Quote from: gcrook on December 06, 2015, 21:24

...Actually a LOT of luck, i find that to be more important than hard work and quality.

This is a lottery in a way.You can create hundreds of clips fairly quick and easy that wont necessarily be of low value, but the one that will make you money is the one you will have shot in the right place at the right time with the right light,subject,duration,lens,upload date,keywords,and it will make up for most of your forever unsold clips.And many times it will catch you by surprise and propably piss you off because it sells and the next best similar clip that you put time and money (and sometimes love) into isn't being noticed at all.
That doesnt mean you cant research what these clips will be and try to create them,im saying that things rarely go the way you hope.
The more you go out and plan the more the chances to capture these clips...

Very well said.

In the last 3 years, 1 of my video files made almost %50 of my all footage sales in SS. I have 500 videos there.

Search placement is everything and I think it is mostly related to luck.

Search placement AND getting rid of the stupid sale-killer filter.

I can tell you straight away that your quest for numbers as a way to quantify and understand this business means less than what you think,you will eventually realize that as i did.
I can give you a number for ss for the last 2 months for example which was 1100-1200 with 1400 clips but that doesnt explain these past 2 months like it cant explain the 3 months before that where it was less that half or these 2 and it certainly cant explain the 6 months prior to the last 5 where it was 200-400 usd with almost the same portfolio.
Same for pond5.
One month it can be 800,the next 1500 the one after that 1000 and so on and so forth.

Number of clips (quantity) regardless of what everyone tells you is the worst way to ensure a stable income.
You will need diversity and luck.Actually a LOT of luck, i find that to be more important than hard work and quality.

This is a lottery in a way.You can create hundreds of clips fairly quick and easy that wont necessarily be of low value, but the one that will make you money is the one you will have shot in the right place at the right time with the right light,subject,duration,lens,upload date,keywords,and it will make up for most of your forever unsold clips.And many times it will catch you by surprise and propably piss you off because it sells and the next best similar clip that you put time and money (and sometimes love) into isn't being noticed at all.
That doesnt mean you cant research what these clips will be and try to create them,im saying that things rarely go the way you hope.
The more you go out and plan the more the chances to capture these clips.

There are more details to these,thankfully a lot of people have discussed and written them down over the years and given time and reading you can demistify this business to a degree.
But you will be forever in the dark like everyone else,with a little candle shining some light every now and then.
And i dont believe for a second that someone has a formula to know what to shoot.Only experience, which saves a bit of time and effort.

Good summary

8 year old thread alert

Quote from: dirkr on November 29, 2015, 18:36

But go out and shoot some wildlife, you'll see that it's not so easy...

That comment attracted my attention, Dirkr, because I shoot wildlife and I agree with what you wrote. It also made me want to see your work, which I just did on DT.

Very nice wildlife images!! Your portfolio is much like mine, except the critters we shoot live on opposite sides of the globe and have very different names and looks. Some day, I hope to have the chance to shoot wildlife Down Under. 

I agree. Wildlife is not like shooting landscapes.  My wildlife work is underwater. My rules are

1. Animals never hold still
2. You MUST know their common behaviors
3. You must know their light reflectivity or absorption features
4. You must know their habitat
5. You must know their defense mechanisms
6. You MUST know how to approach them without scaring them
7. You must know how seasons affect behaviors
8 You must accept defeat (I have worked on animals for an hour or more until my air ran out and not got the shot)
9. You can almost never go back to the same site and find the same animal, nearly impossible unless you are shooting sessile creatures such as anemones and sea fans. Here's a shot where I have sessile animals (the sea fans) and free-swimming fish in one shot. This took several dives to get the orange fish composed in the shot. A little hand full of frozen peas helps:)

 

Quote from: roede-orm on December 06, 2015, 02:41

Everyone thinks the world is ending, because Shutterstock facilitates the entrance test. But what about Fotolia?  They never had a test. And I think the quality of the image material is not so different.

People upload the same pictures everywhere and the agencies take what they want. Entrance exam does nothing if the reviews are like they are on SS. Now people who can't pass will upload and get rejected and find out why they don't pass the exam.

