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Messages - Jo Ann Snover
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1676
« on: October 24, 2017, 09:40 »
I'm talking about fundamental issues of identity and property.
Don't you find the idea of someone gaining property rights on your body a bit outrageous?
You're still not thinking about the IP issues - no one has property rights on the tattooed person's body, only on the rights to license images of the artwork on a part of the skin. The person can be part of any RF image with their tattoo covered or not visible. The person can remove the tattoo or cover it with makeup. The tattoo designer has no control over that. What they do have control over is someone else making money from their artwork without their permission. And I don't see how identity has anything to do with it. You don't lose your identity because you get or remove a tattoo, and tattooed art doesn't become yours just because you have it reproduced on your skin any more than you own copyright in a piece of artwork because you purchase a print of it.
1677
« on: October 24, 2017, 09:15 »
...I think the claim to have PR for tattoos is a bit ridiculous given the explosion of their popularity in recent years....
You really need to get a firm grip on intellectual property issues if you want to sell RF licenses to stock imagery. Suggesting that the popularity of an image means it shouldn't be protected is nonsensical. You should also realize that if you skate too close to the line you might get unlucky and get sued - and taking the image down from the agency wouldn't be enough to satisfy an artist. Read about this case as but one example (more here and here). It just isn't worth the risk, so get a release or find something else to take stock images of.
1678
« on: October 23, 2017, 08:12 »
... One of the key components of DAO is that it incentivizes all network participants (in this case contributors and buyers) to expand the network and bring more participants as trading takes place in native currency which everyone in the network holds....
If you'd said up front you were selling a Bitcoin rival cloaked in a story about licensing images, that would have saved everyone the trouble. There's nothing hard to understand about the idea that this is a speculative pyramid scheme where no one is getting paid in currency with stable value. All the blather notwithstanding, Bitcoin is speculation, not a currency - it has no stable value, and there are a fair number of articles out there by people much more well versed in economics than I am as to how it can never be. You're wasting our time https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2017/05/17/bitcoin-is-an-asset-not-a-currency/#59346d742e5bhttps://www.wired.com/2017/01/bitcoin-will-never-currency-something-way-weirder/There's lots more out there to read.
1680
« on: October 22, 2017, 02:38 »
... what really attracts buyers is the low price of stock photo...
So what sort of low price do you have in mind? This is no longer a situation where you just have to undercut Getty or Jupiter who charged $500 to license an image. At 123rf you can buy two images for $13 or 5 for $39. Deposit Photos offers 10 images for $49. BigStock offers 10 images for $35. How much lower than that do you envision your project going? There's not much real freedom in "set your own prices" if the whole selling point of the business is to undercut existing agencies on price. I can't imagine too many contributors wanting to go there - a few might; see the threads here on the now-defunct Dollar Photo Club for that offshoot of an existing agency that tried to slash prices as a way of building market share. All the Symbiostock sites allowed single purchases via PayPal and had very reasonable prices, but that wasn't enough to get a sustained stream of buyers. PayPal's fees aren't much. My most recent sale from my own site, PayPal deducted 59 cents from the $10 license (for a medium size image). When you talk about "solving the microtransaction problem", I don't see 59 cents on a $10 license as a problem.
1681
« on: October 21, 2017, 17:40 »
I don't have any email about a survey - perhaps they just sent it out to a random sample of contributors? I do think having a place with your portfolio available is a good thing, but I can't imagine depending on SS for that. For one thing, you couldn't link to your portfolio at other agencies (I'm guessing they wouldn't permit that). And when they decide to drop that feature, anywhere you've linked to it is now broken. If SS is looking for a little free marketing help, they aren't paying us enough for me to do that 
1682
« on: October 21, 2017, 17:02 »
Did licensing stock become a target for blockchain technology boosters somehow? This is the second fishing expedition in a short time that was long on technology, short on problem solving: http://www.microstockgroup.com/newby-discussion/hey-all-i-am-newbie-on-this-website/I was about to complete your survey, but you want an email address. I don't mind handing over some data anonymously but I'm not willing to provide income range and an email address to some random survey request. I didn't think the survey was very well put together - for example, you have a very small list of things we'd like changed in existing agencies that doesn't even begin to cover the issues contributors face. There's no "other" option for input. I participated in Warm Picture (a collective site) and Symbiostock in its original incarnation (a network of independently hosted sites) - in other words I am open to finding alternatives to the existing agencies. However, unless there is a plan to attract buyers I have no interest in hearing anything about the great technology with which you (or anyone else) will build a site/network/platform/collective/??? Technology is not going to find buyers or cause them to switch from Getty, Shutterstock or Adobe Stock. Tossing in buzzwords about which technology you'll use really hurts your pitch instead of helping it - it suggests you're up for the technical challenge and uninterested in the heavy lift of building a business. "...buyers and contributors will be better off by having full control over pricing and distribution..." Full control sounds good, but what does this really mean? Buyers never control price or distribution and contributors are only better off in control of both if they have buyers as customers. Which comes back to marketing the site to attract customers away from the existing agencies - how will you do that?
