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Messages - Jo Ann Snover
Pages: 1 ... 69 70 71 72 73 [74] 75 76 77 78 79 ... 291
1826
« on: April 25, 2017, 22:17 »
They pay on the first of the month - they don't work weekends though, so if that's on a weekend, it's the next Monday.
I have mine go straight to my bank account (not PayPal) as they offered that option, so it's about 4 days. They say up to 9 working days, but I'm sure that varies by country (I'm in the US). Can't say about other payment methods.
1827
« on: April 25, 2017, 14:18 »
Regarding QC/inspection. You're right that it varies a bit from site to site - that's entirely reasonable as most have their own preferences for acceptance beyond technical adequacy. What's less delightful is that a site varies a lot from time to time and most don't have any sort of formal process for challenging a decision (which, if done right, can be a way for the agency to monitor the performance of their inspection process; that has been done in the past, but is gone from the microstock agencies now). If you fail QC at Alamy you really need to go improve your technical camera or editing skills. They don't curate for content, just technical issues - in focus, decent level of noise, no wild editing that has degraded the image quality. You should expect 100% of your images to pass at Alamy - but while learning the ropes, upload small batches (5 or 10) as they'll fail a whole batch if one fails. Shutterstock has in the past had decent inspection, but after lurching around a bit (there was a fail almost everything phase) and allowing contributors who can pass 1 of 10 on their initial submission, they now seem to accept virtually everything unless you don't have adequate releases. Some sites have stricter similars policies than others - Dreamstime was nutso about this, but may have changed (I don't bother uploading there any more even though I still sell what's there). Many sites used to be very strict about resubmission of a reject without making any changes (it could get you banned) but lots of people seem to do it and don't get banned, so I wouldn't recommend it. If you submit to 8 agencies and 7 accept an image, the problem is likely with the agency, not the image. If 5 of 8 reject an image, go figure out what's wrong with it and fix it. I would stay away from Deposit Photos - do a search here to see the many controversies they've been involved with over the years. As far as organizing and uploading; some people use tools to do that, others just a workflow. Lots of articles to read http://www.backyardsilver.com/2011/03/my-work-flow-for-stock-photography/http://www.marcorstock.com/en/workflow-microstock/http://www.backyardsilver.com/2016/12/stocksubmitter-elegant-replacement-stockuploader/https://www.picworkflow.com/https://microstockinsider.com/guides/microstock-workflow-introduction-exampleI don't know any site that frowns on creative editing unless you're talking about editorial work, where you can't do it - clean the sensor spots, adjust tonal range and you're done. Most sites don't want you submitting multiple variations of the same shot, and with a few exceptions, encourage color over black and white. Good luck
1828
« on: April 25, 2017, 12:17 »
If you look at the FAQ, they make it clear that the prices are negotiated for each deal, so I don't think you can assume anything about what the price will be to the buyer or what Pond5 will collect. "Deals that are part of the Global Partner Program will be negotiated on a case-by-case basis. These partners tend to have high-volume demands and require custom indemnification and standardized pricing to manage their budgets. We will likely pool content within a similar price range for buyers based on their budgets, commitments, and licensing needs. Deals sold as part of this program may also include extended licenses, which will generate additional revenue for participating artists." I have very little content on Pond5 - they don't really do well with images although it's nice to be able to upload PSDs - but I've opted out. I thought I'd already done that, but I went to check just now and I was opted in. Either I had a brain fart or they opted everyone in automatically as part of launching this new initiative. For the most part, I'm not happy with increasing the number of people who are getting a cut of what a buyer pays and thus reducing my share. Especially when there's no clear win in terms of access to a great, high volume marketplace that I can't get into on my own. I'm already with Adobe (although no PSD templates there of course) so without knowing who else they've done deals with, I can't see any reason to opt in.
1829
« on: April 23, 2017, 18:17 »
I'd like to see Alamy try to automate the process of identifying the most important keywords - which is I think what the supertags concept was intended to do. I'd like it to be possible for the user to change the automated results if they want to. I'd also love to know what's up with the theory going the rounds on the Alamy forums that use of supertags hurts search position rather than helps it. More here. Alamy says just tag and supertag as directed and it'll work out - I assume meaning that if there is any negative effect of a supertag it's a bug and will get fixed at some point. Using the title and description should give some clues about important content even without doing image analysis. It'd also be nice to have an option to take the first 5 or 10 automatically. I keyword in Photoshop and for new images am putting the important keywords up front to take care of Adobe Stock/Fotolia's need for important keywords in the first 7. I'm not anticipating anything being done about this, but it'd be nice...