As I mentioned earlier, the question is really "why" they are doing this.  If in the end no more images make it into their collection due to tough inspections, why lower the criteria? There is cause and effect built into this decision, meaning there is an end game as to why they changed the criteria. In my mind they are trying to encourage more contributors to apply in order to grow their collection. Why on earth would they loosen the acceptance criteria if their inspections block most new content? So, I have several theories but the most obvious one is probably to let in more newbies so they pay out less. It's about revenue and operating income. How better to reduce payouts than simply cutting our royalties when they can dilute long term contributor income with contributors getting 25 cents a download or whatever. Looks very good on the financials when they can say we added X new contributors, X number of images and gross margins are up 10%. 

Who wastes their time with videohive anyway

I've used one for night work (aurora mostly) and generally like it. I've only done one time-lapse but that is mostly for a lack of effort on my part.


Things I like:
- 14mm 2.8 is pretty high on the list of "best night/astrophotography" lenses. 24mm 1.4 or now the Sigma 20 1.4 are slightly higher rated as 1.4 rocks for night work.

- The lens is sharp and has very good coma characteristics. I think mine is showing some signs of abuse as the edges are showing aberrations.  It was great when it was new.

- The price is right. Comperable lenses from Canon and Nikon are very expensive and (at least the Canon version) have pretty bad coma.

Things I don't like:
- I don't mind manual focus lenses but the focus mechanism on this lens is extremely sloppy. Forget setting it to infinity and thinking it will be anywhere near accurate (whether you approach the infinity, or any, setting from the right or left will result in a very different focus setting). That means that you need to use live-view for focusing (bright stars or planets can be used) or set it during the day and locking focus somehow (I use a wide rubber band). Some will claim that you can just focus it >40 feet away and everything will be sharp. I've found that to not hold true in the real world (i.e. outside of DOF calculators). Live view focusing is really the best way to go with this lens.

- The build isn't terribly robust in my experience. Having said that, I'm pretty hard on gear.

14mm is really wide. Sometimes too wide. Although night sky work usually involves pretty big things (milky way/aurora) you still have to worry about the foreground (light pollution, objects in the foreground, general issues with getting a good foreground frame).

Thanks for the response. I have been eyeballing that Sigma 20 1.4 but just think wider is better for astro.

Quote from: stock-will-eat-itself on December 04, 2015, 06:26

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on December 03, 2015, 23:29

If SS gets flooded with mediocre images more buyers may be headed back to macro sites and spend more money to save time and frustration.

SS has always been flooded with mediocre images, difference was a few years ago it was viable for pro's to submit work to Micro and get a decent return on investment within a year or two. Today is a very different story, high production images are simply not paying for themselves anymore. Your right but the effect will be two fold, buyers heading to Macro to save time, and the talent moving work to Macro due to the broken business model.

SS pricing strategy has always been pretty ruthless, personally I can't see how this business model has any longevity for buyers or suppliers.

The business model for microstock was always that amateur photographers could submit images and get paid for them (for not a lot of money). Pro photographers shooting high production images was never part of the business model, it was pro photographers who decided to cash in on the exposure to the market, not the business model of microstock. So really, not so surprising that pros can't make a decent return any more.

I disagree that this business model doesn't have any longevity...there are still small to medium sized companies who still can't afford to spend $60-100 per image; in fact, with the decline in the overall economy, even less so today than 9 years ago. But it will present a problem in terms of time spent wading through the crap just to find a decent image.

One thing to consider is that the proportion of demand to growth is not equal and that mediocracy sells.  As collection size grows dramatically and demand remains relatively flat (maybe a slight uptick) we will see erosion of sales. It is inevitable. Those small companies will indeed keep leveraging MS but our ROI will continue to be negatively impacted over time, even if we keep uploading.

I don't downsize. All the sites I submit to convert. 

Quote from: Mantis on December 01, 2015, 21:04

I have made $35,000 on Alamy.

How many images and in how much time?

I have about 3800 images on Alamy. I have been with them for 7 years or so.

I have made $35,000 on Alamy.

It looks like Canva removed all my files as well. I don't think I've said anything bad about them in the past...they just seem to be in a purging spree as of late.

Oh well, one less portfolio to worry about. They're gaining traction, but I don't think they have many paying customers. Maybe they see removing contributor portfolio as a way of cutting burn rate. I wish they were more transparent instead of being so passive aggressive about it.

Without any explanation? At least we know what kind of person Lee is now.