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Messages - pancaketom
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1576
« on: May 16, 2012, 12:56 »
Reviewing at ALL sites is somewhat arbitrary, especially for images on the margins.
To give DT their due, so far this month is going quite well for me.
To also complain about what I don't like. I had one sale where I got 13.7 cents per credit. That is just WAY too low (level 0 TIFF sale). There was no reason why they had to drop the level 0 and level 5 percentages (or they could have put in a level 6 with 50%)
1577
« on: May 16, 2012, 12:47 »
Everyone should pull all their images from Fotolia, and see how much it is worth then.
easy for you to say. (and me) That would be awesome if it happened - and to H&F/Getty too.
1578
« on: May 16, 2012, 12:43 »
They have only ported 4 of mine over . All are middle aged images, all over the 24 mb size - I have no idea how they picked those 4. The duplicates are still under my account. I have a different username at Alamy.
I wrote to Veer asking about the commission I would get for a sale of the Veer-Alamy content and if there was a way to avoid it or if I would have to remove my account to avoid this competition.
This should have been communicated to us in a better manner. Then again there are many things in this business that should be different.
1579
« on: May 15, 2012, 23:57 »
It looks like I have 143 photos but only about 300 keywords. Where . did all the keywords go? Can't imagine much getting purchased with 1-3 keywords.
I wonder how they are dealing w/ the keywords. Maybe slap the first chunk into field one, then the next heap into field 2, and then any remaining in the last field - I don't think you can see all the keywords of the images, maybe only the 3rd field. I am not sure, I could be wrong. I doubt that Veer is spending heaps of time carefully listing the most important keywords etc. though, so it is probably going to be a bit random which keywords go where if they do it at all. I just checked one of my images and it comes up in a search for words that aren't in the 3 listed, so there are more somewhere - it seems that when I look at the images I uploaded it only shows 3 or so keywords too. At least they are listed at the same price. I wonder if Alamy Creativity is available for Novel Use? It does seem to open up a mess of questions.
1580
« on: May 15, 2012, 19:03 »
I e-mailed Veer about "Alamy Creativity" on Alamy and they confirmed that it was a "new partner"
1581
« on: May 15, 2012, 19:01 »
I checked with Veer and they confirmed that it was a new partner (and they hadn't realized it had gone live yet).
I wonder how Alamy feels about the duplicated content? - and how much less we get for a sale through this channel.
1582
« on: May 15, 2012, 12:36 »
Yes, it has been that way for some time. It usually takes 3 to 6 days before they show up in a search other than newest and in the catalog manager.
1583
« on: May 15, 2012, 10:53 »
My guess is Veer, since it looks like there are images of mine there that I don't think are on 123RF or Stockfresh. I wish that they wouldn't strip out the copyright not to mention I'd rather sell it through Alamy myself and get 60% instead of whatever I would get through the second hand sale - 30% of 60% = 20% of the original price. It would be nice if Alamy could let me remove the duplicates - but then again as far as they are concerned maybe they'd let "creative collection" delete my images.
Frustrating to see this happening. I wonder how long before some site puts our stuff on all the other microstock sites.
1584
« on: May 14, 2012, 21:06 »
If I spent all the time calculating out these things it would up my time costs a bit.
I am sure if I was a real business it would be worth looking into, but I am just small time and I wouldn't quit my day job if I had one.
1585
« on: May 14, 2012, 15:56 »
But don't forget that IS's stated goal is 20% and at least so far SS hasn't said that.
Link please?
Hrmm. I can't exactly link to that. I seem to remember when the RC mess started it was stated that Getty's goal was 20% across the board and IS was moving towards being in line with the rest of the Getty family. If someone else does have that actually spelled out somewhere I too would like to see the link. Sorry if I am contributing to misinformation.
1586
« on: May 14, 2012, 14:37 »
sub from 71.4% to 132.4% od from 18.4% to 31.6% el from 27.8% to 40.5%
is iStock paying more? 