1830
« on: April 21, 2017, 09:29 »
I think it's important to keep the metadata for each image in the image itself. There may be copy/paste from a similar image in a series as you're finishing the editing to prepare for upload, but when uploading to multiple sites, now or in the future, you just upload the JPEG and no copy/paste required.
It is never quite as simple as that in practice - you learn something about good keywording as you progress, so sometimes you want to fix up old keywords as you upload to a new site; some sites don't handle both title and description or have odd rules that require a bit of finessing - but that's the general idea.
I don't have a list of "Jo Ann approved terminology" outside of my head, but if I were a larger producer, I'd do that. You want to be consistent in the ways you describe similar things. So I typically include sea, ocean, water when describing beach or waterfront scenes. I include city and state/country and sometimes region for all outside scenes. Use both house and home for pictures of a residence, and so on. Try to avoid tailoring things to one site's customs - I was an iStock exclusive for 3 years and one of the daftest things I did for part of that time was to start keywording in Getty's-controlled-vocabulary-speak - Front or Back Yard, Residential Structure, Downtown District, Expressing Negativity. No human searches on those terms, so they're useless in any context without the translator (part of the search engine on Getty sites).
1831
« on: April 20, 2017, 10:32 »
Contract disputes are messy. That's what this is - a contract dispute between the model(s) and the photographer (the two parties to the contract) with the agency looking at the potential for getting caught in a lawsuit. As a hypothetical situation, I couldn't fault an agency for deciding that it did not want to spend its money on lawyers if the issues could simply be resolved by removing certain content. If an agency was a public company, one could argue that investors have a right to see them make the best financial decisions for the company. And that decision would be to avoid a legal tangle and remove content in dispute. Sometimes (the dance steps dispute as an example) even that isn't enough, but it often is all that's needed. Our supply agreements with all the agencies allow them to refuse any content for any or no reason. We don't have any right to sell our content through any particular agency. Agencies are risk averse - and if there's not much financial gain to be had from representing legally risky content, why would you expect them to spend money to deal with a contributor's contract dispute? From a business point of view, there's virtually no upside to pursuing legally risky sales - there's a bazillion other sales to make that don't involve any legal risk. I fully realize how frustrating it is for the OP to have had such a terrible experience with this group of models (although that doesn't excuse the racist garbage first posted). But expecting SS to sort this out for you isn't reasonable, IMO.
1832
« on: April 15, 2017, 14:17 »
Dropping commisions from 60-80% to 30% definitely sucks but isn't 30% about the average for current microstocks? Maybe even a bit on the higher end commission - again, for microstocks.
500px prices aren't really microstock prices - more like Alamy but without the sales volume  Alamy pays 50% (if you opt out of distributor sales, which I have). I'm not wedded to any particular percentage - if an agency spends a bunch on marketing and promotion and can deliver a huge volume of customers, even 20% can be a good deal (see iStock and Getty back before they started circling the bowl). 500px is a newbie agency with no track record (with respect to sales; there are certainly some gorgeous pictures at 500px) and before they could even get a track record, they cut the royalties back from 70%. I couldn't say if it was hiring KK Thompson or cutting the royalties that was the primary motivator for me to remove my stuff from marketplace (I left the files there in case they came to their senses at some point), but I was no longer interested in what they were doing. The fact that they have now upped their fees and are trying to flog directory, web site and promotional services suggests they're now hoping that will be their way of making money versus being an agency. That's not useful or interesting to me.
1833
« on: April 14, 2017, 19:09 »
It was up and I was nearly done with submitting and then I get meerkats! Perhaps I'll give them some space to try and stabilize things.
