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Messages - spike
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 [6] 7 8 9 10 11 ... 26
126
« on: August 05, 2019, 11:44 »
Great, SS! Only 5 years late!
127
« on: July 09, 2019, 10:20 »
Hi there Rasika,
I think a support case came through that is probably yours. I have responded to Adobe support and they will no doubt get back in touch with you but let me try to provide some guidelines for the future here as well.
in general, we want to provide you the contributor as much opportunity and creative expression as possible and provide the creative customer with a large and high quality library where they can easily find the perfect clip to add to their project.
As the content lead for motion, I have provided our moderation team guidelines for accepting similar clips. In general, I have loosened those guidelines because a different take, magnification/zoom/focal length or other factors can result in a clip that a customer wants. It's tricky though - there are always going to be grey areas and opinions on what constitutes a unique clip or not.
However, it doesn't make sense for us to have both an ungraded file and a graded file of the same clip. Especially if the files are 8bit color where the idea of "raw" isn't really applicable. Once you get to 10bit color or greater with cameras such as a RED, ARRI and some others, then the idea of a RAW version may be very appealing to some. As Adobe Stock develops, we may be able to offer a customer a choice of a raw clip versus a graded one. The team here certainly have discussed many ideas and we hope to bring them to our users in the future! 
Today, I like to suggest to contributors is to submit a lightly graded version of your clip. This means that it isn't flat like a clip shot in log might be and it brings out the luma range (black to white) and lightly touch the color (based on your preference). The end goal is that the novice buyer will see a beautiful clip and the experienced editor/buyer will see a clip that fits and provides enough latitude for them to push the color to whatever the need is.
I hope that this provides some guidance and if you (or others) have any questions please feel free to hit me up with them here. Please note that I'm technically on holiday so my response to answer may be a bit slower than normal.
Thanks and happy shooting!
Dennis
While this might be good advice in an ideal world, we the contributors also need to earn money, and if you lightly grade your clip, it will probably not stand out in a sea of vibrant clips, won't get picked up, and will end up in the 0 downloads abyss. Extremes, on microstock, always perform better than something closer to "normal". And I can say that just based on my portfolio (around 50k assets). So if the contributor submits "normal" clips (lightly graded), they won't be picked up, and the people who decided to go all-out on their grading (think of orange-teal, crushed blacks, heavy vignetting, cheesy stuff like that) will reap the rewards. Then you'll get a feedback loop of contributors trying to out-compete each other in terms of grading, and the actually good and usable footage for further post will be buried on page 27... if anyone even decides to submit usable footage, given their lower "sales potential". Just my take on it. I used to upload my drone footage in dlog and heavily graded versions, and the graded versions outsold the "raw" by a factor of more than 10. And I bet the "raw" would outsell the "lightly graded" version because the "raw" is only gonna get downloaded by someone looking for footage shot in log, but the lightly graded version will not be downloaded by anyone... because it won't be seen by anyone. I understand what you're trying to do, but what's good for the platform isn't necessarily good for the contributors. In other words, if you apply game theory principles on this issue, submitting lightly graded versions doesn't confer an advantage and is not an evolutionary stable strategy, as a "parasite" (heavily graded clips) can abuse the propensity of customers to notice bright vibrant assets first.
128
« on: March 21, 2019, 13:43 »
I will higher prices for my Pond5 assets
this will be my way to protest.
but wait, someone just mentioned this (I assume new agreement):
If you do not enroll in the Exclusivity Program, notwithstanding section 3.b. above, you shall not set the price for an item of video Content that is higher than the lowest price for which the same (or substantially the same) Content item is offered by or on any Other Marketplace, and if we discover that the Content item is offered at a lower price by or on any Other Marketplace, we may change the price of your content in our marketplace.
A lot of my HD content has been priced below "market place" on Pond5 because of their higher royalties. Now I can hike up the price by 30% and still be below 79$. So in my case, all is good.
129
« on: March 21, 2019, 13:09 »
If they are sincere and truly want exclusive contents, they should allow contents exclusive.
Otherwise, it is just a pretense to cut artist's shares.
Yup. Super manipulative. I'm already on page 8 of my 30% price hike. 
130
« on: March 21, 2019, 12:50 »
So Pond5 thinks they're going to get people to sign up for exclusive ARTIST for a 10% bump.
ETA: Oh, excuse me. 20%. Since they're cutting non-exclusive artists to 40%.
