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Messages - pancaketom
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226
« on: February 24, 2022, 12:55 »
Dreamstime usually breaks them up, but SS and others accept them, sometimes it makes sense, sometimes it doesn't. One minor site decided at some point that per your example if you had "united" and "states" and "united states" those were duplicate keywords and rejected it. How the search deals with those varies from site to site. I used to try to pay attention to that but I don't much anymore. Certainly for something like "christmas tree" I think a 2 word keyword makes sense.
227
« on: February 16, 2022, 16:03 »
getting a bit of thread drift here, but as I recall with DT subs you could get 1,2,or 3 sub sales for .35, .70, and 1.05. I quite liked that and even the lowest sub sale meant the image was making progress towards a higher tier. I think DT said the buyers were confused and complained about using up their sub allotment too quickly so DT dropped it. The higher level credit sales can be quite good, but they are also very rare. Nowadays it is almost all subs, although the rare other sales make a big difference in the total for the month. The percentage they pay is also tied to the image level for credit sales, so not only does a higher level sale cost the buyer more, but the artist gets a higher percentage of that. As far as people wanting images that have little to no sales, I've got heaps of them - have at it. (although I do wish DT would pay a higher percentage for the level 0 sales (and all sales for that matter)).
228
« on: February 16, 2022, 12:02 »
you should ask DT for the official answer, but are only some of these exclusive to DT? Prices have changed over time - especially for subs which used to go up at higher levels as I recall but now are all .35 (except for exclusive content?).
Another possibility is it is some sort of promotional discount - 30% off or something- but I think that might have only changed the cost of credits.
229
« on: February 15, 2022, 18:21 »
Thanks, I didn't see that other post. As a data point, I have not changed any versions of PS for keywording, and the vast majority go through just fine. I didn't try re-uploading, I just cut and pasted the keywords when I noticed they weren't right. If it happens again I'll try re-uploading to see if it repeats.
230
« on: February 15, 2022, 16:40 »
In each of the last few uploaded batches I have noticed that one image has had the keywords overwritten by pretty generic, sometimes wrong, and probably computer generated keywords. They seem to be the same as I get when I refresh auto keywords, but I never requested them in the first place. I know they read at least some of the metadata because the title is correct. I don't think I have clicked the auto keywords as I have to scroll down to get to that option, but I suppose it is possible somehow. I guess for now I just need to check my keywords a little more carefully (I do anyway to make sure the first few are important ones, but maybe I need to look deeper now).
Has anyone else experienced this? I am uploading with the web based uploader and the edge browser (I know it sucks, but I clear cookies on firefox regularly and it is a pain to re-log in to the sites I upload to).
231
« on: February 15, 2022, 13:27 »
SN
SNIP...
I thought the line about unsplash serving the semi-professional creators was cute.
I doubt they will be paying any more than 15% so they won't be getting new content from me.
Sounds right, I never considered anything personally, having to do with Unsplash. Visibility, Exposure, Giving Back, Praise, The Thrill of Competition? The idea of working for free and giving away my images for nothing, never really piqued my interest. Scuffling for nickels and dime on Microstock is degrading enough.
Are you saying with Getty buying Unsplash, they are actually going to pay something, even if it's 15%?
Well I could be the next modern van Gogh? Although I'm far to old to be a tragic early death, rising star. What I mean in reality is: Van Gogh died penniless in 1890 at the age of 37 And the money someone can make from Unsplash, they could also die penniless. 
The first was about Unsplash - cutting into sales at the bottom end (or more pressure to lower prices). The second was about Getty as a whole - No sign that they will pay over 15% to general suppliers, so I have no real interest in supplying them other than keeping a general eye on them in case they do more to ruin the industry or actually do something good to make me want to contribute.
232
« on: February 14, 2022, 16:23 »
I thought the line about unsplash serving the semi-professional creators was cute.
I doubt they will be paying any more than 15% so they won't be getting new content from me.
233
« on: February 11, 2022, 13:25 »
Thanks for the info and analysis.
I think that last column pretty much sums things up. Sad what has happened. I guess the slower growth in new contributors might be the result in the lower amounts to contributors. It will be interesting to see if that number keeps dropping. I am guessing it won't ever go down unless SS is more honest about how they report contributors than I suspect they are.
