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Messages - Jo Ann Snover
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1177
« on: May 14, 2020, 16:00 »
... Seems to be business as usual:
"Cleared Funds
Alamy operates a real-time reporting system, where sales are reported in the Contributor's account at the point at which a client purchases on credit card, or when an invoice is raised to a client purchasing on a finance account.
Sales are posted to Contributors' accounts immediately and are listed as uncleared. ...
The issue with Alamy's traditional sales is that there is often a long lead time from an article being published before the sale is posted - I assume for those customers who have an account and can use images without even an invoice being issued. I've had a number of these cases over the years where I see my image in use, with a credit to me and Alamy but no uncleared sale for that image. I would contact Alamy who would confirm the download and then I'd begin the long wait for the sale to show up as uncleared in my account. And then you wait more months for the sale to clear (they don't always pay bills on time). And Alamy has a policy (they told me) that if they get a partial payment, they don't pay any contributors until the entire payment is received. IMO, calling their reporting system real-time is disingenuous at best. But with image packs, where the payment has already been made to Alamy, I would expect there to be an immediate posting of a sale when the download takes place and it's cleared. If they're going to operate like a microstock agency, they need to pay up like a microstock agency.
1178
« on: May 14, 2020, 12:56 »
I wonder what the image packs mean for contributors regarding payment - if the buyer has to pay up front, surely we have to be paid at time of download versus 2 - 6 months in arrears?
I looked in the Alamy forums and the discussion about these image packs didn't talk about that aspect of the new payment type (that I could find).
1179
« on: May 13, 2020, 21:24 »
Mat, thanks for looking into this. I didn't realize that credits could be used for buying ELs - or that 8 credits was the price. Every credit pack - from 5 at $49.95 to the two large ones (150 and 500 credits at $8 a credit) - would give a discount on the "list" price of $79.99 for an EL. I'm surprised more people don't use that purchase option. Perhaps the notion that you have to buy more credits than you need for one EL discourages buyers? Extended licenses are nice to see 
1180
« on: May 13, 2020, 15:09 »
Mat is looking into it. We'll know more once he posts.
On the subject of discount codes. I understand that once we moved to the percentage of actual sale model, contributors "shared" in any discount versus that just being a marketing expense borne by the agency, coming solely out of their share.
When the agency share is 67%, that should allow them to run promotions to drum up business. Exceptional discounts - i.e. limited time specials or new user deals - versus the volume/annual subscription discounts that are part of the published price lists should really be at the agency's expense as are the credit card fees, server bills, bandwidth charges or other costs of operating the business.
As an example, when Shutterstock did the deal with Facebook for small images for ads, contributors received a subscription royalty even though the buyer didn't pay for the image (it was "free" with the purchase of the ad).
1181
« on: May 13, 2020, 13:12 »
Apart from that I get quite a few subscription sales with odd amounts recently. 2.97 for example... which looks like a 10% discount on the usual 3.30 commission.
$2.97 would be the royalty on a 40-pack of add on credits versus $3.30 is from the monthly 3-per-month subscription. Obviously, I don't know what your sales actually were, but I looked at the royalties on a number of the posted prices.
1182
« on: May 12, 2020, 15:07 »
...One thing I really need to work on is workflow with keywording. It's taking me a LOT of time. Right now I'm with 4 agencies and basically redoing keywording for each image for each agency.
...Do you just separate by a comma?
Also, from what I've seen on here most people use Lightroom for their workflow. I use CaptureOne...
Steve has given you a detailed rundown of his workflow. Mine is simpler (but I don't deal with the volume Steve does) - I don't use anything other than Capture One and Photoshop. I used to use Lightroom but never keyworded there anyway - just used it as a RAW converter. Every image I upload to a stock site goes through Photoshop, even though there is more and more work that gets done in the RAW processing as time goes by. So Photoshop is where I keyword. I always start with the most important keywords first (helps for Adobe Stock and Alamy) and a sense for what those will be develops over time, but the basics are pretty obvious. You type in words or phrases separated by commas. Most sites (Dreamstime is one of the holdouts but I stopped uploading there when their sales fell off a cliff) support multi-word keywords. Photoshop will display saved keywords as semi-colon separated, but all the sites read either separator without a problem. Keywords saved in the PSD are copied into JPEGs when you save as. If I have a subject that I've covered before, I sometimes start by copying and pasting a set of old keywords. Mostly to make sure I don't leave anything out, but you do have to be sure to remove anything not applicable. Some people keep databases of keywords to ensure they're consistent. Sometimes figuring out the best terminology for your subject is worthwhile. For example, if you do a search on SS for lady eating you get about 140K results. woman eating is just shy of 1 million. I settled on woman as the term I use. iStock used Mature Woman as its CV term but older woman is used as well. Shutterstock shows you your top performers and the top keywords used to find them (and I know that's not all that useful until you've sold more). That has told me that house outsells home - I include both but put house in the first 10. Try to come up with one set of data - title, description, keywords - that is universal. SS takes the description only. AS takes the title only (but I cut and paste the description from my Mac's "Info" window for the file). Some sites have a minimum or maximum number of words, so try to avoid breaching any of those rules if you can. Even though almost all the sites strip out copyright information from your metadata, I always include that too (in Photoshop's file info). Bottom line is that the metadata is part of your stock image and lives with it for as long as it's a viable stock image. Sites come and go, and we accommodate them as best we can
1183
« on: May 12, 2020, 10:16 »
I was happy to see an extended license in today's Adobe Stock sales, but puzzled that the royalty was only $21.12
I searched down the page to confirm my memory wasn't failing me - in March I had two extended licenses for $26.40. They haven't changed the prices shown, so either there's a discount program that used not to be there or our royalty percentage has changed.
