pancakes

MicrostockGroup Sponsors


Show Posts

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 - Kngkyle

Pages: 1 2 3 4 [5] 6 7 8 9 10 ... 30
101
Posted this on the IS topic, figured I'd post it here as well. Perhaps more of you can share your experience with this.

I was with StockXpert when they introduced subscriptions in Q4 2007. I compiled this graph to show the percentage of my earnings coming from StockXpert from Q4 2007 to Q4 2009. I used percentage of income instead of just income because obviously over the years my portfolio has gotten larger. These numbers are a 3 month rolling average to smooth the outliers.




102
So the commission from the image packs will be a flat rate of 20%.

Awful.

103
DepositPhotos / Re: Is DepositPhotos looking good?
« on: February 04, 2010, 04:42 »
Their site looks very nice and they have some innovative features that the other sites don't have. (pay by sms for example) As far as new sites go, this one seems to be on the right track. Plus they are based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida which is close to me.  :P I would submit to them but I am going IS exclusive so unfortunately not an option for me.

104
Too bad I already deleted my portfolio at Fotolia a week ago. This would have made for a more dramatic exit. I'm behind you guys 100%.

105
Looks awful. I don't see anything positive for contributors coming from this.

106
iStockPhoto.com / Re: To go exclusive or not?
« on: January 29, 2010, 07:35 »
Well since someone bumped this topic, I suppose I'll update you on what I'm doing. It's a sad story really.

I decided to go exclusive and started deleting and disabling my images from the other agencies I submitted to. All is well until I get to Dreamstime. I was aware of the 6 month hold before hand but didn't think a whole lot of it since I hardly uploaded anything in the past year so surely I wouldn't have a problem. (hahahahaha)

So I have disabled 99% of my portfolio off Dreamstime, down to 7 images remaining and then bam, can't disable anymore. After looking at their 6 month policy more closely (I foolishly didn't do so before hand) I realized you could only disable 30% of the files you uploaded in the past 6 months. Turns out, I uploaded 9 images in the past month. I could only disable 2, leaving me with 7. The 2 I had already disabled were not the most recent uploaded files so I went ahead and enabled 1 of them so I could disable my most recent ones. HUGE mistake. The 6 months start over again when you enable a disabled file.

OK I thought, surely Dreamstime will understand my situation and disable them for me, after all it is only 7 files. (well 8 now  >:() As you can probably tell by now, the answer was a big fat no. I even specifically contacted Achilles and offered compensation with no luck.

Needless to say I was pretty pissed off at this point. I had already deleted my portfolio from Fotolia and Stockxpert so there was no going back. A day later I decided that it would be worth it if I just bought the "sell the rights" extended license for my 8 files. The lowest you can set the price for that is $250. So I would essentially be giving Dreamstime $1000 to remove 8 files. (50% commission back to me)

I tried to buy one. It went through fine, the image was disabled right away. 12 hours later I get this:
Quote
We noticed that you purchased one of your images with sell the rights
license. Regardless of the reasons for this purchase, we strictly
forbid contributors to buy their own images, especially with the sell
the rights license.
We have refunded you the transaction and cancelled the purchase. Feel
free to contact us should you need further details.

So now I'm just out of luck. I went ahead and filled out the paperwork with Istockphoto to secure my next canister rank for when I can go exclusive. Also re-enabled my portfolio on Shutterstock and the other sites that I could. I'm not going to bother re-uploading to any sites so I'm going to take a bit of a hit financially.

The way Dreamstime handled my departure is completely different than every other agency. I understand that they are just following the ToS that I agreed to, but that didn't stop other agencies from letting me go. Hell some of them even OFFERED to pay out the remaining balance on my account despite it being below the minimum payout.

I had initially thought this 6 month policy was in place to cover the cost of reviewing and hosting the images. Now I think it is to make it more difficult to go exclusive to another agency. Why else wouldn't they accept $1000 to let me go? If they want to combat Istock exclusivity perhaps they should make their exclusivity program more appealing.

In the end it seems I'm just going to have to wait the 6 months. If exclusivity to Istock ends up not working out for me, Dreamstime is one agency that I will absolutely NOT be going back to.