1683
« on: October 20, 2017, 20:49 »
Without seeing your images and keywords, it's hard to say. DT has been doing less and less well as time goes by, so it could just be that you have a very small portfolio in a very large pool of images at an agency with a low volume of sales.
It could be that your keywords aren't as good as you think. It could also be that you have subject matter that isn't in demand. It could be a very high demand subject (ethnically diverse business teams) but there's such a huge supply for that subject that it's hard for new work to get in front of a buyer.
Whatever you do, don't add keywords that don't belong, but look at some similar images and check their keywords to see if you're missing something important - easier for someone just starting.
Do you sell through Shutterstock and Adobe Stock? If not, put your work there and see how things go. Both those sites have a better volume of sales and will give you some point of comparison.
1686
« on: October 18, 2017, 12:28 »
Sounds great!
I don't know if it's a general problem, but I tried to select one image to be my profile cover, which worked, but when I picked a different one as I didn't like how the first choice crop looked, I still have the original choice showing (tried another browser in case there was something messed up with the cache, but it showed my first choice as well).
Can anyone else change the profile picture and get it to show? It appears to take a while to update. I now see pick #2 (which I have changed as it still doesn't look good), but I expect to see pick #3
Suggestions that would make this feature much easier for contributors to use include: searching portfolio by keyword; allowing shift-click or select all to easily add groups of images; ability to pick the image that represents a collection; moving and scaling image to fit in the portfolio window (like Facebook does with a cover photo); seeing a count of images in a collection; seeing which collections an image is in when you view it in the contributor side of things
1689
« on: October 14, 2017, 15:24 »
The comments here on US/non-US sales made me take a look at my data and compare that with Shutterstock numbers.
I've only been back with Fotolia/Adobe since the middle of December 2016, but comparing that period (Dec 16 to now) at both agencies, I have an average of 29% of my Fotolia/Adobe sales are non-US whereas at SS it averages 52%
Given the SS numbers, I have to think the low percentage at FT/Adobe is about the agency, not my portfolio.
Looking back at an earlier period, Jan 2007 to July 2008, Fotolia averaged 86% non US sales for me (I don't have comparable data for SS as they didn't break it out at that time). It's certainly true that if Adobe boosted US sales, that would alter the split, but you'd think it should at least end up where SS is, given how strong FT was in Europe, especially Germany, in the past.
1690
« on: October 13, 2017, 21:06 »
While hunting around for more press on the new Composition Aware search, I happened upon an article about Nick Flynn leaving SS for Rokt as Chief Revenue Officer https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/rokt-amps-up-growth-with-new-chief-revenue-officer-300533539.htmlI know nothing more about Rokt than what's on their web site - "They click buy and we say hi", whatever that means... I went to see if Glassdoor had anything interesting about SS that was recent and there were several very negative reviews from the last couple of months. "Sales Solution Manager" who has left wasn't positive. (emphasis mine): "The monthly targets that are given to you are unattainable unless you have been with the company for a while and have a pipeline built up. At this point, they are running out of leads to give their agents. so they are recycling old leads from the previous month which have been contacted multiple times in months prior to that. Do not believe what they tell you during the interview process, you are going to feel like you are selling magazine subscriptions or you're a used car salesman. The management team, with the exception of a few, will micro manage you. For some reason they keep bringing on new sales agents, which is taking away the only "quality" leads they have from the other agents. I can go on and on." Someone from finance who left said: "Absolutely horrific management in the Finance Division. The Managers and VP's have no idea as to what is going on, except for pushing orders down that have no meaning or translation into the daily work. No opportunities for career growth." Another ex-employee: "The leadership team is as incompetent as they come. The founder/CEO is a big man child who changes priorities every other day. Instead of working with teams, he forces them to do what he wants, leading to other projects getting delayed or launched half assed. CFO is also the COO, which has to be a conflict of interest but at this place, he continues to amass more power. He's squeezing every ounce of revenue from legacy products.Executive team is a revolving door other than CEO/CFO, with most of them leaving after a year. The GM structure forces all of them to fight over resources like little rats. They're glorified sales leaders instead of actual strategists. The core product is dying and they don't seem to be preparing for the future. Instead they're doubling down on acquiring more companies that focus on stock assets.The tech stack is as old as the company and of course no progress has been made to fixing the issues because of "too many priorities." Get ready to work long hours because there isn't a clear focus. Advice to Management You won't listen but I'll share the feedback anyway. Stop hiring and firing middle management. Either commit to making it work with them or focus on hiring more people who can get work done. Show that you care about your employees and maybe they'll work hard without being threatened or forced to. Stop coming up with crappy ideas and reduce the amount of time dedicated to products that just plain suck. For once, look at what's worked well in the past and invest a little bit money into that, like brand. Stop trying to use free snacks and food as s recruiting tactic. Those aren't benefits, they're perks."
