What's annoying at the moment is they've shut FT down before they've transferred any of the ranking details over to AS.

I've been using the statistics (insights) page at AS for the last few weeks. It isn't bad, has plenty of positives but it is slow and missing a number of stats that are on FT, views and US/Non-US split. Hopefully they'll sort that out soon. It's been mentioned that the issues over the insights page not remembering what you input and changing back to a FT date range is being looked at.

Funnily, my main issue with the AS site is that it displays earnings in �'s. Even though that is my currency, my head is used to seeing earnings in $'s . It would be handy if you could change the displayed currency while retaining �'s for payment.

True, I'd prefer seeing earnings in $ also.

My guess is that steel wrist watch. Looks like a Submariner?

Could be the brand name on the watch.

I�v been getting a very similar pattern to sales, though I do get the odd American sale, I believe that this is a deliberate policy to keep the rest of the World out of the US market, while they have access to everywhere else.

I�d really like to believe that this was not the case.

Perhaps we could have some Americans on this site let us know if they have a similar sales pattern?

All micro stock Companies should have their Algorithms verified by an independent body that verifies that they are acting fairly, with a bench mark criteria that states exactly how they achieve this, this in my opinion is the only way forward.

Half of my sales are from the East coast in the US, and I'm based in the UK. I don't think there's a policy to keep the rest of the World out of the US market..

Love jokes or teasing! No problem! But if this is a new field? Vergin land of opportunity.

I got used to always work in 16:9 and crop accordingly, but as I said I don't have the whole picture.
People editing on their phones, uploading to IGTV or social media, do, record and edit vertical (portrait mode).
EDIT: thus, they lead the market to vertical as long as their preferences are "recorded" and create the "mainstream".
I have seen some brand requests and final products vertical, but is this enough to start producing vertical content?

If rules on third party images/videos getting more strict (ok, another subject)
will people start producing or buying more of our work?

With those vertical video phone / tablet editors and low "packet" prices offered from agencies,
perhaps there is an opportunity. (Already Pond 5 have this "Social Studio" right?)
EDIT: check description on SS Client Android app in Store: "clips images only available for phone" (well, not sure if true...)


With all those brands trying to enter social media, and be trendy by using "vertical" ads
targeting social media audiences or even Youtube phone users, perhaps there is an opportunity.
I mean for higher quality clips targeting to those brands. (Sorry, my English are so and so...)

@Brightontl your guides in Youtube are cool and useful (thanks for your efforts!) (offtopic)

@increasingdifficulty there is worse headache than this.
Switching from a production house with Premiere to another
using FCXP for the first time. Mechanically hitting keyboard
shortcuts that did nothing or worse, messed everything!

I don't think there's a point in shooting vertical unless this has meaning for the shot.

Since vertical is to be used on phones, HD quality is more than enough. By purchasing 4K horizontal standard videos, buyers can easily crop them vertically and get a HD standard format.

Quote from: wds on January 31, 2019, 09:39

With the Adobe interface, how does one change the order of the keywords after acceptance?
I know how to do it with the Fotolia interface, but can't see how to do it with the Adobe interface.

While in the dashboard section of the portal, select the image you want to update. Scroll down the page and you will see an image preview with the keywords adjacent. Hover your mouse over the keywords and the edit (pencil) icon will appear. Click it and the keyword update interface will appear.

-Mat Hayward

Hey Mat,

As another upgrade, it would be great if there was an option to switch to a text box when editing keywords of already accepted images.

Most websites have this option - we can just copy paste the whole list of keywords and the system splits the keywords automatically at each coma, while retaining the order since it's important for Adobe Stock.

I've tried editing an existing image but when I copied the whole list, it just pasted it all in one keyword field. So I had to manually enter them one by one in each field - which is quite time consuming if you're working on a series.

I found a bit of reading here and there, and here's what I understand so far about Wemark and what it means for us contributors, breaking it down in a few points.

1) They call themselves a platform and not a stock agency, so contracts are directly between the buyers and photographers.

2) They offer 100% royalties for downloads that look like subs (Wemark Go images cost between $0.27 and $0.95 per download), and 85% for something similar to a premium collection (Wemark Impress ranges from $25 to $500 per image).

How does that translate to the amount of WMK we get per sale? Is it fixed or does it fluctuate? It's unclear.

Source: https://www.wemark.com/photographers
Source: https://www.wemark.com/submission-guidelines.pdf

3) They offer transparency for all licenses and payments (excluding personal details) and that's where blockchain comes in. It (as in blockchain) basically registers all these transactions publicly within their system.

Also, it seems that photos can be registered in blockchain (not sure if that's done automatically during upload or if it needs to be done separately somewhere else) in order to get an image ID, creator ID, Hash and Timestamp. I'm guessing this would be useful if we ever live in a world where everybody uses blockchain to track down thieves and people using our images without a valid license. Is that useful for now? No idea.

