RPD  and total DL aren't really useful for comparing agencies

my RPD for AS is twice that of SS yet SS income is consistently about 20% greater than AS (which is what matters in the end)

meanwhile SS DL are 1.5 to twice as many AS, but not reflected in $

so both RPD & DL are misleading as indicators of success, which also makes the AS weekly ranking merely bragging rights

Yes, the AS weekly and lifetime are variable and unreliable, not just because they might be DLs only, but comparing, people have different numbers for the same DLs and lower numbers for more DLs. It's terribly flawed. But nice for bragging rights, which never paid for anything.

RPD, it would be good if someone is comparing similar systems. The problem is just what you say. My RPD on Alamy, to go for one extreme, was $48.83 last year. Being fair, two DLs were around $140 each. If I only use what I consider microstock sites: in order of earnings for the year =

AS  00.88
SS  00.65
WS 00.44
iS   00.47
DT  00.38

In my case, AS is better in all respects. No one can decide based on someone else's images and content. I only have video on Pond5, I don't have Editorial on Adobe. Some of my best images on Adobe are not acceptable on SS. DT takes everything, the same images that are on SS and AS.

It just happens that sorted by DLs, AS is double SS, SS is double WS, IS is double DT. WS earned half of what SS paid, but the RPD is close to 2/3rds.

The only stat that matters is $$$ per year. 



OK a nice bunch of numbers, but AS earns me 3X more in DOLLARS than SS makes me and that's what we spend, not RPD or DLs. RPD doesn't show that. And counting DLs doesn't work either.

AI didn't kill ClipartOf...

"all you can download for $10 sites" did.

Who would pay $30 for a single vector when they can get unlimited vector downloads for 1/3 of the price?

That too. The free and the all you can take sites, are hurting all around.

But, I'm not a fan of AI, the point is, anyone can go to one of the AI sites and type in some words and have an illustrations of what they need. Many places, accounts were free like Dall-E, until last year, and there are still ways to make free illustrations.

It's just sad to see a quality site, going out of business because the market and the industry has sunk so far. Microstock became Pennystock, has become Nanostock.

Spotted some AI payments on my latest sales report by iStock (November).

Check yours under "AISERVICES".

Although it's not much, even by Getty standard, at least they've started paying out.

Yes, we had a discussion about that when the sales were reported for NOV. One is USA and the other is Other. It's listed under Connect Sales for some reason.

Just to keep you informed - the support answered my ticket with serveral specific questions:

"Hello Michael,
For more information regarding our generative AI services we have created a new FAQ section to address the questions you might have. 
Please visit the link below: https://contributors.gettyimages.com/article/10953
Best Regards."

And my ticket was closed wihout any answer to my questions...

I got just over 15% on USA and just under 15% on the other.

I wish good luck to Jamie.

But this was expected. They had a very strict contributor approval policy and later completely stopped taking contributors.

AI killed it?

Aim for 15 seconds clips

From advice of others, 15 to 30 seconds at most. A longer clip can be made into more shorter clips to offer.

I'll side with what majority seems to believe, which is that Microstock is on its deathbed with AI placing final nail in the coffin.   At some point these famous photographers like Yuri were paving the road and showing what's possible with skill and hard work.  Not anymore; microstock is nowdays "Uncle Pete hobby", which for average contributor can hardly even finance cost of gear.  I look sometime at amount of work Brutally Honest Microstock guy Alex Rottenberg invests, shooting, technology, extremely well researched blogs - and what does he have to show for it?  Few 100's a month.

It's really a shame because photography, when done properly, is form of self expression, art and can bring lots of joy beyond just financial aspect.  In particular this downright despicable mess AI is creating.  Today, while researching potential trip to Alaska next summer,  I went to Adobe (as customer would) and searched for "Chilkoot Lake".  Wanted to throw up when I saw results - some guy spammed with 100s of AI generated shots of grizzly bears that look about just as ridiculous as anything I have ever seen.   Shooting wildlife is art, waiting, patience in the wild, having proper equipment/lens - not this.

Yes, Go High or Go Low.    Either be very serious or make it a hobby. I decided hobby in 2012 when I saw what was going on with agencies, cutting our returns, along with the supply being far more than the demand. There was a false belief, being promoted by agencies like Shutterstock, that there was a hug untapped demand, and that there was potential for growth of the business.

I think you hit the point very well, that AI ended the slow death of Microstock accelerating the final crash.

The inability to modify keywords, descriptions etc. after submission is very annoying. If you discover a "typo" after submission, you have to generate a ticket to get it corrected.

And after you write, more than once, the spelling error remains unchanged for years. I used to try to add words to the CV, there's a contact for that. Not worth the time.

It's just platform rigidity that makes no sense to anyone except maybe the guy that originally designed it, and now likely gone.   Another nonsense is "Deep Meta" - heavy, monolithic Microsoft.NET standalone app, likely a nightmare from source code standpoint.   IS already has Web Front End, that more or less does the job.  Absolutely no need for Deep Meta, except maybe to keep the guy that works on it employed.

Deepmeta is the answer to the IS system that's worse and doesn't work and doesn't give us stats. There is also Qhero  https://qhero.com/  if you want another. But here's what works for stats.  https://deepmeta.creativ.zone/

The problem is Getty and their system of cataloging everything. That's where CV came from. CV is not something that someone at IS just dreamed up to make everything convoluted and impossible. It's a cataloging system, used by large archives, museums and research facilities.

