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Messages - Roscoe
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201
« on: May 20, 2022, 08:56 »
At this point in time, I wouldn't worry about any images being taken off a microstock site for whatever reason, least of all dreamstime. The puny rewards you get for keeping images on a port just don't make it worth stressing about.
I'm not worried at all, at least not about my images or my income from Dreamstime. I should rather worry about the state of mind of people who think it's necessary to delete a mother/daughter image because of a loving thank-you-kiss ...
Obviously it's inappropriate in the modern world for children to care for, love or respect their parents? 
I'm not worried at all, at least not about my images or my income from Dreamstime. I should rather worry about the state of mind of people who think it's necessary to delete a mother/daughter image because of a loving thank-you-kiss ...
I guess it's not a human action, but rather an automated action by a bot which suffers from sloppy programming, and was indeed triggered by your combination of keywords.
Better answer but I thought mine was at least absurdly reflective. BAD AI, sounds like the real answer.
Yeah, AI and nuances... very often not a good combination. The thing is, AI systems are only as good as the data you feed them, and it has been proven that AI systems inherit biases and prejudices of their human programmers and data sources.
202
« on: May 19, 2022, 14:04 »
The way things like that usually work:
- A site where you have an account was breached (123RF and 500px for instance were breached in the past), and your personal information like name, username, address, password and whatsoever fell into the hands of those who know what to do with it and how to use it.
- They found out you have an ESP account, and used that data they have on you to log in, and change the account details.
If they do that just before payouts are being made, there's very little time for you to react, or even notice the account change notification mail (you might not even notice it at all as the notification mail might as well end up in your trash folder)
Not saying this is what happened, but I honestly see few other options, as a complete breach of ESP, involving many more accounts being compromised would not go unnoticed.
There would be complaints all over the place.
There's very little you can do against those breaches, they happen all the time. So be careful, manage your accounts properly and take precautions.
Enable 2FA wherever possible, and use unique passwords per account you have on any site.
Use sites like haveibeenpwnd to check which breaches you are involved in and change passwords if you were breached!
Use different email addresses on different accounts.
No doubt you already know all of that, and good to hear you use 2FA where possible. But still might be useful to others.
The carelessness of how people manage their accounts, and how they are eager to provide as much as possible personal information to a broad variety of sites truly baffles me.
Combining different data breaches allows hackers to collect a ton of information on you!
All of that are factors that dramatically limit the risk of being compromised but not zero it.
I saw people who are very aware of their online presence, and who are very familiar with online security measures and techniques being used to hack an account still being tricked into a socially engineered account hack.
203
« on: May 19, 2022, 13:34 »
Relatively strong month here. Question: when we see an image is downloaded on Getty, do we get a bigger payout than if it was downloaded on iS?
Also, why if I go to Getty and do a search I don't see any iS images?
1. Not necessarily, some of the lowest prices come that way because ...
2. IIRC, you're not an iS exclusive, therefore none of your files should be available there to just anybody. However, there's a select group of buyers, probably those with the biggest bulk discount deals, who can see and buy all iS and G files from one account.
Interesting... took a look in deepmeta and found out that roughly 30% of my sales come from Getty, although I only directly contribute to iStock. Probably also the reason why my Eyeem partner content, which is available on iStock too, gets duplicated to Getty without them noticing the fact that they are are duplicates.
204
« on: May 19, 2022, 02:19 »
I'm not worried at all, at least not about my images or my income from Dreamstime. I should rather worry about the state of mind of people who think it's necessary to delete a mother/daughter image because of a loving thank-you-kiss ...
I guess it's not a human action, but rather an automated action by a bot which suffers from sloppy programming, and was indeed triggered by your combination of keywords.
205
« on: May 19, 2022, 01:39 »
Okay month, in line with previous months which are way better than 2021. For some reason iStock increased in sales and earnings.
I do keep on getting those 1,2 dollarcent sales from China.
Again some in April, and for quirky or very niche editorial images (e.g. local places of interest or buildings that I cannot imagine anyone in China would care about) that otherwise never or very rarely sell. Weird.
206
« on: May 16, 2022, 08:06 »
It is the same with Alamy, they do not go easy on rejections.
Alamy does rejections? 
Not sure if you are being sarcastic here, but yes, they do? Anything shot with my smartphone won't fly there. (but I don't have a high-end smartphone).
207
« on: May 16, 2022, 08:03 »
...