So let my experience be a lesson for you all:
1. Don't be an idiot like me.
2. Don't expect Dreamstime to be accommodating to your situation.
3. If you have any thoughts of going exclusive to Istock, stop uploading to Dreamstime ASAP.

If there is any silver lining to this story, it is that I am more motivated to upload new content to offset my loss of income.


107
Off Topic / Re: Apple Tablet Announcement *TODAY*
« on: January 27, 2010, 18:04 »
^^ Yea I just found out about that Microsoft Courier thing. Looks pretty nice. Heres another video of it:
Microsoft Courier - How Microsoft Thinks You'll Use It

108
Off Topic / Re: Apple Tablet Announcement *TODAY*
« on: January 27, 2010, 17:58 »



109
Off Topic / Re: Apple Tablet Announcement *TODAY*
« on: January 27, 2010, 15:11 »
Looks nice. Price isn't as extreme as I expected. But I still don't see how it can beat a regular laptop. Not having an actual keyboard is a deal killer for me. I'm sure they will sell tons though.

Also 'iPad' is kind of a silly name and can be thought of in a not so elegant way.

110
Off Topic / Re: Apple Tablet Announcement *TODAY*
« on: January 27, 2010, 05:59 »
They will probably sell a ton of them, but for me personally, I'd take a laptop with a keyboard any day over a tablet.

111
Software - General / Re: PC problem: WinXP, perhaps hardware
« on: January 24, 2010, 06:10 »
I wouldn't spend more than a few hours trying to fix it. It only takes about an hour or so to reinstall the operating system and another hour to reinstall all your programs. You will likely need to reinstall some drivers as well, they might have come on a disk when you bought your computer or you can download them online from the manufactures website.

Also I agree with borg. Registry cleaners and virus scanners rarely fix the problem, especially one as complex as yours seems to be. Not saying it isn't worth trying but don't get your hopes up. I certainly wouldn't pay any money for one.

Really though, Windows XP is sort of obsolete now. You should check to see if your PC is capable of running Windows 7 and consider upgrading. If not then maybe you can use this as a reason to buy a new PC.

If you do decide to buy a new computer I recommend purchasing one that has two hard drives. With that you can have the operating system on one and all your important files on the other. So if you ever have any issues like this you can easily reinstall the operating system and not have to worry about losing or backing up your files. (OK it's probably still a good idea to back them up but I don't)

112
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Non-Exclusive Sales?
« on: January 22, 2010, 04:34 »
Sales are up. Might end with a BME.

113
iStockPhoto.com / Re: To go exclusive or not?
« on: January 19, 2010, 21:43 »
If you choose to go exclusive be extremely careful deleting your files.  Partner sites like pixmac are slow to remove files.  I deleted my files from fotolia two weeks ago and had my istock application rejected because pixmac still had them  I'd never even heard of them.

Am now stuck waiting for the 90 day rule.  Hope there is a way around it.

It would be good to have a list of these partner sites so we can check them.


Partner sites, and what you have to do get rid of your images on them, have been talked about many times - here's an example:
http://www.microstockgroup.com/general-stock-discussion/exclusive-preparations

Too bad you didn't check here first.



But with Fotolia's partner sites is not easy.   I closed my Fotolia account some months ago and some Fotolia partner sites still display my images   >:(    All images have been removed from the portfolios, but the URLs of each image are still online, and Google has them indexed already.

And this happen to anyone who removes images from Fotolia, not just me.  Partner sites do not remove individual URLs.! 

I've contacted Fotolia many times, and they always say they will be removed... but nothing happens. 




Bah. We'll I might end up having to ask for the extension then. It's going to be very frustrating if I have to wait weeks for them to remove them from partner sites.

114
iStockPhoto.com / Re: To go exclusive or not?
« on: January 19, 2010, 00:38 »
Well, right now I am leaning towards going exclusive. But I am a big chicken and don't want to commit to it. I'll just keep thinking about it for the next few days I suppose.

115
iStockPhoto.com / Re: To go exclusive or not?
« on: January 18, 2010, 15:16 »
OK thank you all for the comments. I did what you suggested gostwyck and ran some numbers to see how much I would have made this past month if I had been a bronze exclusive. It looks like the 5% commission increase and the increase in file prices will about double my income. That puts me at earning ~80% of what I currently am as an independent.

