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Messages - Roscoe
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226
« on: March 30, 2022, 02:38 »
At this stage, as my earnings have decreased so much I have almost nothing to lose.
I guess they (most of the agencies) have us (most of the contributors) where they want us to be.
227
« on: March 30, 2022, 02:19 »
My personal philosophy is to use as many RELEVANT keywords as I can think of. Where we may differ is how I define the term relevant. The word needs to directly apply to the asset being indexed. When you get too abstract is where you can do more harm than good. At Adobe Stock, as most of you know by now, the first 10 keywords you list have the dominant share of impact in search placement. With keywords 11-49, the impact is negligible. The advice we always give is that 15-25 keywords is typically considered the sweet spot. Mosts assets can be described with 25 words or less, but some assets are far more complex and require more. If you can come up with 49 relevant keywords to describe your content, I don't see any harm in doing so. If however, you are stretching the imagination to come up with words that are iffy in the relevance department, you could be hurting yourself. If, for example you have a picture of a banana and you add the keyword apple, you aren't going to trick a customer into buying the photo if they are looking for an apple photo. If your banana shot appears in search, the customer won't click it so the system will assume this is not a sellable image and will push it a bit deeper into search results. The more that happens, the deeper into the later pages of search the image goes, the likelihood of sales happening from people actually looking for images of bananas diminishes.
You can't list more than 49 keywords at Adobe Stock. If you upload an image with 60 keywords embedded, the system cuts it off at 49 and the remaining 11 keywords are simply removed without notification. This is not ideal for anyone so you must be disciplined in that regard.
As far as the question about the title goes, you can list up to 200 characters in the title but we generally say the sweet spot is around 70. Again, no need to be overly strict about this, just use common sense and write out an accurate, descriptive title that reads like a sentence. If an image was captured of me at this exact moment in time I would title the photo "Middle aged bald man with beard typing on laptop computer keyboard." I would then be sure to include the words "bald, man, beard, typing, laptop, computer, keyboard" in my top ten keywords. Words that are listed in the title AND the top ten keywords are supercharged in search.
Everything else beyond that is gravy.
-Mat Hayward
Thanks Mat. Two things: Thanks for your contribution, on this topic and on others. Really appreciated. You (and by you, Adobe) lead by example. I can only wish for other agencies doing the same. Secondly: can I ask you what your philosophy is on long tail keywords? How to use them and how to avoid keyword spamming which could negatively affect the ranking of content? Let me give you some examples to clarify the question. For instance: blue sky. Clear for me this is a long tail keyword, as the color blue only affects the sky, and has no other relation to subjects in the image. It get's more difficult or complicated when using for instance location names. For instance: locations with Saint in it, which is often abbreviated as St. Or locations with hyphens. Locations which are well known both in native as in English language, or locations which are known by their official name and local slangs. Different buyers will probably use different search strings to find these images or videos. So I'm a bit puzzled: should we use all possible naming conventions as different long tail keywords? Or just add all possibilities as single keywords. My personal take on this depends on the situation, and I mostly use a combination of both. Meaning main and unique part of the location as a single keyword, possible abbreviations, slangs or hyphens as long tail keywords. Not sure it's the right strategy, as it might become close to spam, depending on how the algorithm deals with it. I gave locations as an example, but of course there are a lot of other different use cases. Easter bunny for instance, which I would always tag as a long tail keyword.
228
« on: March 30, 2022, 01:52 »
I don't have any for sale there anymore, but back in the day I remember from time to time images would disappear - usually because they decided on a new restriction on what could be sold based on intellectual property. So at some point they got rid of a bunch of vehicle images. Good luck figuring out which images they were out of ~8000 though.
Would be my estimated guess too: deletion of images that shouldn't have been accepted in the first place. Don't have disappearing images on Shutterstock (yet?) but I had iStock/Getty doing it a few months back.
229
« on: March 25, 2022, 06:02 »
I think there's a difference between primary keywords that exactly describe the subject and descriptive, secondary keywords, that describe the situation, emotions or shooting conditions.
I try to be as accurate and relevant as possible with my primary keywords. These are main keywords people are looking, so it's worth your time to think them through carefully.
Most of the times, this means 3 to 5 keywords. Less is more indeed. Adding less relevant or wrong keywords here will hurt your sales, as it shows up in the search results without anybody clicking on it.
I fill the rest, secondary keywords, with relevant keywords that describe the situation or shooting conditions as good as possible.