Has anyone else seen a lower EL royalty from Adobe Stock recently?
Edited to add that I have a second extended license today (and that's in itself a surprise). That one is $26.40 as expected. I guess the good news is that prices/royalties haven't changed across the board. But someone was able to buy an EL for $64 instead of $79.99
1184
« on: May 11, 2020, 15:39 »
I just took a look at the site (I hadn't visited it in a long time) and it appears that Adobe Stock is their "partner"/referral site now. I didn't see SS images (but I'm sure they used to partner with freepik). I can imagine the justification from the agencies, but partnering with these bottom-of-the-barrel sites is very discouraging I guess my major beef with freepix as a "premium" - i.e. paid - site is the 3,000 images per month for $11.99 (they say "unlimited" but it is all subject to daily limits). it's even cheaper if you pay for a year ($8.25 per month) https://support.freepik.com/hc/en-us/articles/202567722-How-many-resources-can-I-download-?_ga=2.197257071.1985695260.1589226845-86432309.1589226845Contributors get 50% of whatever the daily "take" is divided by their download tally. The site has about 2.5 million vectors and 4.5 million images (premium) so it's small compared to any of the other agencies. The problem is that 50% of a very small number is a very small number. https://support.freepik.com/hc/en-us/articles/212799769-FAQs-for-contributors?utm_source=landing-faqs&utm_medium=landing&utm_campaign=landing-faqs&_ga=2.129704140.1985695260.1589226845-86432309.1589226845I have no idea how many actual subscribers they have, but look at the math with 1,000 hypothetical premium subscribers at $8.25 and a 30-day month. The daily take is then $275. Let's assume subscribers don't download the 100 per day they're allowed, but only download 20. That totals 20K downloads total per day, so each has a value of $0.014. Suppose you as a premium contributor get 50 downloads that day - your royalty will be half of 70 cents! Even if you go with the $11.99 subscription and only 10 downloads for each subscriber ($399.67 daily take / 10,000) each download has a value of 4 cents, so your royalty on 50 downloads would be half of $2.00. That's just madness
1185
« on: May 08, 2020, 22:29 »
They appear to portion out revenue on the basis of portfolio size, not sales volume, which seems insane https://upload.picxy.com/contributor_revenue_shareThey don't say "of what" when they talk about share though. I assume that's the net image price? They have subscriptions that don't roll over for unused downloads, so not sure if Picxy keeps any extra cash. They're offering bonus payments for uploads, so I guess they're hoping to grow the library that way. That suggests that sales are not all that great yet https://www.picxy.com/bulk_contribution_modelIf you look at how they structure transactions, they're not an agency; they say the transaction is between you and the licensee. "THE LICENSEE AND THE CONTRIBUTOR AGREE AND ACCEPT THAT THAT ANY TRANSACTION MADE OVER THE WEBSITE AND THE APP BETWEEN A CONTRIBUTOR AND A LICENSEE SHALL BE BETWEEN THEM AND THE COMPANY WILL NOT BE A PARTY TO ANY SUCH TRANSACTION." https://www.picxy.com/terms_and_conditionsI don't really understand the signup process for contributors - which appears to differ if you're outside India vs. a resident of India. You have to give them your bank a/c details but also need to have an account with a payment processor for when a sale takes place. If you're outside India, they require PayPal as that processor https://www.picxy.com/contributor_agreementI don't have content from their area, so it's moot for me, but I would stay well away from something that was structured this way
1186
« on: May 04, 2020, 11:00 »
I thought I hadn't heard of them either, but when I went to their site, my password manager filled in a user name and password. I searched my email and found that in 2015, Franois Aquesbi had emailed me about joining their agency. I had replied that there was a bug and I couldn't read any of their terms or look at work without a login. He replied with login information saying it wasn't a bug but a way to protect artist's portfolios from theft! I didn't think my work would be a good fit for them. Other than complaining to them on their social media sites - sometimes public shaming about lack of a response to emails can help - perhaps you could withdraw your consent under the GDPR? Their blurb says if you don't consent they'll stop representing your work and close your account, which is what you were after. https://www.prodigar.com/cms-content.php?pagename=&page_id=9
1188
« on: April 28, 2020, 16:07 »
... software ... that can read out the keywords at iStock and put them into your files automatically ...