234
« on: February 09, 2022, 13:09 »
I look at other people's keywords, and sometimes I find a good one I missed, but usually I am just overwhelmed by the amount of poor keywording or outright spam. I guess that is what the sites should expect for pennies, but it is still sad.
235
« on: February 08, 2022, 20:00 »
Back when I cared about uploading to SS and SS cared about paying me I had a folder of SS rejects that I didn't agree with. Every submission I would include a few from that folder that it had been a while (at least a month) and they almost always were accepted. That was probably before the AI that would reject a speaker and floppy disk because they looked like a wallet...
If you could get on page one of the 1 word popular searches it would be worthy. But fighting the sliced tomato fight now is probably not worth it (and yes, I had isolated sliced tomatoes in my port, and they did sell).
Keyword spam is another issue entirely, I am amazed none of the sites have even made half-hearted attempts to fix it. For eg- look at the top page of the top 1000 search terms and drop the hammer on any obvious spammed pics.
236
« on: February 07, 2022, 11:45 »
In all fairness to Alamy, in January the lowest sale I got was $1.20 (for me, $3 gross) average sale for me was a little below $25 and they were my highest earner for the month. Plus I got another 26.7 ASCRL payment.
I will definitely complain about the drop from 50% to 60% and even lower for distributor sales and I will complain even more about getting pennies for sales to China (or anywhere else) and I think the 20% is even crappier (but I made enough in January to avoid that for this year), but they also deliver some bigger priced sales and those are what matter. SS used to deliver those, but I think I made more bigger sales on Alamy in January than I did at SS from 2018 until I turned them off after the ~50% drop in RPD and RPI.
Like most of the business I think they are moving in the wrong direction, but they haven't gone as far in that direction as some places with initials like SS and IS/Getty.
I do agree that the super low sales - especially from so called distributors are pointless as far as contributors are concerned and I wish they wouldn't pursue those "exciting" opportunities but at the end of the day the bigger sales are what matters, and although they are not very steady at Alamy, at least for me they deliver them more often than anyone else does, at least since 2016 or so.
237
« on: January 30, 2022, 16:53 »
The search placement is almost everything for sales of common easy subjects. Sure, you need a good enough image, but that is within the capabilities of almost every producer. What it takes to get onto the first page, or even the first few lines is a much more complex subject and you can endlessly try to game the system, but you probably don't know what all goes into the sauce and even if you did it might change or be something you can't control or can only somewhat control (like location based parameters).
For about 5 years I had an image almost always on the top line of the search for a common 1 word search on SS. It sold about once a day. One day they changed something in the search and I couldn't find it going back 10 or more pages. Eventually it moved back up to somewhere in the page 5-10 range, but sales were never the same (more like once a month). When I uploaded it SS had an indexing glitch right after it was indexed and no new images were indexed for a few days - so it was on the first line of newest first and got enough sales there to put it on page one where it stayed until it wasn't. Obviously that isn't something I can repeat or count on ever happening again, especially for a subject with over 11,000 pages of results. It certainly would be worth taking pics of all the things that they say not to bother photographing if you could be on page 1 of the search for them though - flowers, sliced foods, pets, sunsets, you name it.
238
« on: January 30, 2022, 16:28 »
Thank you for your kind replies.
I counted my sales of a certain time span. The average was 6.8$ per sale which is much lower than it used to be 2 years ago, when if was 18.4$. Last year was similar to now. From 45 sales 13 were the 0.25$ ones. I know I said it was more than that, but I was mistaken. There are many under 3 dollars, though. The highest one was 35$.
I could say all is good as long as I sell more files, but the question is: will the customers stop paying more at other places because of Shutterstock or not?
more likely the other places will lower prices to compete with SS.
239
« on: January 25, 2022, 12:12 »
I guess if you shot in a cold place (outside in the winter or a walk in freezer) or very dry air you might not get the condensation either. Of course you might have other issues to deal with.
240
« on: January 24, 2022, 12:40 »
If a January reset is equitable and improves motivation think how much better one every month would be.
241
« on: January 22, 2022, 12:31 »
Just had a look at my photo that has earned me the most in one sale (a swan head macro for $52) and was told by Shutterstock that its popularity is 'high' and that it is 'frequently used'.