Example: no people, selective focus, side view, sunny, overcast ... to name some very common ones.
Nobody will actually search for secondary keywords alone, but buyers use them to help them to get a better focused search result.
I guess, when agencies tell you to maximize your keywords, they actually mean adding as much as possible relevant secondary, descriptive keywords.
230
« on: March 23, 2022, 14:36 »
I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a... fraid.
Real question is: How to perform lobotomy on SS 9000?
That would require quite a solar storm I guess. And that's not gonna happen. So let's keep it realistic: How to mislead SS 9000? I would say: work with it and let it do it's dirty evil tricks: rejecting what it thinks to be perfectly fine images, and accepting what it thinks to be rubbish. Feed it great images, but downsize them to the minimum while going soft of the focus. Still perfectly usable for web publishing at 10 cents a pop.
231
« on: March 23, 2022, 14:25 »
I see the problem as it always has been and will be. Mat makes a good point, less drama and adulteration leaves the buyers more options. But here's the other side. Some buyers want ready to use images. Some don't know how to make their own adjustments. Some want fast and good, so they can spend time on something else, like designs and layouts.
There's room for both and there is no perfect answer to the question, edit heavily or edit moderately. The answer isn't either or, it's something of both.
Personally I like the less finished, I try to not have over saturated images. But as Ralf and others can see, some of the best selling are just that. Bright images, bright colors, sharp and higher contrast sell best, but not everything is like that and not every buyer wants that.
This is sort of like the agencies always claiming they want authentic content with real people in real situations. The truth is they mostly want real people only if they look like models and real situations only if they look like model houses or movie sets.
I think, to summarize, it comes down to this: buyers want an image that comes as close as possible to reality under perfect conditions. For travel, landscape and nature related stuff, I guess it still means dramatic skies, nice sunsets, bright blue skies, vivid colors, crisp architecture, frozen action of animals doing their thing against a dramatic backdrop. You get the point. Not overly processed and filtered, but still pretty darn great compared to what you will probably see when you go there yourself. Same for people, interiors, objects, food, or other topics. Most of the buyers will still go for the great looking cinematic shot, but with a touch of reality. Staged nonchalance I would call it. I mean: You can be like this person in the picture too (but you probably won't because the morning rush ruined your mood). Your living room can look like this (but it probably won't because your cat uses the furniture as a scratching poles). Your dinner can look like this (but it probably won't because the kids were hungry and you casually threw a plate before it was properly cooked) Authenticity is not the same as random snapshots. Far from. It's about nailing a near-perfect reality, avoiding fakeness and situations that are completely unachievable in a real world. Just my 2 cents. I can be wrong.
232
« on: March 23, 2022, 01:57 »
They have a Hal 9000 system doing reviews now.
This one genuinely made me laugh. The topic of Shutterstock rejections has been discussed to death, and the general consensus is that it's ridiculous. Some people still claim they have no rejections at all... well, they must have a magic trick. Every now and then I keep trying because I feel like an image really has sales potential or it has sold on other platforms. Had to upload my bestseller 3 times before it got accepted and now it is... well, my bestseller. Another thing that seems to mitigate the problem is downsizing to 5MP. At 10 cents per sale that's still 4MP too much. All in all very time consuming, and for most of the images not worth the effort if you ask me. Just fire and forget. I found some old images last week from a vacation in Portugal in 2009. Shot with a Panasonic Lumix FX33 if I'm not mistaken. They were bad. I mean the images. The vacation was great actually. Snapshots with a point and shoot standard end consumer camera and looking at the images, it's clear that I had no idea of what I was doing. But you know what? Screw it. I uploaded a few shots which I think are still half-useful. Even did some post-processing on those old dusty jpg's. BAM. All accepted by Shutterstock's evil Hal 9000.
233
« on: March 22, 2022, 03:31 »
I have discussed this extensively with our moderation team and when I asked what was the most common reason for rejection, there was exactly zero hesitation before I received the answer "oversaturation." Again, less is more. I use the vibrance slider almost exclusively in LRC and almost never the saturation slider for this reason. I do like to replace the sky from time to time, but as noted here, it should look like it belongs.
