SS used to have a tool that told you how often search terms were used over time - for instance you could see when seasonal searches ramped up and compare 2 or three synonyms to see what was used most often in searches. It was incredibly useful, so of course they got rid of it.

DT shows what terms were used to find the images sold. It is often misleading because original search terms do not always reflect a search that clicks on similar images or images from the same port. Sometimes searches are very explicit, but more often they are just one or 2 words.

I do wish the sites did more to limit spam - either intentional or unintentional (for example DT pulls words out of the description and puts them in the keywords and also splits 2 or more word keywords into single words leading to unintentional spam.)

I think the advice to put what is in the image in the keywords starting with the most important words is basic and good advice. It would be useful for the sites to say what people search for when they want isolated or cutout (or whatever the search term is) images. Same for top down, or flat lay, or copyspace or negative space or whatever.

AI reviewing is no better than AI production.

I remember one time a while ago (some time after 2015 but before 2020) trying to figure out how many pics I had at 123RF and only about half of them showed up in search. I think they fixed that eventually, but really ever since they promised a doubling of sales (when they cut our take significantly) they have just been going downhill. They are a shadow of their former self, and I should probably just figure out how to delete my port and close it.

Don't even get me started on their pathetic contributor portal - so many problems with it.

Quote from: cobalt on July 20, 2023, 01:01

Eventually pond5 and ss will merge.

What will happen then?

Customers want a one stop shop with the same price for everything.

Maybe a year, maybe 3 years, but it is coming.

Or did ss put out a statement protecting the current p5 system for at least 10 years? Or 5? Or 1?

If SS puts out a legally binding statement, I would agree that having a lot of exclusive content at 60% is a good idea.

But p5 is now SS, so what will the new owners do?

Adding a link to pond5 is in principle a good thing, but obviously customers will want to use their ss plans to download freely on p5.

eta

Do you see p5 heavily promoting their exclusive plan with 60% royalty?

If they wanted to dominate the market, they would very heavily promote that. Also put out legally binding statements, that this will not change.

But I don�t see them doing that.

You are promoting a vision the company it self is not promoting.

Pond5 actually is promoting contributors to become Exclusive.
https://www.pond5.com/sell-stock-footage

You have very little experience selling on Pond5 and also selling stock videos.  So, I don't take your opinion seriously to be honest in regard to stock videos.

I don't think Shutterstock will just make Pond5 into Shutterstock.  I think Shutterstock will keep Pond5's own business model as it is.  Having 2 totally different business model generating revenue is their strength.

Perhaps it makes more sense to look at what SS did to Bigstock and SS as a likely future for P5 rather than hoping they will do what you think would be best.

Well they are training their database with consent from contributors, on the assumption that contributors are abiding by the rules. I won't link to an individual, and this is part of a larger set, but I found this vector of an elephant today.

This is clearly AI created, (which Shutterstock don't allow), and then autotraced as a vector, (which Shutterstock don't allow). On top of this, the keywords were spam, (which Shutterstock don't allow) - light, girl, woman, people, happy, person, sky, silhouette.

If AI is being trained on this two trunked elephant, with two and a half legs and a tusk coming out of his backside, then we are all screwed.

or maybe the people depending on AI are screwed

Not that it would or could happen, but I wonder how this would all legally play out if all the contributors deleted their ports today. I wouldn't be surprised if SS would keep the data finding some weasel wording in the TOS to keep it.

Maybe the AI reviewers give preference to the AI submitters and those are preferred by the AI buyers. I for one welcome our AI overlords.

Quote from: cascoly on June 26, 2023, 19:57

Quote from: MadPhotos on June 26, 2023, 10:38

Got paid today, simlar amount in numbers  as i got paid last time... Yet thanks to getting paid in $ now in EU i basically recived 100� less....

do i understand correctly?  they paid you $5/image but you were expecting 5� /image?

No you didn't, what I'm saying is its in dollar now for all so for  same amount photos sold i lost value. Yes, yes you in US and you don't see problem but i don't pay bills in dollars and my sells are 80% local sales in EU and customers don't pay in dollar either. I don't mind if customer pay in dollar and commission is in dollar but if customer pay in � or �. Trying understand how it is done. Do EU customers pay equivalent of dolar value? We getting commission Right? Again UK and EU customers don't pay in dollars. My question then is, are prices of subscriptions are 1:1 between countries or it always equals to value of "1$" after convertion?

Sent from my VOG-L29 using Tapatalk

you got paid a bonus in the past because you were paid in a different currency. Now you don't get that bonus anymore. That is unfortunate for you, but not something everyone else who didn't get that bonus is going to get all bent out of shape about.

I once schemed about how to sign up for Fotolia in GB so I would get paid in pounds which was a substantial bonus at the time. I didn't go through with it though.

Assuming things are correctly labeled - which is a huge assumption when it comes to stock libraries.

Probably the only good thing about the publicly traded companies is that we can see that they whine to the contributors how things are unsustainable and they have to pay us less and then they turn around and tell the shareholders how great everything is going and how wonderful the future is looking. It doesn't actually do us any good, but at least we have proof that they are bald faced liars.

I wonder how many of those sales were actually at those price ranges or if the actual sales price for many of the sales is something much less thanks to some non transparent discounting by P5.

In general I am guessing that for many clip sales the price is a very small part of the overall project cost so is not a huge factor deciding which clip gets used - but the buyers using subs do try to use subs.

I wonder if those data earnins are a once per year earnings or an every month thing?

or maybe just once, and it already happened.