1691
« on: October 13, 2017, 20:49 »
1692
« on: October 13, 2017, 08:03 »
I can understand Alamy Distributio Commission on 30%. but why and what does the Distributor Commissions of 40% due to earn all this money.
This is standard for distribution sales - 40% for the distributor and 60% to be split 50/50 between you and Alamy. I don't think the distributor, in the age of the internet, does anything worth 40% of the gross - which is why I opted out of distribution sales. The other point of view is anything is better than nothing so people continue to opt in. Your choice at Alamy (I like that they have an opt out at least)
1693
« on: October 12, 2017, 11:22 »
I found some interesting "spam" the new search introduced that had nothing to do with titles, descriptions or keywords in the images being wrong. I typed holly for the keyword and added the "copy space" token. A number of the items returned in the search had Christmas greenery but no holly anywhere. I checked on keywords for a couple of them and they were clean. Perhaps the object identification algorithm finds associations within the collection - lots of holly images have pine cones and fir branches in them so lets return some of those images in the search results as well? Same sort of thing with a search for Aruba with that token at the bottom center and copy space token top center (to get images with lots of blue sky up top for copy space). The arrangement of elements was OK, but the images were from Bali, Mexico, St. Martin, Tanzania (and the ones I checked were all correctly keyworded). That might be OK if I had typed beach for a keyword, but I typed a specific location and that was essentially ignored. We need less spam, not more
1695
« on: October 10, 2017, 13:45 »
To add a little more to the stats for the incredible inflating stock collection, look at the images added per year (October to October)
2016 - 2017 53,136,429
2015 - 2016 38,587,590
2014 - 2015 22,068,430
2013 - 2014 13,795,139
I'm not sure that there's any real value in it (given some of the stuff they've added that I cannot believe will ever sell even once), but they went from 100m to 150m images/vectors in the last year. You have to wonder how long they can keep up a 50% growth rate with a collection this big...
1696
« on: October 10, 2017, 10:02 »
I've been with SS since 2004 (with a hiatus 2008-11 while exclusive with iStock) and I've never had a refund. That could be because they never give the buyer a refund or because they eat the cost. Either way, other agencies could behave that way but they don't.
I think most of the other agencies I've contributed to have charged me for refunds - of those who haven't, like Pond5, GL Stock and StockFresh, sales haven't amounted to much either, so it's not really a fair comparison to the higher volume sites.
One site (that I'm no longer with) charged me a refund when my account was closed! When I returned to 123rf in 2011 after my exclusive stint, I had a negative balance. They explained they'd done an audit of some earlier sales records and the refund was a result.
Contrast that with SS, who had a payment for extended licenses that should have been purchased (but weren't) who contacted me in 2010 while my account was inactive to pay me the money I was owed.
1697
« on: October 09, 2017, 14:24 »
The technology behind a site is not the hard part. If the goal is licensing images, the hard part is finding and keeping buyers - there are lots of other agencies out there and they compete for buyers. Any new agency needs to figure out how to do that - any individual artist trying to sell direct has an even harder time doing that. There have been a variety of cooperatives and artist-run sites before and it's hard to make that work.
If your primary goal isn't licensing images, then don't bother as it isn't going to just draw buyers without a lot of work (the "if you build it, they will come" model doesn't apply here).
There were services to track online usage - Getty bought PicScout as one big example. Tracking your images doesn't do anyone any good unless you can get them taken down or get paid. In the era of large license fees for rights managed images, Getty had a great side business in tracking down unauthorized usage and charging an arm and a leg to the infringers.
For microstock prices, even when we find infringers, the agencies largely couldn't care less. Sometimes there's a nice small business that was clueless and will take something down if asked and apologize profusely, but small license fees don't leave a lot of room for paying lawyers.
Bottom line is that I'm not sure what benefits any platform you might build would offer contributors - and tossing around blockchain to jazz up the pitch doesn't really alter the assessment.
1698
« on: October 07, 2017, 17:55 »
...File size, compressed/uncompressed depends on the number of colours and details in the photo.
No Uncompressed file size does not vary with image content. Uncompressed size (in bytes) = pixels wide x pixels high x bit depth Compressed files can be lossless (TIFF) or lossy (JPEG) and those sizes do vary with image content and compression level (for lossy formats)
1700
« on: October 05, 2017, 09:09 »
...One other thing that have always stopped me is the tricky way to see before/after: in Lightroom you have just to hit the \ key, in C1, as I remember, you have to make a copy of the original file.
And also the possibility to switch on/off each section of the correction development module....
In 10.2 they've added preview (although I don't like the way you get to it; hold Option and press the master reset icon). I've written to support to request the ability to add that to the keyboard shortcuts customization - I'd make the feature use the \ key just like LR Not sure what exactly you're referring to with the on/off switch, but there is a reset icon on each feature which you can Option-Click to see the image without just that set of adjustments. You can also uncheck each Local Adjustment layer to see the image without that layer's changes (which is a bit like LR's switch on gradients and radial except that it's layer by layer instead of all radial, all spot healing).
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