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Messages - Jo Ann Snover
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1376
« on: February 19, 2019, 23:37 »
Mat, this evening I was credited with a subscription sale at $66. Is that a recurrence of the error or a valid royalty amount?
Also, I do not see adjusted amounts in the Adobe Stock contributor interface. The original sales show with their higher (unadjusted) royalties and there is no entry for an adjustment amount. The adjustments do show up in the Fotolia contributor interface.
1377
« on: February 19, 2019, 21:06 »
Did you try emailing Mat Hayward directly (or PM'ing him here) to see if he can sort it out for you? He can also give the IT folks feedback on things that cause problems for contributors - so you could get the procedure improved as well as your account opened again.
Saying you should contact Adobe without giving you any contact information is about as carefully thought out as "Dear #firstname #lastname," (the email about negative adjustments to royalties). They need to pay attention to the details in how they interact with contributors...
1378
« on: February 19, 2019, 12:57 »
....I think those 12,5% still apply in your case as they round up on whole cents. ...
That's certainly a plausible hypothesis  I would note that if what we receive on the Enterprise customer contracts is 12.5%, then the $94.05 royalties I received back in November (and I checked that those were legit via support as I'd not seen that sort of sum from AS before) would have meant the buyer spent an eye-watering $752.40! That's more than Getty (for an RF sale). Which all comes back to our need to know what sorts of royalties we're getting - in writing; with updates if things change...
1379
« on: February 19, 2019, 11:05 »
...I can also confirm that the percentage I was left with is only 12.5% (for each sale in the bunch, exactly the same 12.5%)
Assuming the amount originally credited to me was the buyer's cost, I have two different percentages and neither of them are round numbers. One is close to 12.5 percent (12.5018603958922%) - a $67.19 "royalty" that was fixed to $8.40 The other one was originally credited as $2.64 but "fixed" to a 38 cent subscription royalty. That was 14.3939393939394% I thought that the 38 cent subscription royalty was a floor when a highly discounted package for a large buyer would have resulted in a small royalty at the 33% rate. I'd prefer 87.12 cents/credits, which is 33% of what the buyer paid. I will note that both the above percentages are worse than the industry "leading" 15% iStock pays. I appreciate that neither SS nor AS wants to disclose the details of the terms offered to their large corporate customers, but if we're not getting 33% on all sales through AS, with a 38 cent floor on subscriptions if the royalty would otherwise fall below that, then those details need to be spelled out for us. It's not right that contributors don't know and can't find out what the royalty structure is when deciding whether or not to supply images to an agency.
1380
« on: February 15, 2019, 22:01 »
How about you gather all the specifics first and then report them, in detail, to the affected contributors?
My balance dropped by about $70. That's one mistake? Two? Ten??
Why is it OK to rush to remove money you can't account for properly to contributors you can't address by name?
Adobe could have handled a technical error much, much better than this
And with respect.
Thanks Mat for relaying the corporate message, but I'm sure you're no happier about this than we are.
Sent from my SM-T800 using Tapatalk
1381
« on: February 10, 2019, 13:31 »
Did a search on SS
copyspace: 1,754,935 results
copy space: 8,662,747 results
1382
« on: February 08, 2019, 13:55 »
It would be great if some of the information now being displayed on Adobe's contributor interface could be better consolidated so you didn't have to visit multiple pages (insights & dashboard) and didn't have to see only one piece of information at a time - for example, being able to see your weekly and all time rank at once; being able to see both downloads and earnings in adjacent columns in any of the earnings charts.
Having controls to choose timeframes is nice, but getting a good overview in one screen, at one time so you can check in and then go do something else useful is really more important, IMO. I gave this feedback in the survey too.
I can't see any benefit at all of having the rank on the dashboard page and the other earnings information on the insights page - in other words it seems like a no brainer to put all the earnings information together rather than some sort of hard-to-manage tradeoff.
It is nice to see work being done on the contributor interface, but a bit disheartening to see the rather haphazard approach to UI design and workflow when using it.
1383
« on: February 07, 2019, 18:34 »
Mat Hayward can give you a definitive answer, but I believe that there is no option for contributor-set prices any more. All Adobe Stock pricing is uniform - there are the large customer custom deals, but they're set at the customer level, not by a contributor. Fotolia rank has no parallel at Adobe Stock either, only affecting sales on Fotolia for the remainder of the time it's operating.
If you wanted Fotolia-only prices to change between now and November 5th, Mat's probably also the person to ask as a contributor support person would have to do that for you.
1384
« on: February 06, 2019, 17:01 »
What the point in uploading images to Adobe when they're only paying 33%!
