pancakes

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Messages - pancaketom

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176
Alamy.com / Re: Opting out of China in distribution scheme?
« on: September 22, 2022, 17:03 »
I got 90 downloads yesterday, all mostly 2 cents and all from China. I havent heard back yet, but suspect I will get the same response. So wow, I get to keep the whole 2 cents. Big whoop. What I want to know is how/who opened up this capability and why? Hard to believe it opened up just in time and long enough for the Chinese to download a boatload of images.  These sales dont happen like this all year. So this is suspicious on ALAMYs part.

I think these sales happen continuously over months, but somehow someone at Alamy has allowed the prices to be so low and for the so called distributor to only report them every 6 months or so.  I have one 7 cent sale for which they each deduct 3 cents leaving me with about 14% - one cent. If I wanted a percent that low I'd stick with Getty.

177
Alamy.com / Re: Alamy sale for 7 cents
« on: September 22, 2022, 08:50 »
over on the Alamy forum they posted

https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/15988-sales-to-china/page/2/

"
Hi All,

 

We're very sorry that due to a technical error on our part some of you who have opted-out of distribution are seeing image sales on your account via distribution sales.

 

We are aware of the issue that these sales shouldn't have happened for those opted-out of distribution, and we're investigating to establish what happened so we can resolve this as soon as possible. We'll be paying all contributors 100% of the commission from these sales. If you think you shouldn't have seen these distribution sales on your account, you can email [email protected] however we will be getting in touch with everyone affected once we have a clearer picture on the matter.

 

Thanks,

 

Alamy

"

I got a bunch of distro sales from China for 22 to 2 cents for which I get 5 to 0 cents. I'm opted out of China this year. Plus 2 cent sales for which the photographer gets 0 is never ok. They need to put a floor on the amount the photographer gets. It doesn't have to be very high, but it should definitely not be 0.

178
Adobe Stock / Re: Figma acquired by Adobe
« on: September 21, 2022, 15:43 »
It sure would be nice if they dropped 20 billion on their contributors - even if the market did think it was too much.

179
General - Top Sites / Re: Why don't members show their images?
« on: September 12, 2022, 16:20 »
Whenever people would complain about rejections and post images others would point out the millions of things wrong with the images (sometimes quite correctly, others not so much). I remember someone posted a few of their best sellers as images that were rejected and people pointed out everything that was wrong with them. Certainly some of my best sellers with one agency have been rejected by other agencies for various reasons.

sorting by popular used to be a pretty good proxy for sales on SS, then they completely changed it so that images with almost no downloads were ahead of images with many.

180
Adobe Stock / Re: Low Adobe sales past few weeks
« on: September 01, 2022, 19:02 »
Sadly you can't select stats for more than 13 months for some reason. With a quick look Aug 21 was double Aug 22, but maybe august 21 had some images selected for the free section. The number of dl was pretty similar with a few more in 22.

In general my sales at AS have been pretty sad the last few months with a few truly pathetic weeks.

181
It is almost worth setting up as your own distributor and buy one of your images for whatever it takes to get you back to 40%.

182
High priced sales pretty much had stopped for me before the 10 cent scheme started. I went from a few a month (with a few 0 months per year) to a few a year, to maybe none the year before they screwed us. That was one of the main reasons I was mostly ok with turning off my port. Also the average RPD drop from ~75 cents to about ~25 cents and the overall income dropping more than 50%.

Before I turned off my port I looked back at some of the good years. Wow, no wonder it was fun and exciting looking at stats back then and all that with a port that was half the size or smaller.

183
I would say turning off SS for your mental health and dignity makes more sense than thinking that it will make Adobe sales go up - although maybe you have content that is unique and in demand and that is actually the case. If so I would definitely turn of SS and Getty and force the buyers to go somewhere you get a better percent and sales aren't quite so cheap.

184
123RF / Re: "Exciting" news from 123rf
« on: August 02, 2022, 13:08 »
I never got a notification, but I signed in to see how pathetic my earnings were and to opt out. 123RF was once a good earner. After a few rounds of exciting news over the years they are in the lowest tier and off the upload list.

Everyone who doesn't want to give away their work should log in and opt out.

185
I don't know how the details work, but the result is probably more money for Freepik and less for the artists.

186
It is quite simple actually:

Right now inflation for most products is simply caused by production costs rising: The material to produce a product costs more, so do transportation and energy costs.
In 99% of all cases the person/company that produces the product gets to decide the price for which they sell them to end-customers and retailers. Their production costs have risen, so in order to keep the same profit, they sell their product for more.

But Microstock is one of the few industries where the producer - the person who now has higher production costs, for example by higher fuel prices when driving to shooting locations or higher prices for gear -  does not get to decide the price. It's the agencies that decide the price and they aren't the ones who have higher porduction costs, so they see no reason to raise prices for end products as, unlike contributors,  they have no financial loss due to rising production costs.