BUT, that doesn't account for a more favorable search placing and vetta. What effect those will have is pretty much impossible to figure out. Perhaps some of you could share your experience with this?

If it adds an additional 20% then I obviously wouldn't be losing anything.



116
iStockPhoto.com / To go exclusive or not?
« on: January 18, 2010, 05:31 »
Well, with the new canister levels taking effect in just over a month now I need to either commit to being exclusive or commit to being independent. So here is my situation and I hope you will share your opinion on what I should do.

First off, I'm just a small fry doing this as a hobby. I started in 2007 and haven't really uploaded much in the past year. I do still keep up to date with whats going on and will certainly upload more in the future. I don't make a whole lot off microstock but as a college student the extra couple hundred dollars a month do make a difference. (no student loans!)

I am just a bronze canister on IS with ~800 downloads and am unlikely to obtain silver for at least another year. (assuming I do go exclusive and am grandfathered into the current levels) Over the past year the percentage of my earnings coming from IS has consistently increased and is currently at around 40%.

What I am trying to decide is just how much my earnings will increase if I do go exclusive. If it doubles then that would be a 20% loss over being independent. I know it is impossible to estimate just how much the increase will be but perhaps some of you who recently have gone exclusive can shed some light on this. Some of the recent changes IS have made have likely widened this gap (vetta, 2010 pricing) and I will take that into account.

My biggest problem with IS is their hatred for raster illustrations. Getting them accepted is incredibly difficult. And because of that, I only have 64 images online at IS compared to 300+ at most others. (Admittedly 50-100 of those 300 are crap that I made in 2007 when pretty much anything would sell at SS) You might ask why I even bother uploading raster illustrations and the answer is -- the ones that do get accepted sell great. Yea yea I know the reason they sell great is likely because they are picky so there is less competition. Even so it is still frustrating getting constant rejections and having to send scout requests.

I do submit photos as well though, and I don't have a problem getting them accepted. I would submit more photos but as a college student I don't have the money to travel and I'm not too fond of studio work. OK I'm lazy too but that should be a given.  :-X

So that is pretty much where I stand. I love IS for the professionalism and earnings potential. I hate IS for their raster illustration policy.

Fortunately because I have uploaded so little in the past year, I shouldn't have a problem deleting/disabling my portfolio from DT and BigStock in time. (I already missed the deadline for requesting an extension to the February 24th cutoff)

So what do you think?

117
Interesting responses. Certainly pushes me closer towards exclusivity.

118
I mainly use Opera and love it. Firefox is backup.

119
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Non-Exclusive Sales?
« on: January 16, 2010, 19:23 »
About the same for me.

120
I would try Shutterstock. You will need a bit of coaching first before you submit your initial 10, so be sure to post asking for advice. Really the nice thing about Shutterstock is the instant gratification. As a noobie, you will get downloads almost immediately after your files are accepted. On Dreamstime it's much more likely that you won't get any downloads for the first month. And that could discourage you from doing anything more with Microstock.

121
iStockPhoto.com / Re: iStock in the New Year
« on: January 09, 2010, 00:26 »
Seems like it is just a matter of time before it becomes financially smart to go exclusive for me. Once iStock accounts for 40-50% of my earnings it will be worth it. It was 36% last month.

122
Off Topic / Re: First month after converting to Mac
« on: January 07, 2010, 14:45 »

123
StockXpert was one of my top 3 earners back before subs. Since then it's been a downward spiral, and doesn't look like it's going to change anytime soon.

124
General Stock Discussion / Re: Crestock - Dead Agency Walking?
« on: January 02, 2010, 13:06 »
I haven't uploaded anything new there but I still make more from them than I do Bigstock, Veer, Featurepics, and 123RF. I got a payout a few weeks ago, it took like a month but it did eventually come through.  :-\

125
General Stock Discussion / Re: December 2009 earning percentages
« on: January 01, 2010, 20:49 »
For the month and for the year:



December was by far the BME at Istock.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 [5] 6 7 8 9 10 ... 30

Sponsors

Mega Bundle of 5,900+ Professional Lightroom Presets

Microstock Poll Results

Sponsors