This is an old, old topic, but to paraphrase a tech executive from years ago, 60% of eff-all (i.e. zero) is still eff-all. The percentage isn't all that matters and you'll go down a bunch of dead ends and upload to time-wasting Shutterstock-wannabes if all you look at is the shiny object - a high percentage - being dangled in front of you. At the moment, Adobe Stock is closing (and in some months at the end of last year was beating) Shutterstock for the #1 earner slot
1385
« on: February 06, 2019, 13:50 »
Hey, I made Emerald at some point!
You're a talented man Congrats on Emerald, although if your proportion of credit sales to total sales is as low as mine is, it really doesn't matter any more from a money point of view. For any sales made via Adobe Stock, Fotolia rank makes no difference to earnings
1386
« on: February 05, 2019, 15:21 »
Anybody get an email from Adobe RE: a survey about Adobe Stock and the Contributor platform?
I'm about to take it and probably not be complimentary.
I did, and I took the survey as best I could. They asked for one feature to improve and I gave them a list (it was a field you could type into). I'm not sure how they came up with the questions though as the one about where you added keywords didn't include Photoshop, so I had to put that in "Other"! I found many of the questions vague and was surprised at how few topics they touched on.
1387
« on: January 31, 2019, 11:18 »
The big problem I see there is the volatility of every cryptocurrency, there's a huge risk $1 commission to become 1 cent just in one night.
The other big problem is that there has been no word that I've seen about any sort of marketing of the agency to potential buyers. If this is just a place to host your images with no marketing other than what the contributor does themselves, then I can't see what the attraction is. Marketing and sales generation is the hard part. I don't see how they have anything to appeal to buyers. Their premium content isn't exclusive and is overpriced. For example, I found a large collection of images from an outfit called Mint Images that is also on Alamy and Dissolve (with the same content). Wemark's prices are much higher than Alamy prices for the same images. What type of stock imagery buyer would prefer to obtain images where you have to deal with the volatility and hassle of buying tokens? What large corporate buyer is going to put up with this extra hassle?
1388
« on: January 30, 2019, 17:06 »
Just had a 0.12 USD sale today, is that the new norm or has this always been around?
Are you at a 30% royalty rate? If so, it's probably a freebie or sale that's paid to you at the minimum per credit value of 40 cents. This minimum credit value for the purpose of calculating royalties is ages old and was a way to ensure contributors got a minimum even if they were heavily discounting for large buyers. I left 123rf a year or so ago, so there may be something new I'm not aware of.
1389
« on: January 29, 2019, 11:07 »
Look at what you've been selling in the last couple of years as a guide for what subject matter might be useful for you to resubmit. The only point in uploading rejects would be if you believe there's real sales potential that's been missed. With two years sales to look at you have some data that can help. The other thing would be if all agencies rejected an image, don't bother resubmitting. It's less and less likely to be a random reviewer error the more and more rejections you have received for that image
1391
« on: January 22, 2019, 22:58 »
1392
« on: January 22, 2019, 22:56 »
You must mean 15 Terabytes, I assume, not GB? I use Backblaze, but it's not archival storage unless you plan to keep all your images online all the time. Backblaze is, as they very clearly state, a backup service, not an archive of all files including those not currently online. It's very reasonably priced, but that's because it's one computer with attached storage (no NAS drives) only for their basic service. Other options run much more and some have bandwidth charges too. I use external disks for archival storage that are not online except when I add files to them. I found much higher failure rates when files were online all the time. Every so often (10-15 years) I move data to new disks. I still have some archive on DVDs (in plastic inserts in binders on a shelf, so in a decent environment) that should be transferred to the external drives, but it takes a lot of time to do.