1834
« on: April 14, 2017, 17:37 »
Good keywords are important, but you need to think about what constitutes a good keyword. For example, you have pictures of train tracks, but you don't say what city or country that's in. For many buyers, getting something local will be important - so do that for outside shots that are clearly in a particular place, but don't do it for studio shots or textures where it has no relevance. This shot is just labeled "city" - but there's nothing to say which!! You might get more sales if you added city and country to the keywords (and probably to the title) Never put multiple places on one shot - there's a lot of that on SS with tropical beaches that I think people justify by saying that it could be the Bahamas, Jamaica, the Seychelles, etc. Shutterstock has over 134 million images and you have such a tiny portfolio and subjects that relatively low demand that I'm not surprised you're seeing gaps in sales. For a number of your images, a little more care when taking them would yield a more salable result. As an example, the flag in this image is hanging limply in such a way that you can't really see the flag at all. If you waited for some wind to blow the flag a little so you could see it better, it'd be more useful.
1835
« on: April 14, 2017, 17:21 »
The 500px marketplace (where they license images as stock) is open to anyone, but for an image to be selected for Prime is an editor's decision, not yours. They appear to be changing things to emphasize paid services - see this recent change - but you can upload photos there at no charge and skip all the extras. They used to have a limit of files per week for free accounts, but I'm not sure if that's still there. Pricing is higher for Prime - if your work is selected. Bear in mind the royalty rate is only 30% unless you make the file exclusive https://support.500px.com/hc/en-us/articles/207423197-Prime-and-Core-Collection-Prices
1836
« on: April 09, 2017, 12:31 »
1837
« on: April 08, 2017, 19:48 »
There is a link on the contributor home page to a forum topic on changes we'll see soon in the payment history page: "As you know, we are investing heavily in upgrading the technology that powers Shutterstocks infrastructure, website, and mobile apps. As part of these ongoing system upgrades, you will begin to see changes to the Payment History page in the coming days. Youll see improvements to the design, and new options for customization have been added.
Were looking forward to sharing more improvements with you in the coming months.
Thanks for your continued contributions to Shutterstock."I have no idea why they want to "improve" this page - and from the comments so far in the forum, I'm not the only one wondering why they're wasting time on such a low-use area. I posted my thoughts (for what good that will do) suggesting they should ask us what improvements we want versus just making them and assuming they'll delight us https://forums.submit.shutterstock.com/topic/90730-coming-soon-refreshed-payment-history-page/?p=1606025
1838
« on: March 30, 2017, 17:50 »
I got a refund email a couple days ago. It's only 2 sub sales, so it probably happened in less than 30 minutes. If people didn't get a sale in that specific 30 minutes, it probably won't affect them.
Thanks
1839
« on: March 30, 2017, 16:46 »
They took $0.76 from me for February.
...
How did you know about the refund - did they send you email? I don't have any refund emails from SS and looking at my stats online, the numbers for Jan & Feb show the same totals as the two payout amounts, so I think I wasn't affected by these errors.
1840
« on: March 27, 2017, 14:05 »
This month's On Demand numbers (so far) are about the same as January and about half February's. The new packages - that produce 0.87, 1.47; 0.59, 0.75 - are marginally more, but it's a dribble that's essentially a rounding error in the month's totals. I happened upon this thread that gives a clue as to the prices Shutterstock charges for their Premier accounts. It really sucks that only a subset of their contributors get to play in that sandbox... https://www.reddit.com/r/graphic_design/comments/4wmxij/shutterstock_pricing_i_dont_even_know_what_to_say/
1842
« on: March 24, 2017, 17:11 »
Agencies that have fair terms generally can't market the agency or our work effectively. Agencies that have become large and successful typically start cutting costs to boost their bottom line when they can't grow more by expanding the customer base or volume of sales to those customers - contributor royalties are usually where they start.
I did take a look at your site and don't see anything there that tempts me. Regardless of how lovely the site is, it's marketing it to buyers that's the important part. I have my own site (holdover from the original Symbiostock project; license a small number that say) and sell prints through a couple of existing POD sites, plus I license through stock agencies - Shutterstock and Adobe Stock/Fotolia are doing the heavy lifting there.
Does your software handle VAT for European license sales? If not that rules out a lot of markets...
