won't say you're wrong, but from past experience, I'm not thinking this will be some kind of windfall for contributors.
I do not expect it either. What I wanted to highlight is the fact that a contributor should be eligible for a commision every time when the image created with that topic is sold. I expect more stable income (not necessarily larger income though).
|
Sponsors
Microstock Poll Results
Sponsors
|
Show Posts
