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Messages - pancaketom
Pages: 1 ... 37 38 39 40 41 [42] 43 44 45 46 47 ... 91
1026
« on: June 23, 2014, 11:53 »
Don't worry, when the site goes down they will soon give the buyers a discount code so that you make less per sale.
1027
« on: June 22, 2014, 14:30 »
As long as I don't go to the stats page it seems to work, if I go to the stats page I have to do the captcha every time - and I have had to as long as I can remember - along with another falsehood "You will not see this prompt again unless you have logged out."
On the plus side - income is better than last month, on the minus side - income is about 50% of where it was before our percentages got cut along with the promise to "double sales".
1028
« on: June 21, 2014, 14:16 »
I sure hope they rent done. I am about $100 light from typical PP. I am expecting this to go to zero, though. Once TS closes and IStock is the new TS.
Do you expect PP sales to go to zero, replaced by new sub sales on IS, or do you just expect PP sales to go to zero, stop? I don't know what to expect actually.
Anyway, why should TS close? What about the other collections on TS? The new IS subs and TS could co-exist.
I do expect TS to dissolve. The reason is that I don't understand why they would compete with themselves and need two disparate sites to drive sub sales. I could be wrong but if TS is so great why dilute it with Istock subs (which were just recently introduced).
so they can pay contributors less of course. If the PP are done - this is my lowest since Feb 2012
1029
« on: June 20, 2014, 10:44 »
I think the sites need to make the searches work better, not delete images.
One possibility would be to go through the top most common searches by buyers and do something so the spam and "bad" pics don't show up in the first 4 or 5 pages of results. That would go a long way towards no annoying buyers but if someone had a very specific search they could still find the obscure image that fit it.
Search position is key for regular sales of popular subjects.
1030
« on: June 18, 2014, 09:57 »
While you are fixing your end, can you please double our sales as promised (or return us to 50% of sales).
1031
« on: June 17, 2014, 21:46 »
Not fixed as far as I can see.
1032
« on: June 17, 2014, 10:14 »
I think agencies (the big ones) can have plenty of profitability with 70 to 85 and more percent of each sale.
1033
« on: June 16, 2014, 13:41 »
Yes, SS and all the others also consider market share when they decide on pricing - which is a moot point to most contributors because they sell most everywhere.
1034
« on: June 16, 2014, 12:41 »
Another one going the way of the RC. I hope they lose all of our images for this.
1035
« on: June 11, 2014, 17:56 »
even more annoying than the usual lies
"You will not see this prompt again unless you have logged out."
and a promise about doubling sales.
1036
« on: June 11, 2014, 10:45 »
I think the slide will just continue - RPI will be lower, the sites that screw photogs will continue to do so. The quality of images will continue to rise as will the volume available. It will be even harder to get started in this business, but plenty will keep trying. Some older contributors will keep at it, others will just let their portfolios ride, and a few will pull them in anger.
1037
« on: June 10, 2014, 12:40 »
June is my 3rd best month of the year already - although not many sales since 6-6, so it really got off to a roaring start (a bunch of PEL and TIFF sales helped a lot). Only a few bucks to be the BMY and within reasonable distance to be a BME - which would be the first BME for a significant selling site in a long time for me. I don't expect the pace of the first week to continue, but as long as it doesn't just completely stop I'll be quite pleased with them this month. I already more than doubled the April total (April was pretty dire though).
1038
« on: June 09, 2014, 19:43 »
Action speaks louder then forum crying. Agency won't change until we make them change. If people complain but do nothing to change, they should just shut up.
I hear this a lot, but what is considered doing something?
You honestly had to ask?
Drop all agencies that lie, cheat and steal. Drop all that have pseudo sites that they own or run or are hiding partners. Do not tell sites that you are a cheerful victim who wants to be cheated and lied to and that you are willing to work for them for pennies.
The way it got to this way was agencies dropped commission. Agency changed level, referral and bonus. Agency added new impossible levels and RC. Nobody did anything. Agency adds new ways to sell without permission and cheats us, hides truth. Nobody does anything.
When agency says, we will include allowing option out, people claim it's a victory. Kind of victory, when they are still lying, cheating and stealing, but feel good, you can option out of some part.
When the problem started was low pay and people said we'll make it up by selling on 10 agencies for poor pay to make up for low pay. Then agencies see they can pay nothing and get good images. Agency lowers pay and nobody does anything, they still sell and work for nothing. Now it becomes race to the bottom. Agency makes more we make less. They look for new ways to cheat us out of a fair share.
Agency says, we can keep lowering pay and cheating these people because artists need the money and won't do anything to change the way we abuse them. The artists are beggars and down at heel. We'll take hand outs instead of what we rightfully deserve.
You want the answer again? Drop all agencies that lie, cheat and steal. Or take the abuse and be a willing victim. But don't complain about being a victim when it's a choice.
It's also called, put up or shut up.
How is that working for you?
1039
« on: June 09, 2014, 15:05 »
It still multiples. So it's order of magnitude whether it's if you look at us compared to other stock marketplaces like an iStock or others, it's two or three or four times more expensive to not use Shutterstock. If you look at the higher end sort of more traditional marketed might be 6 or 8 or 10 times more expensive.
That seems kind of old. Those magnitudes don't really exist anymore. Most other agencies are cheaper now or the same deal.
Not so old, 6 or 7 months ago and as we can see Fotolia & IS were forced to make adjustments downward in order to compete. This has not been good for contributors as it degrades the value of the asset we pay for and produce.
