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Shutterstock.com / Re: How are sales going?- Shutterstock
« on: October 25, 2013, 11:53 »
3 weeks doesn't seem long enough to me, but maybe IS made him an offer he couldn't refuse?
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. 1276
Shutterstock.com / Re: How are sales going?- Shutterstock« on: October 25, 2013, 11:53 »
3 weeks doesn't seem long enough to me, but maybe IS made him an offer he couldn't refuse?
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Dreamstime.com / Re: DT now accepting videos« on: October 24, 2013, 23:34 »
25% for the first sale always seemed a bit low to me, but at least with the pics there is a reasonable chance that you could get a bunch of sales and thus get a better percentage over time. In my quite limited video experience one or 2 sales might be all you get.
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iStockPhoto.com / Re: Uploading to IS to get onto TS - Your opinion« on: October 22, 2013, 21:02 »Back when the PP was optional, I opted out. One of the main reasons for that was to support Shutterstock. Fast forward a couple of years, and all indies are now in the PP, whether they like it or not. Shutterstock has gone public, and is now answerable to shareholders. Agreed, except I fear that the SS strategy is to move things over to BS where the pay is heading the way of the PP. Or move the BS RC system over to SS, which would be even worse. I opted out of the PP when I could and I removed most of my files from IS when that was no longer an option. They need to pay at least level w/ SS to get me to consider sending them anything new, and even then I would suspect a bait and switch. 1279
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Uploading to IS to get onto TS - Your opinion« on: October 20, 2013, 21:33 »
Well IS - if you are listening, you will get even more content if you pay a decent percentage for IS sales and a decent amount for subs.
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iStockPhoto.com / Re: Uploading to IS to get onto TS - Your opinion« on: October 19, 2013, 12:00 »
At one point I would have said - sure if you want to support .28 per dl instead of .38 per dl, but since SS seems to want to do that themselves it might not really make of a difference if you are getting lowballed from SS/BS or IS/PP.
Of course you still have to deal with the IS submission process which is a PITA even with deepmeta - and who knows what new fiendish things Getty will come up with next. I'll be staying out myself, but that is more for personal satisfaction than pure economic decisions. Curiously enough I do have some pride (although not much). 1282
iStockPhoto.com / Re: September Partner Program started!« on: October 18, 2013, 11:04 »
with IS+PP I got .64 rpd. That beat .39 last month and .37 the month before. Admittedly my depleted port is a small sample but it is a big jump up. For comparison on SS the last 3 months I got .81, .77, and .80 . The total dl #s are down there, but the occasional higher $ sale are propping the totals up somewhat. The question is are the PP and BS successfully skimming off regular subs buyers?
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General Stock Discussion / Re: Why is Shutterstock sellng our images for 1Cent each??« on: October 17, 2013, 20:20 »agreeIt's only a matter of time before enough management folks at SS start asking why one side of the office is paying out so much more per download than the other side of the office... probably more like a shell game 1284
General Stock Discussion / Re: Why is Shutterstock sellng our images for 1Cent each??« on: October 17, 2013, 10:30 »
The problem is that BS doesn't need to lower our cut - they already did that (at least for most of us who don't sell 50,000 per year). Sure, if you are on the bridge, they are stringing you along for another 6 months, but if they can move enough buyers from SS to BS (where they pay less), they will make more $ and we will make less. They keep saying that the BS customers don't come from SS, but I am doubtful that is 100% true. They figure that taking a short term loss (or maybe just breaking even instead of 75%) to move more buyers to BS (from SS and from the competition) is worth it. For them - yes, for me - no, since BS is about the cheapest paying sub site.
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General Stock Discussion / Re: Mid October - Still no post summer, pre-holiday bump?« on: October 15, 2013, 22:29 »I tend to think if your images are 'too precious' to be sold at sub rates, then they shouldn't be on microstock at all.To me, it's not really about my images being too precious. I sold at a variety of different prices for a while. What I learned was that higher prices worked better for me. It doesn't make my images special or better than anybody else's images. It just means it is better for me to sell them at higher prices and less profitable to sell them at lower prices. I'd love the option to turn off subs at a number of sites and even set my own prices. It would most likely improve my income drastically overnight. Also, what is good for the microstock sites is not necessarily good for the artists. For instance, their ideal sub buyer never downloads anything = money for the site and none for the artist. I do think the sub sales move the images up the levels at DT nicely, but I wish they hadn't gotten rid of the higher return for the higher level subs. It makes for very bi-modal sales (which is what I get at SS too I suppose) 1286
General Stock Discussion / Re: Microstock Poll looks worse than ever« on: October 15, 2013, 19:50 »I do better on 123 then before the RC scheme...the poll results look also negative...Maybe I'm wrong, but at least 123RF seems to be not worse than a year ago. I don't seem to be experiencing that, in fact my RC totals have been dropping for at least the last 4 months (as long as I wrote them down) and pretty much every month this year is either very close or below the same month last year. I'll take the 50% please. My totals are about 2/3 of last years totals, but the year is 3/4 over. If only the IS claim of half the revenue in the 4th quarter was correct... 1287
Alamy.com / Re: Alamy changed payment threshold« on: October 15, 2013, 15:42 »
I'd much rather the chance to choose a higher threshold or a fee. Really the fee should come out of their 50%. I could put up with more before they started lowering the percents.