- It is not true you can have more visibility uploading with them. WireStock has.
i've had many images accepted by SS thru WS that were rejected by SS as 'non-licensable' when i submitted them myself
Is that really the case, and did you submit it in the same way (e.g. commercial, same title and keywords) as you did to Shutterstock? I don't have to tell you that Shutterstock's reviewing is very inconsistent and your content might as well get an approval with a second upload. Anyhow, until now I haven't seen any proof of content being part of Wirestock's collection performing better (in other words, get better ranking and more sales) than content on my personal accounts. Obviously, it's difficult to compare, as I don't have duplicates, but still. I have some similar content (different angle, perspective or setting) available. One on my personal account, the other one distributed via Wirestock, and I really can't tell the difference in sales or commission rates. The only thing that might be different are the levels. Wirestock's collection can be assumed to be on the highest level at agencies, and despite the 15% share for Wirestock, this might result in slightly higher commissions for contributors who are at a lower level. But does it affect the ranking? I'm inclined to say no, but of course, I can't know that for sure. Another thing I want to add, and this one is very anecdotal: I get high commission rates, compared to my personal account, at P5 for images submitted via Wirestock. Of course, they only happen a few times per year, and are thus very anecdotal, but I get the feeling they seem to submit their images to P5 and set a higher price to the images there. Something I can do myself at P5 (which I don't because... yeah I don't know why. P5 rarely sells images for me).
208
« on: May 16, 2022, 07:48 »
until you run out of targets.
New targets will keep op popping up I guess, filling the gap that the Shutterstock bomb created (assuming P5 will lower commissions). Talented videographers, able to produce high quality and unique footage, will go somewhere else and find new markets where they can sell their content at higher commissions. But for sure, the majority of the high quality content already available on P5 will not get removed, as many contributors will just leave it there as "the work is already done". A few more acquisitions down the road and Shutterstock has a high quality footage library available at bottom of the barrel subscription prices.
209
« on: May 16, 2022, 07:35 »
Also nothing special and there are better images of this place, but for some reason this one picked up. If you search for "santa catalina arch antigua guatemala" there will be 5 pages of results, but this one is second on first page & getting couple of downloads every week which keeps it high on the list
In all fairness, yours is actually one of the better shots. Many of other ones have the arch dominating the scenery, missing out the surroundings, are overly saturated or have crooked horizons or perspectives. While yours, while being no-nonsense, shows the complete scenery, colorful houses included. It's a realistic shot, and if you go there, it probably looks exactly as you shot it. So it's there for a good and valid reason. Well done.
210
« on: May 04, 2022, 02:29 »
In the past the still good enough ones were not submitted to that new rare high quality agencies, which names we do not know, but they still got submitted to the listed agencies. But now even that not anymore! ?
Wirestock did not clarify this - even not reply to it. That is a sign that wirestock really changed a lot an seems not worth it anymore to upload images there.
There are now two optioins for us:
If you moved all to wirestock and closed accounts on Adobe an others, we might open new accounts there again to get our images accepted.
Or: Just give up with stock photos, bcause the last easy way via wirestock gets s...ks now too.
To bad!
Did they really ever do that? Submitting it to "new rare high quality" agencies? I never had an Extra Channels sale. They also seem to have stopped submitting to the regular agencies. My uploads from last weeks don't show up at those agencies, and for sure they don't have major quality issues. I can imagine Shutterstock rejecting some, but Dreamstime for instance accepts nearly everything you give them. So despite my images having the status submitted in the Wirestock dashboard, they are not online at the agencies. At none of them. They completely lack transparancy, and they just do as they like in an amateuristic way.
211
« on: April 26, 2022, 14:13 »
Well, at least Alex' post triggered a discussion, and probably informed contributors who were not very familiar with Freepik up to now.
Mission accomplished. And food for follow-up.
212
« on: April 26, 2022, 14:00 »
1155 connect downloads
1015 from California
Invoice dates: 1 dated 1st January 2022, 7 dated 1st February 2022, the rest dated 31 December 2021
all for the same amount of 0,00464
$ 4,7
140 from Australia
Invoice dates: half of them dated 1st January 2022, the rest dated 1st February 2022
all for different amounts from 0,00052 to 0,567
I have never noticed that connect export options before. (Thank you, Uncle Pete!)
It's incredible!
Have we ever been told about those connect sales?
Can't remember it either, but it was already around when I actively started contributing a few years back, and I too only noticed it further down the road when I had a deeper look in my sales reports. The discussion about connect pops up every now and then here, and it's... well, a lot of talk about not even pennies. 