Some info about these buzzwords: https://medium.com/cryptolinks/cryptocurrency-in-a-nutshell-4ad5de1bd36e

4) Contributors will be paid in WMK and there's a field in billing information to add a 'ERC-20 Compatible Wallet Address'

It seems that we would have to create a crypto wallet somewhere (vaguely similar to a PayPal account but for Cryptocurrency) to get these WMK coins transferred there... and from there we should be able to sell them, exchange them or withdraw them in our country currency? If anyone knows more about that, please share

Just had a 0.12 USD sale today, is that the new norm or has this always been around?

Quote from: Not Today on January 29, 2019, 12:54

I've received an email about Wemark being live.

Just had a look and it seems that they will pay contributors in Wemark Tokens...
Does anyone understand how we can convert these to real money? :s

It depends on your country. But if someone here is expert in blockchain it would be cool to know. Or only places that accept ETH directly?

Thanks, I might give them a few photos as a test and try to understand how it works along the way.

Would be great indeed if someone could explain more about blockchain and changing these currencies into real money.

Bitcoin has been successful in the past, so maybe they will also be? who knows. Or maybe it's a scam and I'll never see these photos back 

10% of SS here

Same here, about 10% of SS over 2018 for photo sales. Videos don't sell.

I understand what you mean. I thought that the date wasn't important in my pictures, because most of them are touristic places or things like that, buildings or cityscapes, not news or concrete events.

I use to write just the month and year in SS and BS. Maybe a short abbreviation could be a good option for the other agencies at the end of the title.

Yes dates are important even if they're not news related. Buildings can be renovated or destroyed etc. and in a few years time, someone might be looking for a picture of the ''before'' to write an article about it.

I use the same editorial description for all the agencies which is accepted without any issues: ''city, country - month day, year: description"

Quote from: Not Today on January 25, 2019, 05:33

Does anyone know if that's allowed? Or does Blackbox requires full portfolio exclusivity on footage?

What you describe is entirely within the license of BlackBox.

BB is NOT exclusive.  The only limit they place is that any video clip sent to them cannot also be sent to ShutterStock, Pond5, AdobeStock, StoryBlocks or Vimeo.  If you uploaded clip A both to BB and to one of those agencies, it would result in a duplicate upload, and you would risk losing both your BB membership AND the ability to upload future clips to those agencies.

However, you can submit "clip A" to Blackbox, plus any other agency that accepts video not listed above.

You can also submit "clip B" to any and all agencies, as long as it is not also submitted to BB.

You can mix-and-match as much as you please, to allow you to test direct vs BB, or to expand your market beyond those listed above.

(BTW, if you do join BB, I'd appreciate if you use my referral code -- JKX5J2D3 ). Doesn't cost you anything, but they then give me a dollar or so each time you make a sale.

BTW2 - I have only been on BB for a few months, and already make more money there with 800 clips that I make with a photo portfolio of 4500 images on a dozen agencies.  3 more video sales today, at $35 each. (35 dollars, not cents! )

Thanks a lot for the info, that's great.

I had already registered with BB but I'll have a look if I can enter this code somewhere.

Quote from: Not Today on January 25, 2019, 05:33

I'd like to upload a few videos ''X, Y and Z'' to blackbox for the revenue sharing option, while keeping all my other videos ''A,B and C'' on SS, AS, P5.

Does anyone know if that's allowed? Or does Blackbox requires full portfolio exclusivity on footage?

Thanks!

Sounds like an interesting test plan. Here's the Blackbox FAQ and a contact link on the bottom. I don't do much with video, you might want to find out for yourself and come back with your answer.

https://www.blackbox.global/faq/

Personally, I might be better off using a place like this, even if they are exclusive distributors, because I could upload once and be done: They deal with Shutterstock, Adobe Stock, Pond5 and Storyblocks. But I'd like to know from someone better and a longer member, how they see this as a member, not as an opinion of revenue sharing.

I woudln't support revenue sharing if it was my photos and I couldn't upload or do anything where I wanted. I can understand someone else not liking an exclusive plan if they do video. I mean, my video is not serious or complicated, and the main four sites I'd want to have it at, are covered.

Oh yes, it's just that I have some old footage sitting on my hard drives for projects where actors agreed to sign a release for the project itself but ethically (and maybe legally even) I don't use it for stock, so I thought revenue sharing with these actors would be a great alternative (and a fair one) for them to agree to sign a new release and make some extra money with these drives.

Thanks! I'll try to contact BB directly.

Quote from: Sammy the Cat on January 23, 2019, 04:44

What a classy outfit.   

No wonder reviewing has gone down the tubes

It must be a horrible job to do full time that will drive you crazy in a short time. So if we are to believe that all images are reviewed currently they are getting about 200,000 submissions daily so 1,000 reviewers required each day. So assuming they allow such luxuries as leave/weekends that must be about 1,200 Full Time Equivalent reviewers h'mmmm.

Seems about right, it says 1001-5000 employees here:
https://www.glassdoor.com/Overview/Working-at-Shutterstock-EI_IE270840.11,23.htm