1393
« on: January 22, 2019, 15:23 »
A little more google searching reveals that it's rumored Fiverr will be launching a US IPO in 2019. https://entrepreneurs.maqtoob.com/is-fiverr-going-public-2423e548cf2dhttps://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/business/.premium-fiverr-online-freelance-platform-eyeing-ipo-at-1-billion-valuation-1.6427826Fiverr doesn't seem to be deterred from its "see no evil" business practices by lawsuits - note that amazon sued over 1,000 sellers because of gigs offering posting of fake reviews (they ran a sting operation and sued "John Doe" sellers). Fiverr doesn't get caught in the net, unfortunately https://moneyinc.com/fiverr/https://smallbiztrends.com/2015/10/fiverr-amazon-fake-reviews-lawsuit.htmlThrere is already quite a lot of information online about the risks of getting image content you don't have the rights to use if you buy from Fiverr, so it's not news that the place is a shady market https://toughnickel.com/business/The-Pros-and-Cons-of-Fiverr"...the site is legitimate, but the sellers vary! ...any stock images or drawings provided to you might well be copied from elsewhere..." http://neo-stock.com/blog/the-indie-authors-guide-to-stock-photography/"The best thing to do to protect yourself in this instance, is ensure that youre working with a PROFESSIONAL (preferably fulltime) artist. AVOID websites like 99Designs and Fiverr which is where the vast majority of unscrupulous designers operate." https://kindlepreneur.com/stock-photos-for-book-covers/"Just because an artist says they have a license for a stock photo site, it doesnt mean that they actually do. ...Many of my covers were designed by artists that I hired on Fiverr. However, I always provide my own stock and figurative images" Fiverr has partnered with Getty to offer stock image add-ons for gigs (which isn't the type of offering I'm discussing where the whole gig is handing over stock photos obtained from agencies). The idea, which I'm sure they don't police, is that the image is integrated into the gig deliverable. Sellers get 25% of the license price. https://www.fiverr.com/terms_of_service"...Important: Each selected Stock Image is authorized for a one time use. The selected image is integrated with the delivered work only and not as a stand-alone or for recurring use. Sellers are unauthorized to share the original image file with the Buyer or any third party." They're expanding - opened a Berlin office in December 2018 (they already have offices in New York, Miami, Chicago & San Francisco). Business must be good... http://nocamels.com/2018/12/fiverr-opens-new-office-in-berlin/I'll keep an eye out for news about an IPO in the US. I'd expect that in the current political climate, the US attorney general would be a waste of time, but the NY Attorney General would possibly be more likely assuming they'd have any jurisdiction based on a subsidiary office there https://www.fiverr.com/jobs/offices/nycLooking at the California Attorney General's web site, it occurred to me that one might have to be a consumer of Fiverr's services to file a complaint with them. There's also the fact that their terms of service say Fiverr isn't responsible for the "User Generated Content" "Fiverr does not check user uploaded/created content for appropriateness, violations of copyright, trademarks, other rights or violations. We invite everyone to report violations together with proof of ownership as appropriate. Reported violating content may be removed or disabled" I'm not a fan of the hands-off approach whereby the "platform" disclaims all responsibility for the content their sellers offer but still collect their 20% from all sales. Fiverr uses stock photos in its own advertising, so it clearly knows how the business should work... https://twitter.com/fiverr/status/1080584646981754881https://www.dreamstime.com/man-laptop-working-late-christmas-night-man-working-home-laptop-christmas-eve-image125255303https://depositphotos.com/211766912/stock-photo-man-with-laptop-working-late.htmlhttps://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/man-working-home-laptop-on-christmas-1170916885
1394
« on: January 19, 2019, 19:07 »
Google
1395
« on: January 18, 2019, 17:24 »
I know we've been around this block before, but I checked Fiverr for stock photos today and found there's been essentially no change - they have many gigs where people offer (for $5, $10, $20 etc. depending on quantity) bundles of agency stock photos they have no right to resell. This gig, for example (new seller started December 2018, so this isn't something left over from long ago) has three options and includes stock images from more than one contributor (I searched Shutterstock) so it's not possible it's legitimate from the copyrightholder. https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/funny-chihuahua-dog-posing-on-beach-1081879181https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/romantic-date-candle-light-dinner-love-749063584https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/blue-pipelines-carrying-clean-water-household-677991997https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/bamboo-pedestrian-hanging-bridge-over-sea-536177866https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/mohammed-salah-gabriel-professional-egyptian-national-1098345056There are a ton more gigs just like this one. Very depressing that Fiverr continues to allow this shady practice. Very depressing that none of the big agencies will put pressure on Fiverr to shut these gigs down. Ages ago, complaints from stock contributors, I think to Shutterstock as it was mentioned by name in some of the gigs, managed to get the worst offenders shut down, so agency names aren't mentioned any more. In the meantime, has anyone had any success in reporting these thieves and getting anything on Fiverr removed? If so, how did you approach it. The wiggle room is that with files at multiple agencies and a requirement for DMCA notices that only the copyrightholder can request removal, it's hard to pin the thieves down. They might even have licensed the images they're showing as "advertising". Fiverr should be ashamed of themselves, but apparently aren't. Any suggestions for how to disrupt this scummy thievery most welcome
1396
« on: January 18, 2019, 10:10 »
...I have now my first photo live on Getty and as you said they totally ruined metadata. They put traditional roof clay girls as stacked wood trunks ( ?). Can I change that? ...
You could ask, but I very much doubt you'd get a change. Most of the problem is Getty's Controlled Vocabulary. Terms - particularly places, but other specialized terms - aren't in the CV. While I was active with the old iStock we would go round and round over this and attempts to expand the CV. When it was expanded (not often) it was a desperately slow process. There are two schools of thought about having a controlled vocabulary. One is that it is the company's crown jewels and the other is that it's a dinosaur supplanted by sophisticated search engines like Google's. If Getty could at least try to make it more dynamic and keep it up to date, it might help, but as they've been so burdened by debt over the last several years they've been more running in place than innovating.