This will be worse than useless. Getty's controlled vocabulary works (given its approach) only on its own sites with its own search engine. Put those controlled vocabulary terms - most of which aren't even vaguely related to typical speech or search words - on other sites and you will severely hamper the sales of your images. On Getty sites you search for house or garden and it knows to map those to Residential Structure and Front or Back Yard. On other sites, where humans search for house or home, files keyworded "Residential Structure" won't be in the results. Same for Horizon Over Water, Nautical Vessel, Downtown District, Mature Woman, etc. On Adobe Stock, you will want to put the important keywords first - there's a post about that in this forum, but I think it's the first 7 that are significant in terms of search placement. Bottom line, you need your files keyworded in a way that works for all sites and have those stored in the JPEG you upload. Pain to fix this now, but it's necessary.
1189
« on: April 27, 2020, 13:17 »
Today, for the second time this month, an extended license sale netted me only $14.27. At the beginning of April, there was an EL for $32.19 and mostly they have hovered around $28.
I believe my prior low water mark for an EL sale was $16.50.
If you look at the pricing page, they offer a 2-pack, 5-pack or 25-pack for ELs. At a 30% royalty rate, those come out to $29.85, $26.94 or $20.39. The discounting is pretty big - I assume for a corporate client who they're trying to woo back (that side of the business has been contracting the last two quarters).
Assuming they have not messed with contributor royalties on these sales, it means that EL sold to the customer at $47.57, less than half price (compared to 2-pack).
They post their Q1 earnings tomorrow. Will be interesting to see what they have to say for themselves...
1190
« on: April 25, 2020, 11:29 »
Picked a heck of a time to start! It's probably not surprising given the economic disruption, but I see overall sales volume way down at the moment, so don't interpret slow sales as a reflection on your work specifically as it's not "normal" right now. I would offer a couple of thoughts (and I'll put the one I think you should most pay attention to up top in case you want to have only one suggestion per contributor ) -Pay attention to keywording. If you've been a photographer for a while, I'll assume you haven't had to think about that, but if your images don't show up in searches, you won't sell, regardless of how great they are. Take your image's subject and do some searches on Adobe Stock and Shutterstock. When you see something similar to yours, look at the keywords the other images used and make sure you've covered all the bases. If you have photos of places, make sure neighborhood, city, state and region are there; for people, ethnicities, ages & gender and so on. -If you're not good at cloning, stay away from anything with logos or brand names. No art on the walls or statues. No numbers on ship sails or license plates. If you do editorial, that doesn't apply obviously, but editorial typically doesn't sell in the volumes that commercial work does -I assume you're used to editing your images before submitting them (given you shoot advertising) but look over your images at 100%; even though reviewing has become pretty terrible at some sites, rejections for noise or sensor spots or other technical flaws can be unexpected for photographers new to stock. -Don't overlook boring but useful subjects. Stock is about useful images, not just a pretty face in front of a camera. -You can chase trends, but those images age much more quickly - fashion, technology, food fads. Images can and do continue to sell for years if they are free of any obviously dated stuff -I'm assuming you're already doing this, but make sure your keywords (and titles & descriptions) are in the JPEGs you upload. If not, they should be - not only to save you time now, but also to make life easier when a new agency comes along a year or two down the road and your portfolio's ready to go. Oh, and congratulations on your first sale!
