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Messages - increasingdifficulty

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1026
123RF / Re: Time-wasting clicks
« on: August 03, 2017, 08:12 »
Not sure what you're up to but it's ONE click for me.

1. 123rf.com

2. I click Earnings.

---

If you want 0 clicks you bookmark the Earnings page.

1027
General Stock Discussion / Re: JULY SALES
« on: August 03, 2017, 07:10 »
The problem is that I want my average to be equal to my best month  :P

Nice thought, but that will never happen.

1028
General - Stock Video / Re: Predict My Earnings
« on: August 02, 2017, 18:44 »
increasingdifficulty: "What do you make right now? Duplicates/similars only hurt your sales and is really bad for SEO..."

- The first couple of months only around $500, so hoping for much more than that in 12 months from now. I don't have any duplicates - I have many of similar theme. Surely having many clips, all with good metadata, is better for sales than a few? Think about this - if someone types 'white sandy beach' into the search engine, and almost all the results on the page are my clips, I'm going to have much better chance of selling than if there were only 1 of my clips in the search results. Unless I am missing something?

Yes, you ARE missing something. Something very important.

"White sandy beach" yields 17,117 results on Shutterstock. The default sorting is "Popular", meaning clips with many sales. Your clips won't show up there unless they have many sales.

With 1,000 interchangable "white sandy beach" clips you're diluting your potential sales over 1,000 clips, meaning maybe 20 will have 1 sale after a while. If you only had one or maybe three perfect "white sandy beach" clips it's much more likely that those clips would get 6-7 sales each and they would rank much higher in the Popular search. If one clip would get 20 sales it would rank very high.

"Relevant" is also largely based on sales, so the same applies there.

"Random" won't show many clips from the same contributor.

Many of your clips would only show up if you have very unique clips with search terms yielding few results. This is not the case with "white sandy beach" or anything related to that unfortunately.

I know you don't have actual duplicates, that's not what I meant, but you have clips that are so similar that they are interchangeable for a buyer.

The only good strategy would be releasing the clips slowly, one by one, so that you always have something show up when customers search for "New". But since the default is "Popular" that's what 90% of customers will use.

1029
General - Stock Video / Re: Predict My Earnings
« on: July 31, 2017, 13:35 »
Uploading so many similar clips might even hurt your sales because no single clip is going to get many sales and rise up in the search results.

Precisely! Duplicates/similars only hurt your sales and is really bad for SEO.

1030
General Stock Discussion / Re: AUGUST SALES
« on: July 30, 2017, 16:04 »
I would like to know about May 2023. That's an important month for me.

1031
General - Stock Video / Re: Predict My Earnings
« on: July 28, 2017, 15:11 »
I agree with Brightonl - good clips, but they are almost all the same clip (in the eyes of a buyer).

7,000 becomes more like 700 or 70. A "paradise beach" search will only get you limited sales.

7,000 diverse clips could bring in a lot of $$$ but here it will be lower. The competition for "beach", "tropical beach", "vacation" search terms is very, very strong.

It's just like living close to an epic forest. One or two of those clips could be stock bestsellers, but a portfolio of 7,000 epic forest clips won't earn 3,500 times more...

$1 per clip per month on Shutterstock only is a good average. It will likely be much lower than that. $2 per clip per month in total across all agencies is a realistic average with a diverse portfolio. It will likely be much lower here.

What do you make right now?

---

Unrelated questions:

How is internet out there?
Were you born there or are you from another country and moved there? Easy? Hard?

1032
Off Topic / Re: Videofolio Critics
« on: July 28, 2017, 09:20 »
30-50 total you mean? But 10 at Pond5?

10 out of 3,000 is 0.3% of your clips each month.

On a cheap site I sell between 30-40% of my clips each month (P5 stats are MUCH lower).

On Shutterstock I sell about 1.5-2% of my clips each month. Since the prices aren't 20 times higher there I make more money on the cheaper site.

---

This is all very complicated, and can have a lot more to do with the competition and search visibility on each site, than the actual price.

On the other hand, why are 90% of all Shutterstock sales discounted sales? That tells me buyers DO care about price, and they would much rather pay $49 or $59 than $79 for a clip.

---

If you have been at P5 for many years, and your clips pop up in search all the time, you can price a bit higher. The ones who sell the most at Pond5, however, have their clips priced between $40-80.

If you're a new player, setting a high price at Pond5 could be an advantage, since only a very specific search would result in your clip being found, regardless of the price.

If you upload a NYC skyline clip today it doesn't matter if it's priced at $25 or $2,500. No one will find it anyway, unless they are looking for a very specific angle, date, movement, or resolution.

---

So maybe the right strategy for Pond5 is in fact to price high, since you won't sell more with lower prices anyway because of the sheer amount of clips you're competing against. This isn't optimal for all sites though, and is more a result of the extremely bad averages sellers at Pond5 seem to get. Even top sellers don't seem to sell THAT many clips when you take into account their 30,000 clip portfolios...

1033
Off Topic / Re: Videofolio Critics
« on: July 28, 2017, 06:14 »
Ive tried plenty of different prices and right now my clips are
Premium 4k $250, HD $100
Standard 4k $180, HD $80
I sell about 10 clips a month on Pond5

How many clips do you have? What percentage of your clips do you sell each month? That's what's interesting to know.

1034
Pond5 / Re: POND5 Vintage Collection 1864 Abe Lincoln Film
« on: July 27, 2017, 09:14 »
The first film was made in 1878.