For me it is, PP sub sales are about 11% higher than at SS per sale (I didn't check sub plan pricing but I think they are about the same so IS would be paying a higher %). On Demand sales are probably on average about 25%, while single image OD are 20% which is the same or lower than a base level exclusive. And ELs (I doubt too many people buy the 25 EL packs) are probably closer to 30% on average which is the same or less than the majority of exclusives. The point was that SS is not giving really high commissions. In fact if your issue with IS is that they give too low commissions it would make more sense to be exclusive since SS gives lower commissions than they do.
But back on topic, my guess is SS will raise prices and keep commissions the same.
But don't forget that IS's stated goal is 20% and at least so far SS hasn't said that.
1587
« on: May 14, 2012, 14:00 »
I hope it doesn't lead to something like what happened with IS. Hopefully it doesn't, but who knows.
I don't see SS lowering prices, the only places really lowering prices are the small sites trying to elbow in. I do however see lots of the big sites lowering commissions - that is my bigger worry. SS commissions for subs are hard to really know since nobody knows the actual number of sales (and how do you calculate extra sales that never get used but wouldn't be bought without a sub plan). SS commissions for on demand types of sales are pretty poor, especially at the bottom end of things. They aren't as poor as IS and FT, but that doesn't say much at all. If some company is going to expand to rival Getty I'd like to see a site with better commissions. Then again they don't have a long history of dropping commissions. Unfortunately the yearly raises of the past are also a distant memory.
1588
« on: May 13, 2012, 18:48 »
My internet access is spotty enough that I would never choose to use a program that required a working fast connection.
1589
« on: May 12, 2012, 23:42 »
... Images with 20 dls can now be 'selling better' than images with 120 dls. .... I suspect that "best selling" might be a bit like SS "popular" and the age of the file factored in??
There is something else also because old images with relatively few downloads can appear before newer images with more downloads - and this is just sorting in my own port - so no relevancy for keywords or other secret sauce should be effecting the order.
1590
« on: May 12, 2012, 23:40 »
I totally agree. I'm saying all the time, that the prices should go up, quadruple at least. They're absurd at the moment, especially if you look at the quality of the best images (only a few %, but that's more than enough to find a good image for most subjects)
they should go up anyways, inflation is pretty bad in europe but even more here in asia, here it's running at 10-20% per year for many items and 5-10% for anything else with some goods peaking at 100-200% compared to 2011.
all this is first and foremost reflected in the average cost of transportation and the production costs are therefore skyrocketing but agencies are still paying peanuts, selling less than before, and pretending to slash royalty fees even more.
There is nothing pretend about the commission cuts.
1591
« on: May 11, 2012, 16:23 »
After uploading a new file, is anyone getting this type of message "file not accepted by our system, please upload again, file may be corrupted." This has happened to me 3 times with the same file, which I know is fine (no problems uploading it elsewhere). I use the http uploader (I only submit a few images at a time). Very frustrating.
Yes that happened to me 4X (with 3 different files) luckily I noticed it since it happened after the entire upload process was over.
1592
« on: May 11, 2012, 16:21 »
A few years back people discovered that by giving each other "5" ratings on istock they propelled each other's images to the top of the search, where buyer lethargy kept the images indefinitely. When iStock caught on, it removed the public rating system from the search algorithm and it may also have cancelled the accounts of a handful of the worst culprits. But once an image is given real momentum it remains locked in to the top of the search for a long, long time, with buyers picking it up just because it is on the first seach page, and so keeping it there.
Just as a number of us are top contributers for not much better reason that that we have been pushing images through for eight years, so there are images that remain popular because their search ranking was falsely inflated and have been stuck high in searches for years.
Yeah I remember this incident well, it was a small gang rating each other, later they got booted out, accounts closed.
I seem to recall there were groups that bought each other's images when they first appeared - this was after the user ratings were removed from the search but when initial sales were key. I think eventually they got a slap on the wrist - sort of like their big campaign against spam - a lot of talk and not much action. I think that IS has always paid out a higher percentage of payments to a fairly small number of producers and in general IS has always been a bit of a positive feedback system (like many MS sites). I had a few images that started looking promising but got hit by a best match switch and that was the end of them.
