Seen my work on House of Cards, a documentary on colonizing Mars on Ustream, A trailer for some low budget sci-fi movie, and a South Korean sci-fi/music TV show. Not too shabby. 

I'm no expert in the software you speak, of but if you need six extra frames then they've got to come from somewhere... so you're either going to have duplicate frames, or interpolated frames... which will probably do the job but can be noticeable. Unless I'm missing something, I'm not sure how it could be done flawlessly.

"But I must watch my pennies in cost outlay as it will take years to get the return, if ever."

I agree! $0.59 per month? So lets say the going rate for a photographer is $25 to $75 an hour. And lets say it took you one day to take the shots, process them and upload them. Maybe longer. That means you'll have been paid the 'going rate' for that day in about 50 years time.

I'm not knocking you, some images sell better than others and some sites sell better than others, that's just the way it is... just wanted to put it into context!

Have you tried Shutterstock, you should make a lot more purely becauase there's more sales/traffic overall. I wouldn't be surprised if you're hitting the payout every six months there. I think it;s only $"5 or $35 there anyway.   

Getty/istock wont care but maybe it will get some publicity and people will find out about the pittance they want to pay us.

Would be nice, but maybe a little bit optomistic. I mean, how many people enquire about the welfare of the workers who produced the clothes that they're buying? If it looks good and the price is right, then I'd say the majority of people don't really care. Rightly or wrongly, that's just the way it is unfortunately.

So I finally got around to reading one of the emails sent this week on the new commission structure. Am I right in thinking that I'm currently getting 16% for my videos, and next year I'll get 20%?

$29 currently, going up to the regular price of $49 at some point. The revenue split is 50% to Envato and 50% to authors, although there's some kind of modifier based on the value of the item... so you'll get less for a photo than a website template.

So it's impossible to say what you'll get per photo until it's been running a while and there's some historical data from contributors. The more they download the less you'll get, but they do have something slightly different that might stop people downloading millions of files a month... each item needs to be registered for a specific use. So you can't just download stuff for fun and use it in any old thing. If you do, then you don't have a valid license to use it. Sure, that's open to abuse and there's no real way to check, and I'm sure it will be abused by a minority of subscribers... but I'd like to think the majority of buyers play by the rules. Otherwise none of us would ever get any extended license sales.

But yeah, whether it's going to be profitable for contributors remains to be seen. If it's a reasonable addition to sales in addition to marketplace earnings then happy days. Time will tell.

Quote

...To this end we are: Paying out more royalties to contributors overall...

Do you know how many times I've heard that tired old line? Every time a company cuts something, it's always because we'll somehow magically do better in the long run. Nine years in this business and I have yet to benefit from these kinds of changes.

I'm beginning to think maybe these companies are being dishonest with us. 

 

 

Although, to be fair, I think a lot of people interpret these emails wrong. They're not saying that all contributors are going to earn more as a result of whatever change they're implementing... they're saying that they're going to be paying out a total of more money after the change than before the change.

So if the amount of items on the site increases by 100%, and the total revenue increases by 101%, and they cut the commission from 16% to 8%.... then on average, every contributor is making a 75% loss. BUT... they're still paying out more royalties to contributors 'overall'.

Where did you get the industry standard percentage from?

I have to agree with the microstockphoto. They're better than the average guy on the street would be able to do, but the average guy on the street usually isn't selling stock.

The framing just seems all wrong for me. I don't think the review was automated, and the fact it's inconceivable to you that somebody may have actually manually declined your images... makes me think that you need somebody to tell you your work is s*** to bring you down to earth a bit.

Not that they are s***, but there's a lot of room for improvement. Yes, they may sell well on other sites, but is that just because the other sites have lots of sales? DP isn't exactly the biggest seller, so it's quite possible you wouldn't get any sales with those images even if they were accepted.

And as a parting 'cruel to be kind' thing to consider.... what if the only reason they sell on other sites is because a few people have needed example images for articles on how not to shoot stock images?

I think I'm going to give this a try, so I'll let you know how I get on. I only have video though, but the FAQ says that you can upload a still frame from the video and it will still find stuff. Worth a shot! Not doing it now though, I'm far too hungover. 

Quote from: Pauws99 on November 09, 2016, 17:26

Quote from: Newsfocus1 on November 09, 2016, 15:40

On the subject of finding your images in use you might want to try the new See In Action feature at Dreamstime (I don't think this has been mentioned on MSG as yet). Just go to your sales page and hover to the right of the thumbnail of the sold image. Click the See In Action box and it does an immediate Google search for that image on the internet. The great advantage is that you don't have to faff around uploading the image first like you do with a reverse image search. My very first search threw up an Ebook cover featuring my Avatar cat http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23414251-figaro-the-cat-detective-and-the-great-dog-pooh-mystery which was quite fun to see. Note, it's not showing you where Dreamstime sold that particular image -just internet matches in general.

Thanks for that seems to be throwing up some odd stuff too though with my image thrown in a random document...strange

This is Google Image Search. It's a function which has by been available by Google for a few years, it's not specific to Dreamstime. When searching in the image section on Google you can drag any image on the net to the search bar, once you drop the image there it shows where the image is used online.

I think he's saying that this does that automatically and continuously though. Dragging 10,000 images into Google every other day could get a bit time consuming.

Christatron on a bike, this escalated quickly! Josephine... you're missing the point again. It doesn't matter where you're from, or what currency you use... 5 or 10% less or 5 or 10% more means exactly the same for everyone, no matter where they live.

But still, let us know how you get on when you ask Shutterstock for a raise, hopefully it goes well. If you're successful then I'm sure many others will follow. They will build statues and sing songs of your brilliance for many years to come.