Really? Sounds like they've just copied Alamy 
So, just like I said: I'm not sure what exactly what they'll do, but I'm almost certain it won't be "good news" for contributors.
Didn't an Alamy exec or someone have a video explaining all the new "changes" which were, of course, bad for contributors?
Feels like damage control in advance, having them personally stream the news to the community instead of sending generic e-mails.
Pond5 - if you're listening - we the contributors don't care how you deliver the news - as long as they're good. If they're bad, there's no good way of delivering them - not though a genetic newsletter, a "town hall", or a personalized youtube video. And just trying to deliver them as softly as possible is manipulative. So I hope for the best, but I do expect the worst.
I'll be increasing the prices of ALL of my assets on P5 to make up for the loss of commission. In fact, I'll further up the prices, so let's see how that affects my sales. Free market.
131
« on: March 19, 2019, 07:41 »
Microstock is a volume business. If you have something really unusual, it probably should be on microstock sites in the first place.
You mean the opposite, right? Anyway, pricing could stay the same - the agencies could just increase the commission to the artist. That would motivate the artist to create more assets with such high value, while also not alienating customers with "weird" pricing schemes. Just an idea.
132
« on: March 19, 2019, 07:37 »
I'm not sure what exactly what they'll do, but I'm almost certain it won't be "good news" for contributors. Didn't an Alamy exec or someone have a video explaining all the new "changes" which were, of course, bad for contributors? Feels like damage control in advance, having them personally stream the news to the community instead of sending generic e-mails. Pond5 - if you're listening - we the contributors don't care how you deliver the news - as long as they're good. If they're bad, there's no good way of delivering them - not though a genetic newsletter, a "town hall", or a personalized youtube video. And just trying to deliver them as softly as possible is manipulative. So I hope for the best, but I do expect the worst.
133
« on: February 08, 2019, 21:43 »
 Shutterstock was vastly superior a few years ago (months on the x axis), then Fotolia/Adobe caught up and on some months even surpassed SS. Then they traded blows, but SS stayed on top. As for this February, SS earned 20% more, but that means little because shutterstock calculates the withholding tax when payout is due (and it's 30% for my dumb country without a treaty) and fotolia calculates the deduction immediately. So they might have earned the same so far. I don't care either way because I added around 20k files just to keep my earnings at roughly the same level (with a downward trend) as a few years back
134
« on: December 14, 2018, 14:41 »
Stopped uploading everywhere except for SS, Fotolia (AS) and P5.
Deleted account: BS, Photodune.
Maybe I can't do anything about the race to the bottom as an individual, but the amount of effort needed to submit files to other agencies wasn't worth the hassle, so I dropped them. Maybe if enough people follow suit, other agencies start giving contributors better terms. But I doubt it, with the factories and poor *insert country* contributors.
135
« on: December 13, 2018, 13:05 »
Same here. I was beginning to wonder I'm the only one.
So much about "this is great news for contributors!". Sure. Like always. Bye storyblocks.
136
« on: December 01, 2018, 08:52 »
"Veteran" (since 2009) here; 10% drop compared to Oct2018, and everything on a consisntent downslope.
What's up with Storyblocks? Since they introduced 50% royalty (but you'll get more sales!!) I get almost no sales at all. While before it was around 10 per month, this month I sold 1 (ONE!) clip. Last month 4. And I would need at least 20 sales just to make the same amount of money as before the "GREAT FOR CONTRIBUTORZ!!!1" news. Thinking about dropping them completely.
137
« on: October 12, 2018, 09:18 »
I mostly just upload the static 4k version, the editor will know how (much) to pan and zoom.
I tried uploading some versions with pans/zooms, but they didn't induce any increase in sales.
138
« on: September 07, 2018, 18:07 »
Matt
It is intriguing when stock agencies deploy time and money to develop features that will only be used by exclusives on their site. Doesn't everyone who is not exclusive get their files ready for upload in some system or other and then upload/submit to all at once? Could this be used by someone who submits to many sites?
As a matter of interest, are there are large percentage of exclusive artists on Adobe/Fotolia?
Steve
That's a fair point Steve. If you are embedding your metadata before uploading, this particular feature won't do much for you. However, it will be a tremendous help for new contributors learning the wacky and oh-so-fun world of stock indexing and as you mentioned for those that upload to Adobe Stock exclusively.