To put it further into perspective, Jon is talking about SOD's when he mention this phrase. "If you look at the higher end sort of more traditional marketed might be 6 or 8 or 10 times more expensive."
Does anyone think it is beneficial in any way to undercut the existing macro market by 8 or 10 times?
Shutterstock's Management Presents at the Goldman Sachs US Emerging/SMID Cap Growth Conference
http://tinyurl.com/qcqszco
So, why aren't IS and FT "forced" to pay 20-30% to contributors to compete instead of as low as 5-15% depending on the exchange rate. As for undercutting the Macro market, that is how micro started, why expect a change from that? Sure, I'd love for them to pay contributors more, but at least they haven't dropped their payment like a number of other sites.
1040
« on: June 07, 2014, 16:56 »
Yes, but I wouldn't send them all my files and they wouldn't be more than 5 MP or so.
1041
« on: June 07, 2014, 13:36 »
Yes, if you look at the # of newly accepted images on SS each week it is a lot (like 265,000). If 5% of the reviewers are doing an awful job your chances of hitting one of them is not all that high, but the chances that a lot of people will get weird rejections are pretty high. I personally haven't had a problem in a while either, but when all or almost all of the images are rejected for focus or lighting when other images from the same shoot have been accepted in the past it does raise flags.
Many or most of the rejections are perfectly valid and it is when experienced contributors complain about them that people take more notice, especially when entire batches are rejected for the same reason.
1042
« on: June 06, 2014, 15:44 »
Is it that P5 doesn't get much traffic to buy photos, or what? Those that are happy with P5, are any of you selling just stills and not footage?
Video sales at P5 are very good. Very rare to sell a photo though. I was hoping after they bought pixmac it would help P5 photo sales, but it doesn't seem to have made a difference.
Thanks for the answer. Kind of sad they couldn't even keep the sales level of pixmac going.
It is quite possible that the total # of sales has gone up but nowhere near the # of new images brought in from P5. My early P5 photo sales were quite promising, but not much change with a lot more of my images - I am assuming it is the same factors there too.
1043
« on: June 05, 2014, 10:57 »
I think GL was severely impacted by the changes Google made. I'd love to see more sales there (and at SF - although SF doesn't seem to sell my type of images very much). Another black eye for SF from my point of view is it took over a year for them to respond to my application. I really liked stockxpert though and wish SF could gain that kind of traction. If I wanted to market images I'd open my own site.
1044
« on: June 04, 2014, 21:26 »
It is probably fair to say that Amazon is working for Amazon and the publishers are working for the publishers. The authors are probably pawns for both of them - although like microstock Amazon has opened up possibilities for many that were locked out by the traditional publishers. Actually the situation is probably pretty similar - the successful authors did very well under the old system and the ones who couldn't get in didn't. Technology and Amazon cracked that nut, and we still don't know where it will all end up.
1045
« on: June 04, 2014, 13:17 »
I haven't voted because my income is so sporadic it is hard to come up with hard numbers - anywhere from 30-70% probably depending on the month. (that sounds impressive, but it is only because my other income is so low - luckily years of being homeless (mostly by choice) have honed my skills for living cheaply).
As far as doom and gloom - it is a bit depressing lately - but if you have a real job that was supporting your family and now you make 50% from microstock, that means you doubled your income, and if you stopped working, it is likely that you will continue to make a significant percent for some time (although it will taper off).
It sure would be nice if the days of uploading a mediocre picture and getting immediate sales were still going on though.
1046
« on: June 03, 2014, 15:46 »
The shape of my graph is similar to Rimglow's, but a little more drop off after 2012, and a lot lower with more images.
1047
« on: June 03, 2014, 10:35 »
I thought it was worse than it was - actually a bit better than April (which seems to be the new but lower than before normal). DT was quite good and Alamy woke back up but was still below the average from 2012.
1048
« on: June 01, 2014, 20:40 »
They beat May 2010... (but not any May since then). Actually it was about avg. for the year, which isn't so great. April was very good though, so it feels like a letdown. Usually I have 10 or so "good" days at SS (totally arbitrary distinction). This month only 5 - but the good days were very good, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been. DT and Alamy took up some of the slack though.
1049
« on: May 29, 2014, 20:29 »
I'd love to see the discovery documents in a case about if a site was ripping off photographers.
1050
« on: May 29, 2014, 15:08 »
There are a number of things DT could have done better w/ this, but it could actually be a good thing for contributors. (although I must say I have become very leery of "exciting" new offers). They should have told us how long they expect this beta test to go on, and I'd like to know the order how much we would get for a use. For instance if it is for less than a sub sale - I want out and I don't want it to gain traction. Another question is will a usage with this program raise the image level or will we get a higher remuneration if a high level image is used in this new way?
DT in general have been one of the better sites. My long term earnings graph there shows a general trend with 2 big drops - I think they might have both been from "exciting" new opportunities - when they dropped from 50% to less, and the second drop was when they dropped our % again and got rid of the more $ for higher level subs sales.
I hope that they understand why we are a little gun shy right now. I appreciate the heads up from them, but in the current climate any site needs to explain what they are doing if they don't want people to be immediately skeptical if not hostile.
Sorry to be nit-picky and point this out Laurin, but we "pray" the sites don't "prey" on us. Otherwise I am sort of picturing a conversation between Magneto and Prof Xavier.
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