1397
« on: January 17, 2019, 16:25 »
Well that makes things more complicated I looked at some images, recent and older, and the every-third-image numbering scheme wasn't always the way things were. So images from the early days - I checked some from 2006 - are sequential. By 2011 (when I came back from exclusivity and started uploading again, the numbers are every third. I did check some searches by number just to see if other people got assigned numbers in between my image numbers from a batch uploaded sequentially, and I can't find anything when searching for those "in between" numbers, so I assume they're skipping them completely. That does affect the ratio, but it doesn't affect the overall patterns and how they change over time. There was higher rate of rejections from late 2016 and they accepted almost everything in the summer of 2017, for example. This morning I dug around to see when the image assigned numbers really jumped up, and was able to narrow it down to something happening on Jan 20, 2018 where image numbers in the high 797 millions were followed - on the same day - by numbers in the low 1 billion range. I can't find any online content (with some quick spot checks; I'm too lazy to do more) with image numbers in the 800 million or 900 million range, so I think they skipped some numbers. I think I'm just going to let this investigation go as there's too little solid data. By the way, if you want to find the upload date for an image - they don't display it on the page - use the browser's View Source option and search for "datePublished".
1398
« on: January 17, 2019, 01:50 »
Earlier today SS was at 244,523,790 images online. I looked at that because I was taken aback at the image number of an approval this week - it was 1.28 billion
Assuming that they are actually assigning numbers to uploads sequentially, which I think they are, that's a staggering number.
Given the number of images online, the ratio is 5.256 - meaning for every image accepted, 5.256 are submitted. That's over the life of the agency. I wondered if that ratio had varied from year to year.
When the collection started to balloon in 2013-14, and when they did away with the 7/10 acceptance to become a contributor in 2015, I assumed, as I think many did, that they just accepted more of the work submitted - and that the junk came from the dropping of any useful standards.
I did a little sleuthing with numbers today and it told me that the issue was not accepting a higher portion of what they received, but increasing the number submitted by a vast amount.
As a contributor, I have image numbers with an approval date that will tell me the total images submitted by that date. With the Wayback Machine, I can look at the total number of images online on the site on that date (after December 2004 when there were "more than 53,000 images" online; before that they didn't show collection size.
My earliest image was from October 28 2004, number 18,634; I found image submittals at roughly yearly intervals (sometimes the dates didn't line up exactly) except for my hiatus while exclusive at iStock.
Not surprisingly, in 2004 and 2005 the ratio of images submitted : accepted was very low - 1.779 and 1.875. They were accepting more than half of what they received. That climbed to 3.035 by October 2007.
Picking back up in October 2011 through August 2016, the number floated around the 5 mark - 4.345 was the lowest between 2015 and 2016. They were then receiving 464K images a day and approving 106K per day
Between Aug 2016 and Feb 2017 the ratio soared to 7.618 - they were receiving 610K images a day and only putting 80K online
From Feb to Nov 2017 things settled back down and the ratio was 3.529, but then between Nov 2017 and Sep 2018, the images per day exploded to 1.38 million, with only 182K going online - ratio back up to 7.566
It's possible there was some chunk of image numbers skipped or reserved during that time - my only data is the image numbers of my submissions.
From Sep 2018 to Jan 15 2019, the acceptance ratio is now 4.006 and submissions are a less crazy (but still very high) 861K per day
You certainly have to wonder at the insane numbers of submissions after 2013 - 2014 or so. I still believe they aren't doing themselves - or contributors - any favors by encouraging this sort of bloatware.
I would also love to see what they're rejecting (given some of the horrendously bad images we've seen them flood the collection with).
1399
« on: January 16, 2019, 12:39 »
Your site looks great - congrats on getting this set up
Couple of general questions about what you propose for other photographers potentially interested in this platform. What about costs?
I looked at Shopify's site and it says their basic plan is $29 per month. What are you charging on top of that for your tools? If we currently have a hosting service, does yours work with that or does it mean establishing a site on Shopify's servers (you can tell I don't know much about Shopify!)?
Lastly, your information page on Pixify mentions a drag and drop uploader; is FTP also an option?
1400
« on: January 15, 2019, 13:12 »
...
I'm actually not thinking about develop website/wordpress templates, just creating my blog, using some template and use some images as background of the website...
My misunderstanding. Just using a stock image on a site does not require an enhanced license (and how it gets onto the site doesn't matter - code it yourself or use a wordpress template). It's only if you're creating a template for resale that you need an EL Regarding the subscriptions, unless you need a huge number of images in one month, as a buyer you're better off with the pseudo-subscriptions where you get 10 images for $49 - more expensive per image, but $49 instead of $249. You can pay for one month, but you have to be careful to cancel so you aren't billed for another month automatically (some buyers have complained that they didn't realize that and thought it was a one-time payment). You can buy a certain number of images in a prepaid pack, but you only get 5 images for $49. However, you have one year to purchase them instead of 10 in one month with the pseudo-subscription.
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