1191
« on: April 23, 2020, 13:18 »
I had never heard of them before either. I went to look for the contributor agreement as it typically says something about who the company is - i.e. who the contributor is making a contract with - and which state's laws (or country's) govern the agreement. It also typically says something about payout terms but that's just 50 euros minimum and that it's on request. Euros suggests this is a business in one of the 27 member states. https://www.crushpixel.com/pages/contributor-agreement.htmlThis agreement is so shoddily written that I find it hard to take the web site seriously. There are also some unpleasant terms, such as "You warrant Us the right to give some customers free downloads / licenses, for example for marketing purposes or as a refund. In this case You will not earn a commission for the download." "You warrant Crushpixel.com the right to suspend or delete your account at any time without providing any further explanation." - and that says nothing about them being obligated to pay your outstanding balance when they do so (even if it has to be over 50 Euros). There's a web designer in Leeds, UK, with a facebook page for her business, Crush Pixels, but I'm assuming that's unrelated There's not much in their domain registration Domain Name: CRUSHPIXEL.COM Registry Domain ID: 2175317908_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.namecheap.com Registrar URL: http://www.namecheap.comUpdated Date: 2018-08-26T15:03:08Z Creation Date: 2017-10-16T21:35:29Z Registry Expiry Date: 2023-10-16T21:35:29Z Registrar: NameCheap Inc. Registrar IANA ID: 1068 Registrar Abuse Contact Email: [email protected]Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: +1.6613102107 Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited https://icann.org/epp#clientTransferProhibitedName Server: KIA.NS.CLOUDFLARE.COM Name Server: ROCKY.NS.CLOUDFLARE.COM DNSSEC: unsigned URL of the ICANN Whois Inaccuracy Complaint Form: https://www.icann.org/wicf/>>> Last update of whois database: 2018-08-26T15:08:40Z <<<
1192
« on: April 14, 2020, 21:39 »
This month's payout is later than usual, but they sent an e-mail on April 3rd saying they would pay by the 15th. If you are not receiving those messages then it must be the tax form as others have suggested - otherwise they are very reliable.
Shutterstock paid me on April 6th - not sure how many days payments typically take, but I'd assume by now everyone would have received theirs?
1194
« on: March 11, 2020, 23:00 »
...Think about it and please support me. Because it may affect you, if other agencies follow this bad example. Thanks.
What are you looking for in the way of support from others? I'm not all that worried about stock image agencies implementing this, especially if a contributor was generating sales for them, but if it did happen, I'd take my money and leave the site. I'm not with Zazzle and I'm not aware of anyone else who has done this. I did, for example, leave 123rf when their drop in sales eventually resulted in a cut in my royalty rate (seemed like a perverse incentive system I didn't want to support), so I am willing to put my money where my mouth is.
1195
« on: March 10, 2020, 12:00 »
I wasn't aware that resellers had any reason to contact contributors directly. What did she want?
I wasn't also, but there is the mail. She asked for my phone number to briefly speak with me...
Anyone ever got this kind of email?
I have never had email like that, and I'd be surprised if a reseller deal with Shutterstock would allow them to do side deals with contributors (which is likely what they want). If it was something on the level - such as details of exactly where a particular image was shot - they'd ask in the email. The reason to have a phone call is so there's no record of what they're asking (IMO)
1196
« on: March 03, 2020, 15:37 »
1197
« on: February 25, 2020, 09:18 »
...The EL's are pennies now....
That's not my experience with SS. I had opted out of ELs when they changed from a flat $28 royalty to a 30% (or whatever your percentage is). I used to say yes to any EL emails $28 or over and no to anything less. After a year or so it appeared that the SODs had dried up and I suspected that it was somehow tied to the EL opt out - something like only showing their corporate clients files where they could buy any type of license. I opted back in to ELs. The SODs came back - or it appeared that way to me - and although there was an occasional low EL (I think $16 was the lowest I ever saw) I figured it was better to leave ELs turned on. My most recent EL - they aren't frequent any more - was for $29.50. I have seen low value SODs, but never an EL at $1.50. I don't have any images where the content makes it an issue for uses that might have been covered by the "sensitive use" option, so I never opted out of that.
1198
« on: February 21, 2020, 18:32 »
I'm glad to see it back - it was totally unreachable for a day or so for me.
1199
« on: February 19, 2020, 18:32 »
Download volume is lower at SS but it's the lower RPD - the SOD sales have gone AWOL - that's the major problem. This month so far my RPD is 61.5 cents versus Feb last year was 80.3 cents (December RPD was $1.01, but the last three or four months of the year are always much better). Adobe stock's sales total is beating SS and the RPD is 98.2 cents - more of the custom sales at slightly higher royalties. That isn't great news given that it's a result of SS's slump, but I'm glad AS isn't slumping too In their Q4 financials, SS said that the corporate sales had shrunk 1% (while the eCommerce had grown 7%); I can't see how that can be good news for us, and they keep saying they're working on revamping that side of the business, but it doesn't so far seem to have done anything for volume or royalties.
1200
« on: February 14, 2020, 12:26 »
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