I agree that if the US office is doing well, then they should be able to return the 5% or even bump it up since the US office is doing so well. Somehow that doesn't seem to be the trend though. Guess I'll have to switch to direct deposit. They probably have more sales than ever, but at a lower price and spread out over many more contributors. I certainly did a lot better there last year (I am at about 50% of the total but with 3/4 of the time). 1288
General Stock Discussion / Re: Mid October - Still no post summer, pre-holiday bump?« on: October 14, 2013, 12:38 »... watching CreativeLIVE, and seeing the reported sales on FAA, it seems that there's still a lot of discretionary money around in parts of the US. I'd be ok with $420 for less than a day of selling one color stencil spraypainted canvasses. Maybe I should go to NY and sell some "banksy's" myself... As for my photo sales - It seems that after the first few months my sales dropped this year and have been under last years numbers since then. No real noticeable summer drop or fall boost this year. 1289
iStockPhoto.com / Re: About exclusivity...« on: October 12, 2013, 16:51 »
Back before the RC mess I always thought that at some point I would have to make a hard decision about if or when to go exclusive at IS, but then they would "improve" search or something and sales would be cut in 1/2 and it would take a year of uploading to bring them back up. At least as an indie if one site (even SS) does that it isn't going to completely devastate your income.
Now I couldn't imagine putting all my eggs into that basket even if it looked like more income at the moment. I just have NO trust in them. Not that I trust the others much, but at least they probably won't screw me all at once. 1290
Shutterstock.com / Re: OFFSET opened doors« on: October 04, 2013, 19:58 »
Funny, on SS authentic images are also known as rejected for LCV. Maybe I would have done better waiting for offset.
That said, there are many fantastic images there. If SS gets Bigstocked I'll definitely be looking for an outlet for better images. 1291
New Sites - General / Re: Colourbox changes the royalty structure« on: October 02, 2013, 13:54 »
20% or less is only normal for greedy sites like IS and FT
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General Stock Discussion / Re: September 2013 Microstock Income« on: October 02, 2013, 10:08 »And today was my Best Day of the Month! Things are looking up. Lucky you, it was my worst. 1293
General Stock Discussion / Re: My 6 month Stock Assessment« on: October 02, 2013, 10:00 »
Nice pics and good sales. I am surprised they accepted the Sydney Opera house though. I thought that wasn't allowed.
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GLStock / Re: Somebody get the crash cart - GL has flatlined!« on: September 26, 2013, 13:20 »
Also 50% of you set the price at GL can be a nice sum, 50% of say .50 at CS isn't all that much.
I had a number of good months when I started at GL with nice EL's and a lot of promise, since then and especially since the google search change I suppose only a few a month. Hopefully google search or something can change again and sales will pick up. I think of it as an investment against the IS and FT and SS domination of the stock market. One thing with getting a lot more images at a site is that it dilutes individual contributors earnings, but might not effect the site's bottom line much at all. 1295
Pond5 / Re: Pond5: What should we improve?« on: September 25, 2013, 21:06 »
This is a new problem, with firefox when I select the dropdown menu to edit submitted photos if the item is at the bottom of the list like "set image type" instead of selecting the item from the dropdown menu it selects the things from behind it on the page (like "about" "contact" or "jobs").
It worked fine last week, so I guess this really isn't what should we improve, but what you shouldn't have broken. 1296
Shutterstock.com / Re: Changes to the TOS at Shutterstock« on: September 23, 2013, 17:17 »
am I allowed to mention that my downloads rhymed with hero for the first time in years and years saturday and the whole weekend only rhymed with chew. Have they also implemented some sort of DT rolling preferences now?
you advisors need to not tell anyone. 1297
Pond5 / Re: Pond5: What should we improve?« on: September 21, 2013, 20:39 »
I don't much care for the dark haze on the bottom half of the cover picture. I'd rather just have the picture, although I suppose if it was an exceedingly light picture the text wouldn't show.
oh, and more sales please. 1298
Shutterstock.com / Re: Changes to the TOS at Shutterstock« on: September 17, 2013, 20:26 »
I am your advisor and you are my advisor, now we need to talk about finances...
What an odd clause. It does make me worry they are planning on porting the horrible RC system from bigstock. That would get me a lot of very non-specific negative press from me. I always get a little nervouse when they change the terms, as they are NEVER changes in our favor (at least not in my experience). 1299
Featurepics.com / Re: Anyone uploading here?« on: September 13, 2013, 21:06 »
They were about 50% of what I made on 123RF last month - unfortunately more to poor sales on 123 than great sales on FP, still they are ticking along slowly for me.
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Veer / Re: Veer contributor upload tool updates« on: September 12, 2013, 20:05 »
FTP still doesn't work as far as I can tell - it fails to get directory listing or something like that.
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