He died in 1865. So yes, it's fake.

1035
After Effects for maximum control over single clips for stock.

Premiere for editing them together into a film. Premiere has easier access to scopes and stuff but I still prefer the control you get in AE for single clips.

1036
Shutterstock.com / Re: playing with similars
« on: July 26, 2017, 08:25 »
I like the one where the Moon is about to destroy the Earth.

That's some realistic Photoshop work right there.  ;D

1037
Shutterstock.com / Re: playing with similars
« on: July 25, 2017, 13:22 »
"But why don't my travel shots sell...?"

1038
The most useful tip I got was to look at images already on the agency of my subject, and ask myself, "Why would someone choose my photo over theirs?"
NB, it's not always the 'best' standalone photo (always an objective call) which is chosen, it might be that a colour or crop they could make is 'best for their layout', so you can't always tell, but it's always a good question to ask yourself.
Yes I try and do that however buyers don't always want the "best" they want "fit for purpose" which explains why much of my fairly average output sells.......

Right and this is why (mostly) leaving room for cropping is usually a good idea.

...and also why only shooting during golden hour is a bad idea. Some people seem to think that no one ever needs daytime shots...

Imagine a film where everything is shot right before sunset. Pretty strange.

1039
General - Stock Video / Re: video editing
« on: July 23, 2017, 08:06 »
Naturally, some buyers would prefer flatter looking clips so they can grade to taste and match other footage.

BUT - every single top selling item I've ever seen has been quite heavily graded to a ready-to-go look. 

1040
You mean like these?
It does happen every now and then :P

Exactly.  :D

So these should be on SS?

Well, that's a personal choice. They are nice, but it can take 5 years of $0.25-0.33 sales to make up for a single sale at a more expensive place... a sale that might never happen...

Can't really advise you here.

1041
You mean like these?
It does happen every now and then :P

Exactly.  :D

1042
When I say an identifiable place perhaps something like this, as traveled people looking at it would be able to tell where it is from the rock formation (Algarve, Portugal). I submitted this once as an editorial but went back to it and blurred + cloned people out and tried again submitting as commercial, which I believe would have more value. The editorial image barely sold.

The horizon needs to be fixed on that image.

1043
I agree with what the others said but I would like to really emphasize photographing animals at their eye level (of course a drone shot or from the ground up on an elephant is cool too, but in general).

It makes ALL the difference in the world. A monitor lizard from OUR eye level or even 3 feet off the ground is not going to be very interesting.

Get the camera down to 3-6 inches off the ground and it's a completely different shot.

Same with the crabs. Everybody sees crabs from above. Get down in the sand and enter the crab's world. Angles and light is everything.

Snapshots are just that - the world as we see it every single day, we're so used to that and it doesn't feel interesting.

Get low, or up in the air and everything suddenly feels more interesting for the viewer.

1044
Call me crazy, but I would say that 99.99% of pictures used by teachers in a classroom setting (PowerPoint or similar) are not bought... They are the first hits on Google image search.

My son brought home an animal assignment and my photo was on it. I told the teacher how cool it was to see my photo on his homework sheet and she said she found it on google.

There you go ...

Exactly.  ;D

1045
Envato / Re: Mystery Payout
« on: July 21, 2017, 11:08 »
Treaty with US or AU? Also, as the other user said, there is no tax section on their page.

US.

1046
Call me crazy, but I would say that 99.99% of pictures used by teachers in a classroom setting (PowerPoint or similar) are not bought... They are the first hits on Google image search.

1047
Envato / Re: Mystery Payout
« on: July 21, 2017, 07:54 »
It's not incorrect, envato is australian based, so 30% is probably right amount. I checked yesterday. I'm also paying 30% at Canva, which is also *.au based.

As far as payments go, they are US based. It's the IRS that insists on withholding taxes. If you have a 5% treaty, you should only get 5% withheld.

1048
But in Italy nobody buys stock stuff even the rest of the year, so it is not a factor in this market

Based on what? I have lots of content from Italy, and Italians buy my stuff all the time. Not as much as the US, UK, Germany, Canada or South Korea, but more than most countries in the world.

Americans always buy the most by far, but they also have the population of half of Europe.

1049
Pond5 / Re: I don't like the POND5 search engine...
« on: July 20, 2017, 17:15 »
There are a lot of contributors undervaluing their (quality) work.

You don't know that since you don't know how much they make each month.

1050
Pond5 / Re: I don't like the POND5 search engine...
« on: July 20, 2017, 09:16 »
First of all... selling 4k for under $ 100 is absurd. Second... if they'll need 4k, they will find it.

Because 4k is so incredibly hard to produce and almost no camera in the world can handle it? Ethernet cables and wifi routers collapse under the pressure?

You price based on CONTENT. Not resolution.

A 4k clip of a duck should be cheap.

A 720p clip of an erupting volcano can be very expensive.


Sure, cuz your rent, equipment loans, software rent, monthly bills, and grocery expenses are price based on quality too?

Yes, they are priced based on quality for the most part.

But you confuse resolution with quality.

An enormous house with torn wallpaper, a rat problem and mold everywhere is not of better quality than a small apartment that's brand new with top-notch interior.

---

All I'm saying is that just because it's 4k doesn't mean it's a quality clip that should cost $100+. But naturally, a 4k version of an outstanding HD clip should be more expensive.

And let's not get into the whole "value your work" thing again... I know where the most $$$ comes from and that's good enough for me.  ;)

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