LOL. It's only sold 3 times.
It's extraordinary that Sstock hasn't yet seen fit to sort out this misleading information.
Thanks for sharing that. That's interesting about only 3 downloads. I am starting to think now whether the ratings are based on dollars earned?
I just looked through my list and picked out an image that also only sold 3 times, for a total of $41.49. It says popularity "none" and "never used".
Another image that sold 3 times for a total of only 8.60$ has popularity "high" and "high usage".
This rating is all a mistery to me.
Neither download times nor dollars earned seem to be the main factor. Maybe downloads per time? Like an image that sold 3 times within 3 months will get a better rating than an image that sold 3 times within 3 years? Though, if you ask me, no image that only sold 3 times should be labeled with "high usage", regardless of any other factors, just like no image that has ever sold should be labeled "never used". It's both wrong and misleading to the customer.
for a long time search placement was some combination of sales/time with a boost early on, and perhaps an increasing penalty as time went on. Then they decided as a technology company that was too simple and shook everything up and now it doesn't really make any sense. I wonder if they even really know what is going on with it anymore.
242
« on: January 21, 2022, 15:12 »
Ok. Thanks Mat.
Get Microstockr, and you'll have all these missing stats and more, not only for AS but for all your microstock sites.
Really? $5.99 a month to read the stats on Adobe? I hope that Mat has been lobbying to get us some decent lifetime earnings details for images. It just seems silly to have to go 13 months at a time and collect things on our own. For all the things that Adobe does right, the information about our earnings and assets performance is lacking.
This is why representatives from most of the agencies never come here, or stopped after a small number of visits. People like you who find something wrong with everything. And when they do try to answer you find something wrong with that too? Mat has been here many times before and over many years. The least people here could do is act like adults and a little bit professional?
(neh, just messing with you Pete:) )
I don't see this as an attack on Mat or anything else.
I see it just like Pete as quite strange that an agency with such technical know-how is not able to provide a reasonable statistic or an app - as it is obviously desired by most users.
Especially when it is something that they used to have and removed.
243
« on: January 21, 2022, 12:19 »
I too have been opted out of novel use for as long as I was aware of it (before I ever had a sale on Alamy I think). I got these sales. And no - 4 cent sales are not a market I want to make any inroads into.
244
« on: January 14, 2022, 21:09 »
Thanks for coming here and talking too us. I still think you need to have a floor on what people can sell our images at - and anything that gets us single digit cents is too low. Especially if a distributor isn't delivering any higher prices sales, as far as I'm concerned, the contributors and Alamy are better off without them.
In the interest of average sales over the last few years - all are rounded...
year gross avg sale my avg take per sale
2016 34 18
2017 78 36 a good year
2018 50.5 26.5
2019 44.5 20
2020 39 17
2021 20 9
That said, I did make slightly more in 2021 than in 2020, but it wasn't the $1.50 or whatever I made from the 4 cent sales that did it.
edited to add my take includes DACS and ASCRL and so on, so is higher than the actual sale number,
245
« on: January 13, 2022, 17:06 »
In fact I would say that SS designed it so that the bigger packages would be attractive to more buyers - instead of a 25/day limit, make it 750/month - or whatever, and who knows what secret under the table deals they have going on. They don't really care how many are available in the subscription, they know most places won't use anywhere near the total and all they have to pay is .10 each - at least until they feel the need to lower what they pay us. I would even say that a lot of the reason they changed the terms was so that they could charge less and still make plenty of $.
Wait for the first quarter earnings report to see what %age they are actually paying out overall. My guess is pretty low.
246
« on: January 12, 2022, 16:06 »
Are OODs also dependant on levels?
Yes, all sales are.
Yes, right, that's the point. For subs, levels are nearly irrelevant, but for other sales where we get commissions, levels make a difference.
I guess this needs to be posted again?
Where the trick is with the Subs is, most of the time, they are paying us more than the percentage, because there's a 10 minimum, and the price of the download is so low, that they have to give us more. Everything in the pink we get more money than the level percentage would have earned.