Bingo. The race to the bottom continues, in one small step.  Btw, IMO this won't help with the retention of new contributors (I remember a statistic that only around/below 10% continue to be active uploaders). An increase in royalties would, tho. But we all know that's not gonna happen
139
« on: September 01, 2018, 06:47 »
Good for you. My sales numbers are actually lower for August than in the last 6 months.
140
« on: August 17, 2018, 05:20 »
You dont have to work with BB. No. But I have to work against BB if I don't work with them. One thing that I always liked about being a stock contributor, is that (at least I thought) it's a level playing field. Everyone has the same chance to succeed, everyone's royalties are the same and everyone is ranked equally (well, algorithmically, but that algorithm is impartial) in the search results. I don't find it fair if I, as an independent contributor, have to wrestle large aggregators (who already put up so many files no one contributor can match) that have both higher royalties and better search ranking. If it comes to the point that I'd earn, say 50% more through BB (which is achievable, given that my country doesn't have a tax-treaty, so I lose 30% to all US-based sales (and all sales on SB)), then I'd consider switching to BB. No one guarantees that those 15% will remain forever, I dislike their business model and would prefer not to work with them, but as a business decision, I'd think about it. Thanks for all the info.
141
« on: August 15, 2018, 17:46 »
They have better rates at some of the agencies. I know they said at Shutterstock, you'll get a bit more than you would normally, even after the 15%.
How's that possible? They get higher royalties from SS or SS charges more for their clips?
142
« on: August 14, 2018, 14:41 »
If I understood correctly, they don't offer any stats, keywording and captioning, submission to higher-tier agencies etc., and just serve as a place to upload your files, which they then (probably manually) upload to 4 agencies you can upload to yourself (P5, AS, SS and SB). And for that... they take 15% of your revenue?
If that's right and anyone accepts those terms, they deserve to lose 15% of their income.
Anyway, I don't like them either. 15% for THAT. Lol.
143
« on: February 05, 2018, 13:55 »
How do you know that not all your video sales are US sales?
Fair point; but I think it's highly improbable that among 100s of sales, all of them are US-based. Could be, just highly improbable.
144
« on: February 05, 2018, 12:37 »
I live in a non-treaty country and EVERY video sale has an $14.15 amount withheld. I thought that's just the way it works, despite the fact that all other agencies apply the withholding tax only if the buyer is from the US.
Then I go and check my images sales earnings on the same agency (storyblocks) and some images have tax withheld from them ($1.15), but some have $0.00 (aka no withholding tax applied)!
What is up with that? I would have understood if they applied the withholding tax to all sales (which they don't because they haven't applied to some of my image sales) or if they just applied to US sales (which they don't, as otherwise some video sales wouldn't have $14.15 withholding tax associated with them).
I don't want to throw accusations which are unsubstantiated, but this seems like they might be tricking contributors and keeping the withholding tax amount even though they shouldn't, as they should just keep if for the US-based sales.
Anyone know what's up?
145
« on: January 31, 2018, 06:21 »
A moment ago the staff of Dreamstime wrote on the message board: 'We've been working to fix the bug. You should no longer receive these emails.'
While they were "fixing the bug", I just made a filter to delete all emails from *@dreamstime.com I got more than 300 of those, I didn't have the time to wait for their engineers to fix it. I'll leave the filter still on tho, never got anything useful from them anyway *shrugs*
146
« on: January 28, 2018, 12:11 »
So far, over 50 of these requests. Enabled around 10, but I'm not expecting any sales, it's some sort of a bug or scam I think
147
« on: January 24, 2018, 06:03 »
Well $19 is the minimum... goes up to $199 for 4K. And 60% is better than 0% I guess.
So is 1% #thumbs_up
148
« on: January 24, 2018, 05:46 »
Are you guys opting in? 60% from $19 seems awfully low.
Of course not. I don't value my work very high, but I value it enough not to put it on istock, dreamstime, or in this partner program.
149
« on: September 18, 2017, 06:09 »
Sean, do you by any chance know if Stocksy is interested in timelapses/hyperlapses? So that I don't waste anyone's time if there is no interest.
150
« on: September 12, 2017, 01:16 »
The newly launched subscription prices are way too high for hobbyists. I'm out.
If you earn so little that $5/month is too much, then you probably don't even need the app. I don't mean that in an offensive way. IMO the price they chose is fine.
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