That's the whole problem. In microstock producers can't decide their prices. We can't forward our rising expenses to customers and microstock agencies don't have high enough morality standards to do it for us.


I've often thought that.

Train fares go up like clockwork every year, normally by 5 - 10% in the UK.

Petrol has been known to fluctuate by 10% in a week.

Even fast food chains are raising their prices.

Meanwhile MS agents have been terrified to raise prices for years.

How can the price be fixed for so long.

Why is the price the same across the world and not reflect costs in different locations?

not only do prices not go up, they keep going down - or at least the amount the photographer gets keeps going down.

187
Eventually economics will sink the coal industry, but not until a lot more damage. I would say that legislation has made a huge difference in the environment in instances like the clean air act and the clean water act. At a minimum the legislation should stop encouraging damaging technology and practices.

At one time the conservatives and economists agreed that a carbon tax was the way to encourage change. Then when it looked like it could actually pass, they balked (not the economists, the so called conservatives). It is a global problem and local solutions can't fully solve it, but the US (or any other country) could lead the way and show what is possible. There are benefits beyond just dropping CO2 emissions - like not being beholden to say, Russia or Saudi Arabia and not having thousands of extra deaths from air pollution.

188
Thanks for that.

The one thing that really jumps out at me was 2.2 million contributors and 2.1 million buyers.

I guess I am one of those 2.2 again since I have assets at P5.

189
I do not know, but I am guessing that there are companies where the bean counters buy a big sub plan, and the image users are stuck with it - unless the search results get so bad that they complain a lot (either because the images are not there, or the search just sucks due to poor algorithm and spam. It takes a long time for changes to percolate through the system. There are others where the people who choose images choose the site - and there I am guessing the quality of the search results is pretty key. I am always amazed at how bad some of the searches are for specific things at the sites. Some day a site will improve that and it might be a game changer for them.

With my tiny and not very unique portfolio (at least for popular images) I did not see any increase in sales elsewhere when I stopped selling at SS or IS, but I did notice I felt less violated. Sadly they have pretty much ruined the business for me, fortunately I am not dependent on it for food or a roof over my head.

190
Alamy.com / Re: Alamy sale for 7 cents
« on: July 11, 2022, 15:23 »
I wrote asking about getting 1 cent for sales and got some pap about getting a low percent based on the distributor taking a cut and then alamy taking a cut - no mention about why the sale was so low, so I asked again, the second time I got more pap about how distributors charge what they think is competitive in their market and how wonderful that they are a market that we wouldn't normally reach - I asked what market that was and haven't heard back.

The average return is still pretty good, but going from 50% of sales to 20-40% and these super low sales is pretty discouraging.

191
123RF / Re: "Exciting" news from 123rf
« on: June 15, 2022, 22:14 »
Ever since they cut our take promising to double our sales (which never happened), I haven't been impressed with them.

192
Shutterstock.com / Re: Contributor page's new design
« on: June 10, 2022, 00:43 »
The last time they "improved" the contributor page it was a much worse page, so why expect anything different with "improvement" 2.0

eventually you will get used to it and then when they "improve" it again you will complain that the old version was better.

193
Are there dark clouds?

dude, there were dark clouds in 2010, we are well beyond dark clouds at this point.

194
The only way SS would increase commissions is if its in their business interest to do so. Very few folks left when they cut commissions. As far as theyre concerned, lower commissions doesnt hurt their business.

Agreed. I would like to see them do something to stop their download numbers from slipping....and maybe get them to increase??

The only way they are going to get DL numbers to go up is to charge less - and pay you less and no - you won't make up the difference in volume. If they can't treat artists right I hope they crash and burn.

195
I guess his damage is done - on to destroy something else.

196
I found that happened to me when SS screwed us. I still submit stock, but I haven't done 100% stock stuff in a while and the numbers are way down.

197
I bet SS will try to pay them 10 cents per infringement. I hope they get totally cleaned out.

198
Especially at the level of most SS contributors - money will make you happier.

199
Dreamstime.com / Re: Lower rotalties on Dreamstime?
« on: April 20, 2022, 00:36 »
Mine this month are .35, .42 or $2.  Even back to the beginning of the year, nothing below .35, highest $5.79 (looks like a one-time sale XS image, 11 credits). I noticed that at least one image that has had 225 DLs & so is Level 5, still earns only .35 at the low end - I guess they must have done away with the levels earning more at some point? I don't really remember.

Yes, they stopped charging more credits and paying more for higher level sub sales a long time ago. The all too rare credit sales cost more and you get a higher percentage if they are a higher level.

200
Dreamstime.com / Re: Lower rotalties on Dreamstime?
« on: April 18, 2022, 16:19 »
A long time ago there were some very discounted credits being used - resulting in very low sale prices and even lower returns - especially for level 0 pics. If the credits never expire I am guessing there are a few still out there. Almost all sales are .35 these days - although I did have a $17.25 50 credit sale this month.

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