I didn't say it was good for stock, in facts it's terrible for the application, for us and for customers. But that's what it is and why Getty chose it.

https://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabularies/index.html

Quote from: wds on December 19, 2024, 22:57

The CV is very frustrating if you are uploading editorial and they don't have the name of a store or business....and that happens a lot.

That's another example. Just leave it, it will still get indexed which is all you care about

Managed keyword concept is incredibly dumb. Capturing entire dictionary of modern language is virtually impossible.  No wonder nobody else is doing it.  If this idea had any worth to it, rest assured Adobe would be doing something similar on their platform

If you followed the links I included, you will see, this isn't for us or stock photos, it's for large archives. The idea is something like taxonomy, in that, you can't include everything, but you need relationships, groups, and names. There's a conformity that's supposed to make things less confusing and more organized.

I don't think CV makes sense for our use or stock photos. But that's what Getty decided as they are running a huge archive, that needs to be searched. One thing, maybe, it does cut down on spam and useless words?

Quote from: Uncle Pete on December 18, 2024, 17:25

Here's my answer, like the drones in New Jersey, which aren't drones, but mistaken identity or ordinary UAVs, this is 100% conjecture, from what I've read. Translated, that means I might be imagining things or I could be right? Or none of the above.

Training share: 50% of the revenue will be divided between all of the files used to train our AI Services, giving an equal share for each file. This rewards every file that was part of the value created by our AI Services in each year.
Weighted share: 50% of the revenue will be weighted to each file in the training set, based on the royalties that file earned from traditional licensing in the same year. This rewards the proven commercial value of your content in each year.

50% plus 50% = 100% Half will be an equal share of the money, received by Getty, for each file. Half will be based on royalties that the file earned, in the same year. That's for each of our files or each of our files that were used, that also had sales.

50% plus 50% = 100% and we get 15% of that total amount, the 100%, for images. A further guess is video gets 20% of that 100% if the files used for AI training are videos.

They probably had meetings and committees that met and studied for months to come up with this. 

Until someone comes up with the real answer, from support, or finds a better made up version, that's mine. We get 15% of that 100% and Getty keeps 85%

What you wrote is almost as convoluted as IS platform ;=)

That's why I think I understand it? 

Real simple and straight. The number we see for the CONNECT SUMMARY STATEMENT

Summary of Connect-based revenue by customer and product.

AISERVICES United States
##.## is the License fee
Commission = varies
##.## is what we get. (mine was just over 15%)

The second AISERVICES for location says "varies" then License Fee Total, Varies for Commission, and the number we are credited. (mine was just under 15%)

So the numbers for AISERVICES are the 100% and we get, around 15% of that.

The whole 50% of each file and 50% of each file that has downloads, is just mystical, magic, Getty math, and irrelevant. They pay us a roughly 15%, just like everything else.

I don't confirm the slowdown,in fact this week is already better than last week,and I have already reached last December's sales number.

From January my sales should increase further,I don't have much Christmas content and I definitely need to do more people,I already have ready and selected more generated people content,but I have to start working on it as soon as I finish the current project.

Lots to do,better get to work! 

I'd agree that there's no telling. I just had a burst of sales today. I never know why or when someone is going to want something. Cobalt is right about the Holiday sales, I always get a boost from that. But, I just had an Easter image download. Something I uploaded two years ago. My St. Patrick's Day project was a dud. Maybe they will pick up after two years of laying dormant? No I don't mean rank, just sales would be good.

I'm done uploading new, for this year. I'm saving anything else for 2025, to kick off the New Year with some uploads.

Quote from: jasonlee3071 on December 15, 2024, 17:24

Received notice a few days ago that they are relocating their photo section over to Yay images.
Which is the reason why they may not be accepting any contributions at this moment.

both these companies truly suck! Remember nothing plus nothing still equals nothing...

Two dead agencies, pooling their resources, to make a slower and more painful, slow death. This is the end my friend. 

Quote from: Uncle Pete on December 12, 2024, 12:44

So... maybe it's you or your location. 

No, it's just that my questions are more complex than yours, they are technical in nature. And how they will solve them is not yet known.

You can read my questions now?    Yes, my question was about their system, submission and reviews, Editorial and things that I do, so it wasn't technical "technically". The reply took a week. But in other instances, they have been faster and gave personal responses, not some boilerplate "expert" who probably knows less than you or I about how SS works, and then says, they will forward the question to someone else, which means two things: 1) It's going into a black hole and we'll never see an answer OR 2) It's going to the real SS assistance people. Where they will file it as #1 on their priority list. (see #1 here)

The only thing that worries me is the dismissal of people from the support pond5. No one answers my questions now. 

See the other thread where I answered your claims. No need to post this over and over.

We need a "-1" button

You have my support on that.  Bring back the fun.

There was a - vote, way back, but it was just silly sometimes, as someone would post, "Hey, it's Monday" and if they were an unpopular member, they would get -25 in an hour. Leaf removed it, I believe, to make things a little less contentious and adversarial.

But I miss it, even if people disagree with me, I recognize and support their opinions and rights.

Too bad Ambu left, they had some good points about P5