1843
« on: March 24, 2017, 13:53 »
This is spam, pure and simple. It should never have been approved with these keywords - not because the keywords are multi-word or complex, but because most of them have nothing whatever to do with the image. This contributor's portfolio is awash in spam of this sort. Nothing wrong with the images, just the metadata. Here's the image in question  Even if you ignore the borderline keywords, these are just not applicatble: attack, clinical cure, crm customer relationship management, donate donation charity, foster home, fundraising charity, medical assurance, pediatric doctor, school education, sick survivor people, single mom. This one (same contributor) is just as bad  Spam: biotechnology engineering, car automobile vehicle accident, child adoption week, city society development, creating creation, ecology technology, foster care, international day of prayer and acttion for human habitat, parent finance saving, rich poor conceptual ideaThis contributor has a piece of woven fabric as a texture with the keywords manuscript and clothes line. An isolated white canvas bag with the keywords agriculture and wall paper. White jigsaw pieces with keywords startup business, office and children. I can't see how any of this spam can help (who searches for world thinking day?), but for heavens sake don't copy this rubbish
1844
« on: March 23, 2017, 17:26 »
Hi Mates
Anyone trying Adobe stock ? I see no rating in Microstock poll
I closed my fololia account some time ago.
Should i start uploading to Adobe stock or is the fotolia site still a good option ?
If you have a Fotolia account (in your case, if you ask them to re-open yours) you can upload to either site and the content will appear on both: http://www.microstockgroup.com/fotolia-com/adobe-stock-contributor-site-now-live!/msg464778/#msg464778 I believe they have shut down adding contributors via Fotolia and that can only be done via the Adobe site. I'm seeing good sales through Adobe Stock/Fotolia (restarted contributing there in December). I'd definitely say it's worth it - second only to SS at the moment (for me)
1845
« on: March 22, 2017, 07:50 »
Why is this happening, was there a price change in February?
It's the changeover from the old model - where independents could earn up to 20% to the new one where it's a flat 15% for all indies. As they had "grandfathered" rates for several years, I was still getting 18% (which is still pathetic) even though I'd removed most of my portfolio in 2013. Not sure what the rate was for the person posting the chart but you get the idea
1846
« on: March 21, 2017, 14:27 »
Where i can see how much did i earn and what photo it has been downloaded and what i earned from that download?
I can see at Royalties only that charts, and i don't understand a lot from them...
Select the Export tab on the left. Then select your contract from the drop down list, select PDF for the type and then click the download button
1847
« on: March 21, 2017, 07:38 »
Does anyone know why in my statement it says "exclusive" in the column for exclusivity? Did I forget to tick something somewhere during the transition? 
Me too and dont know why
I think it's just another of their eff ups. Mine says Exclusive as well, but (a) the rate shown is 15% and (b) last month's said Non-Exclusive, so I think they know my status and just made an error in preparing the statements
1848
« on: March 21, 2017, 00:13 »
I can't license the iStock images anywhere else, but I'll have to rethink leaving images there. Who'd have thought that a Thinkstock sale at 28 cent royalty could look good???
Tossers!
Why can't you license iStock images elsewhere?
It's just these specific images. They were shot at an iStockalypse and part of the agreement I signed as a participant was that I would only license images shot there through iStock. At the time I was exclusive and didn't see a problem with agreeing to that. I doubt anyone would come after me if I broke the agreement, but I wouldn't do that regardless, so these particular (about 100) images I left at iStock when I removed the rest of my portfolio in early 2013 (the Getty-Google fiasco)
1849
« on: March 20, 2017, 19:30 »
I don't know whether I'm more upset by getting 15% of a 45 cent license (0.0675 cents) or 15% of a 25.698 sale (not sure what that was, but It's an essentials image) $3.8547 That's just crazy.
I can't license the iStock images anywhere else, but I'll have to rethink leaving images there. Who'd have thought that a Thinkstock sale at 28 cent royalty could look good???
Tossers!
1850
« on: March 20, 2017, 15:26 »
I always reply and point people to where they can license my work (usually putting my own site first, but listing other agencies offering it). If someone has been nice enough to include a compliment, I thank them. Depending on how they word things I point out how inexpensive the licenses are. If they ask for a freebie in return for photo credit, they get something like the following (from just such a request):
"If you mean you'd like to use it for free, I'm sorry, but that's not an option. I sell my stock images through a number of sites (list them here) but I don't give them away.
Considering you don't have to buy a long term subscription or a pile of credits to license an image, it's never been easier to license just one.
If it was a charity looking for it as a donation, I'd decide based on whether I supported the charity or not.
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