1593
« on: May 11, 2012, 00:14 »
mine disappeared too, after 1 day also.
1594
« on: May 09, 2012, 23:29 »
I'm not exactly sure what error you are reporting - my stats page seems fine and has a nice sale from the 8th.
1595
« on: May 09, 2012, 16:24 »
I am a rock climber and as far as I can tell the best selling rock climbing picture on SS is completely laughable as far as rock climbing goes. So having knowledge and access isn't necessarily what is required. That said - if you do have knowledge and or access to something specific you have the potential to get good images a lot easier than others without that knowledge / access do. That works for the hobbyist, but someone who wants to do stock full time needs more.
Depending on how you define quality and quantity, it could go either way. If you define quality by microstock sales then of course quality wins. I'd rather have the sales from all but someone's top selling (highest quality?) image than just the top seller though - it just depends where you make the cut.
Of course thousands of images that don't sell are useless - especially compared to a few images that sell well.
1596
« on: May 08, 2012, 11:27 »
I usually get between 30 minutes and 2 hours before I have to log in again. Possibly your browser is rejecting a cookie?
The whole re-login process there is really annoying, but at least I can usually get something done before I have to repeat it.
1597
« on: May 08, 2012, 00:27 »
If my image sales for new content for the last 6 months = x, the total sales = 24.5 x
new images in last 6 months y, total images = about 15y
So, I'd say new images aren't selling as well as old ones - in marked contrast to SS selling patterns 2 or so years ago (or maybe I am just making crapstock for the last 6 months - not entirely impossible).
I think when they list "Earnings from New Content" that means all the content that was uploaded in the specified time period ie. 6 months in the above example.
1598
« on: May 07, 2012, 20:17 »
I think it's been a month since anything of mine got transferred to TS, so I assumed the connector was busted/offline/resting again
Resting ?? more lik asleep at the wheel.
the connector prefers resting on his back. (I'm up to 6 there - I think 2 more than last time I checked a few months ago)
1599
« on: May 07, 2012, 20:15 »
I suggest you dump FT - for the sake of your health if nothing else. High blood pressure is bad for you.
Actually in general I think RPD is somewhat meaningless and what really matters is RP effort.
Also maybe it would be better to look at sales for the last month instead of the last 20 sales at each agency - maybe one of them you had 20 sales in a day and another it took 2 months to get 20 sales. If I look at my last 20 sales - Alamy destroys all the microstock sites - that is if I even have 20 sales there.
but don't completely dismiss the desire for somewhat of a fair system - if an agency does us wrong enough and continues to do so then they need to be dropped - even if it is only for your dignity and peace of mind.
1600
« on: May 07, 2012, 18:42 »
My new images seem to be doing barely better now than they were a few months ago - but maybe I have more new images lately?
I think that the old SS had images indexed once or twice a day and If they had more than a few sales the first day they would show up fairly high in a general search - not just newest. Now they get indexed to newest almost immediately but it can take at least a few days before they get indexed into the general search - by that time unless they have been racking up sales the whole time or they are in a tiny niche they are buried.
In a popular subject an image can get buried in the newest search in hours - there is no chance to be at the top of that search long enough to get a decent position in the general search. Before if you got some lucky timing with the indexing then that image might make a decent placement with the general search. If it was good enough it might stay there. Your image also might get buried on arrival with unlucky index timing though and never see the light of day and sales. Perhaps luck in the timing still makes a difference, but now the luck is to get images accepted at the beginning of the work day where your images might sell - before it was to get accepted right before an indexing. With the long lag in review times I don't think there is much we can do about it other than upload a lot in the hopes that some of them get the lucky timing.
Ideally your images are in high demand low supply niches and none of this matters to you. Feel free to PM me with these niches.
I do miss the surge of uploads with a newly accepted batch of images, but I think it is probably better for me to get the sales I do with old images - although it does hurt my motivation to produce and upload as many images as I might if the new images sold like they used to.
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