213
« on: April 26, 2022, 13:53 »
Thanks, got it!
You're welcome. Someone here will know what California means. One of the partner sites.
Not claiming to know, and I can be wrong, but I guess it can mean anything or any company, as a lot of potential customers for the connect program are located in silicon valley?
I think it's a specific partner not a broad area where most of the computer people are. That's how we know (or assume?) Canva is the Australia customer. It's someone who uses a single streaming subscription or has the on demand subscription for within their design software online. Whatever it is, pennies per use paid to Getty and fractions paid to us.
I mean, the partner pays 0.03091 per use and we get 15% which is 0.00464 of that. Now that's exciting... 
I read the suggestion of Pinterest somewhere, but honestly, it can by anything? From startup to big tech?
If only we knew, which of our images are online where under the connect program, we could rig up our clickfarms and get rich rich rich ;-)
So I need to pin some of my own images and see if they show in Connect? Interesting idea. But for all I know, it's only for the original pin and we can't click bait them into money.
Haha, that's not how it works. But I think you can pin your own image, drive traffic to your portfolio that way, and hope someone thinks "* that's a neat picture from Pete here" and goes through the hassle of licensing it. I'm sure the agencies would love you to do that. Some more guessing around, considered Connect is PPV: What might happen in case of Pinterest, any other social media or advertising platform, is that someone licenses an image via connect, and uses it to promote something. It would be a safe way to test the waters, without having to spend a lot of money on licensing. If the post goes viral (or the ad shows a high conversion rate during the test run and the customer decides to increase the budget), then the customers starts paying for the license, but also gets the return of the campaign that reached a lot of potential customers. If the posts or ad fails, then the customer gets away with it without having to spend money on licensing. Same probably applies to web development for low traffic hit or miss sites, news articles with low expected traffic or anything else that's too risky or not worth it to buy a regular license for because the customer is very unsure about the success of whatever they are creating. So what I think/guess, that Connect is: a high volume of low volume usage. At least, that's my interpretation of my connect sales. I might be wrong of course.
214
« on: April 24, 2022, 11:31 »
Thanks, got it!
You're welcome. Someone here will know what California means. One of the partner sites.
Not claiming to know, and I can be wrong, but I guess it can mean anything or any company, as a lot of potential customers for the connect program are located in silicon valley?
I think it's a specific partner not a broad area where most of the computer people are. That's how we know (or assume?) Canva is the Australia customer. It's someone who uses a single streaming subscription or has the on demand subscription for within their design software online. Whatever it is, pennies per use paid to Getty and fractions paid to us.
I mean, the partner pays 0.03091 per use and we get 15% which is 0.00464 of that. Now that's exciting...
I read the suggestion of Pinterest somewhere, but honestly, it can by anything? From startup to big tech? If only we knew, which of our images are online where under the connect program, we could rig up our clickfarms and get rich rich rich ;-)
215
« on: April 22, 2022, 05:21 »
Seeing these commission rates, I'm somehow glad I didn't invest time and money last year in developing a video portfolio.
I only have a few dozen of video's online, generating a handful of sales per year, at indeed pretty low commissions. I probably missed out a lot of potential revenue when commission rates where higher, and starting the learning curve to shoot and edit clips was still on my to-do list, but now... Who's still motivated?
Shooting and editing stills is a pretty solid and efficient process for me, and I'm starting to get the feeling that it generates a higher return for me than start shooting video, for which I have to go through a learning and investing curve.
I might be wrong, and the fact that I only sell a handful of clips is directly related to the quality issues my clips have, but I will have a mountain to climb when I want to develop my skills in shooting video, and seeing the comments of others, there's no cherry on the cake after taking the effort. Right?
216
« on: April 22, 2022, 01:13 »
Thanks, got it!
You're welcome. Someone here will know what California means. One of the partner sites.
Not claiming to know, and I can be wrong, but I guess it can mean anything or any company, as a lot of potential customers for the connect program are located in silicon valley?
217
« on: April 20, 2022, 03:50 »
Still not sure how to feel about those connect sales. Anyhow, they lifted iStock to be my top earner in March. Regular sales where also pretty good.
Even more: iStock is my best earning agency for 2022 so far. Who would have thought!
218
« on: April 12, 2022, 07:45 »
And now, if someone wants to write an article about BASF he would want a photo of a BASF factory with the BASF logo right there and not some generic factory. So, why aren't imges like this accepted as editorial? Isn't this specific enough?