Example of a level 3 person and a sub from a 350 pack. The buyer pays 39 cents, level 3 gets 25% which would be .0975 so SSTK raises it to 10 cents. A level 1 same license sale, at 15% would earn us .0585 which forces SSTK to elevate the amount to 10 cents.
Please accept this as humor, but that means SSTK is losing money on every sale, when they have to pay us more than our promised commission, because of the guaranteed minimum. I feel so sad for their loss.
However if they charge a real value price for a download, then we get the level percentage.
And just think, the more 10c sales anyone gets, the faster we rise into a higher level! Exciting? Where we still get 10 cents, except the rare OD, SO and EL licenses.
Going for a higher level
What we really get for sub downloads
I think with the subs you have to remember that almost nobody uses their entire subscription. That is why back in the day when SS raised prices they would wait a month or 2 to see what the rates were and then have the new tiers (or whatever it was that got us to .25,.... to .38 per sub download. You better believe they weren't losing money even if they would have had the subscribers downloaded all they were allowed to. By changing things now they can charge less and still make a killing paying out .10 (or whatever pittance higher).
247
« on: January 11, 2022, 16:33 »
Sales through Alamy gets you 40% of gross, distributor sales gets you 30% of gross, so I you got 30% thats distributor sale in my opinion.
Yes and I made an example, but: 15 cents +(- .045) +(- .06) = +.045 commission - also makes me see that the .045 in the front is rounded up to .05 and the .045 for the contributor is rounded down to .04 ? They just picked up a half cent that way. Slick accounting in their favor?
it's actually 60% For Alamy of whatever is left after Distributor commission not 50%
Show me that math I can't see how you got 60%
15 x .4 = 6 cents to distributor leaving 9 9 x .6 = 5.4 they rounded down to 5 leaving 4 for me
248
« on: January 10, 2022, 14:23 »
But in the interest of fairness, I must point out that so far this year Alamy is far ahead with 3 sales for which I will get $86.11 if I did my math right (it was so much easier when it was 50/50)
Well done, I've just had my second sale of the year, taking my total net to $2.49.
BTW, (in case you don't know, and if you do know, it might help someone else) you can see what you've netted for each sale on the 'Net Revenue Sales Report', which is downloadable from your homepage via the 'Download Sales Report' button.
Thanks, that is helpful once you check the right boxes. I actually didn't get that much from my 3 sales, there was $26.70 in ASCRL Nov 2021 payment included too. Still better than the sales at the end of December 2021. I suspect that the official answer is that is what you get ($.04 per sale). Hopefully behind the scenes they are annoyed they are so low and do something to put a floor on sales. The way the market is going I wouldn't put any money on it though up to a hundred sales for an individual is only $4 but 10,000 for Alamy is $600. I also think that taking 80% from the sales for the ports that they are unable to sell well is lame. Another reason why I wouldn't recommend getting into this business anymore. The percentage of low sales is much less than SS, but the overall number of sales is much much less and I went years without a sale over $30 (for me) at SS. It is up to everyone to decide how much they are willing to put up with before they stop uploading or pull their ports entirely. For a long while I made much much more at SS than Alamy, I think it wasn't far off by 2019 - more because SS came down so much and Alamy didn't fall as much.
249
« on: January 10, 2022, 11:21 »
I got a usual pap response from my e-mail asking about them and if there was a way to avoid sales that low...
"These sales were made through one of our Distributors and theyll charge what they think to be a competitive price in their market. Its in everyones interest to get the highest price for each sale as the money is split three ways, but sometimes these prices look small when compared with similar licenses in the UK & US.
Remember these are customers we wouldnt normally reach as its a sale through our Distribution scheme and an Additional Revenue Option.
You can only opt out or remove countries in April of every year; this is so we can give our distributors a consistent collection."
But in the interest of fairness, I must point out that so far this year Alamy is far ahead with 3 sales for which I will get $86.11 if I did my math right (it was so much easier when it was 50/50)
250
« on: January 05, 2022, 20:02 »
I sent the "close account" request yesterday - how long till they even respond with the hoops I'll have to jump through?
I received a reply from support this morning. Other than asking if there was anything they could do to persuade me to stay, there were no hoops to jump through 
I hope you told them 50/50 split and no sales under X amount, where X >$1
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