If I understood it correctly, you should have used something in the line of "BASF chemical verbund-site next to Rhine river in Ludwigshafen, Germany" as caption?
219
« on: April 08, 2022, 00:42 »
I get the banner too, but no more information to be found on their FAQ page. Now, I can think of a lot of things that Shutterstock can do better, but improving their contributor dashboard is very low on that list. Maybe improvements are mainly to be found on the customer side, like Unamas already found out one: selecting or excluding artists per country. Not sure where the added value is in this feature. As a customer I would not really be interested in where the content that I download comes from, and as a contributor, I would certainly not like the fact that I'm getting punished for foolish behavior of fellow countrymen I don't have any impact on and who's actions or opinions might strongly differ from mine.
220
« on: April 08, 2022, 00:18 »
I must have missed their communication, and it took me a few minutes to figure out what was going on.
If I understood it correctly, they set a limit to "free" easy submissions
0-70% approval rate / 30 easy submissions
70-80% approval rate / 300 easy submissions
80-90% approval rate / 1000 easy submissions
90-100% approval rate / 5000 easy submissions
The limit will be reset on 5/1/2022
Going premium at 9.99$ will get you:
Additional 100 Easy Submissions
Faster keywording and review: Wait no more than 48 hours.
24/7 support: Round-the-clock customer service.
Download files with metadata up to 500GB: Store and access your files with metadata anytime
I don't really understand who would need all of that. I have an upload limit of 5000 easy submissions which will be reset on the first of May.
No way I'm able to shoot and process 5000 stockworthy images in one month! Maybe pro's with very high production volumes can use the faster keywording, reviewing and support service, but for them, I would really expect Wirestock to take the extra effort anyhow without expecting contributors to pay.
Also: 9.99$ will get you 100 additional easy submissions on top of 5000. That's ridiculous!
That said: not sure why Wirestock isn't working for you. They are barely an agency, and a mainly distributor, so your content probably won't work either if you decided to upload it yourself to the agencies supported by Wirestock.
221
« on: April 07, 2022, 12:32 »
Today I briefly had a banner in my Shutterstock dashboard telling me that there would be some exciting changes ahead. There was also a link I was supposed to click on for more information, but it only lead to the contributor FAQ page and I couldn't spot anything new there. Now it's gone again.
Anyone else seen it? What do you think it will be? I really hope it's just something as harmless as the redesign of the dashboard page. 
Didn't see it. Yet. Guess it means popcorn time. Nearly two years after the previous hit. Unlimited download plans for customers with revenue sharing for contributors?
222
« on: April 07, 2022, 12:11 »
P5 may feel that since they sell so few images, they want to scale back review resources etc.. as a way to keep their costs down perhaps?
I never had the feeling real reviewing was taking place. They just accepted everything. Never had a rejection on P5. So P5 actually starting critical content reviewing, not only in terms of quality but also evaluating subject saturation, would rather feel like raising the costs.
223
« on: April 06, 2022, 02:03 »
My RPD on Shutterstock has taken nosedive since I stopped uploading, although number of downloads has remained constant. It would be interesting to see if there is connection? I doubt as it would need some fine algorithm adjustments which I don't think they can be bothered with. It is more likely related to overall large sub packages policy shift
I kept on uploading and my RPD took a nosedive too. 0.26$ for March, which is very low. March 2021 my RPD was 0.72. Whether it's algorithm or policy shift to large subscription packages I don't know. I would guess the latter. But it still can be algorithm thing, as they might push some portfolio's more towards subscription sales and others more towards OD's. Technically it's possible. All I know for sure is that nearly every sale on SS is a sub, OD's are scarce and when they happen commissions are low. Last year I had bigger sales (let's say 20$ and more) every month. This year: none. So yes. Something has changed 
224
« on: April 06, 2022, 01:45 »
Ha! Weird. Because I never saw P5 rejecting something. My latest uploads to them date back from last week, and they all were accepted. As usual.
Apparently they have "enough" which I can understand for certain subjects. Makes no sense to have thousands of images of skies or flowers in their collection.
Anyhow, no need to bother, because image sales on P5 are very scarce. I few images a year, one every two months on average, that's all I get from them.
Commissions are fine (last year got a 20$ sale) but still... at these volumes it's a waste of energy to be bothered about their rejection policy.
225
« on: March 30, 2022, 05:45 »
Fast reviews seem to be back?
Uploaded a bunch of images today, all of them reviewed and accepted within the hour!
Enjoy it while it lasts!
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