-Mat Hayward
This is golden
Yes, and this is what we are told by other professionals too, and in general, I support this point of view. Yet, coming back to one of the reasons Ralf started this thread: If you look at landscape pictures for example, the bestsellers are completely oversaturated by the colors and partly overworked beyond recognition - but they are bestsellers. And this is also my experience. A clean and rather flat image has very limited chances of selling in a competitive market. Maybe we're all having different standards of what a highly processed image is, because sure, there are gradations, and is what I'm doing (and bestsellers look like) considered as "normal or acceptable" retouching. Edit: when I look at my landscape bestsellers: these are all very vivid images, rich contrast, quite some drama every now and then. And I definitely have rather flat images in my portfolio too, from times where I refused to sell myself out to overly processed imagery. I changed my mind, because the more realistic shots rarely sell, unless I have no competition.
234
« on: March 22, 2022, 03:18 »
What I did see: a lot of 1,2 cent (yes that's right, I triplechecked) sales from China.
Does anyone know what the deal is here?
The same for me. What's going on?
As ShadySue mentioned earlier in the thread: These are (always?/usually?) through a Chinese 'partner' FotoPress.
Luckily for me, for some reason these Chinese buyers don't like my work, or my rpd would be even lower than it is now. I can't really recall seeing so much nanosales from China in one month. I got them in the past, but they were rather anecdotal.
235
« on: March 20, 2022, 16:43 »
This is from bosphorus_tr 
Marry christmas design tree vector illustration and balloons.
Lol. What a joke. Love it how the Shutterstock watermark blends in perfectly. Marry Shutterstock, Christmas!
236
« on: March 20, 2022, 16:32 »
I'm guilty of doing split toning, dramatizing skies (sky replacement when I'm drunk), dodge and burn and using the saturation slider.
At least, for landscapes and travel related stuff, which is quite some part of my portfolio.
I try to not overdo it, but I definitely want to have a highly appealing image, yes.
I found it out the hard way. Travel related buyers want to sell a dream, not reality.
My editorials are kept to basic editing. Maybe adding a slightly amount of punch with the contrast or saturation slider, and some highlight dimming (I tend to slightly overexpose rather than underexpose) but that's about it.
I don't spend hours of editing on removing brands or people, I feel like it isn't worth my time, as the image might not sell all.
So those shots get uploaded as editorial. But I do try to frame shots avoiding brands or people. Wherever realistically possible.
Edit: the shots of Dinant you showed are not far off of how I would do it by the way.
Maybe I would have warmed them up just a tiny bit while being a bit softer on the blue (seems a bit harsh?), but hey, that's just personal taste.
And if it sells... well, then you did the right thing!
Roscoe, you don't have to feel guilty, my sky is replaced too.
What I'm getting at is that I find the bestsellers on my subject for my taste horribly overworked. But they are selling.
Is that really better:
Yes, I have the same feeling regarding overprocessing. Sometimes I think: Djeez, I took it too far. This won't even fly through the approval process. But then it did, and then it sells. So there's that. I have a sky replacement shot published in Lonely Planet. Whooops.
237
« on: March 20, 2022, 16:27 »
Ha Ha, there's the trick question of the month or maybe the last decade? I've read some really intelligent answers here and I'm still not sure if I know what Connect sales actually are. Seems like some kind of catch-all term for partners, super subs, API, mystery contracts and something about "fees", plus continuing use.
Isn't it some weird pay per view kind-a-thing for blog posts or ads? Anyhow, I really don't care about connect sales. It's like your boss telling you: hey nice work man, got a surprise for you. Here's ONE free cinema ticket. *shrugs schoulders* But! April is coming up, and if I'm not mistaken, that's a big big month for Connect sales. I don't know what's the deal or how it works, but once in a year, in spring (April or was it May?) connect sales go through the roof and they pay you ... I don't know, some aggregated sales of last year? So better call your bank and tell them to make sure all that money fits in the account you have. 
238
« on: March 20, 2022, 16:20 »
These are (always?/usually?) through a Chinese 'partner' FotoPress.
Luckily for me, for some reason these Chinese buyers don't like my work, or my rpd would be even lower than it is now.
Thanks! Don't know about FotoPress. It's the first time I see so much sales from China, and at such a low commission. I mean, I had sales from China before, and they (as far as I can remember) were always at very low commission rates, but in February, someone must have looked at my port and just bought a few dozen of images at 1,2 cents. Ugh!
239
« on: March 20, 2022, 16:10 »
I'm guilty of doing split toning, dramatizing skies (sky replacement when I'm drunk), dodge and burn and using the saturation slider.
At least, for landscapes and travel related stuff, which is quite some part of my portfolio.
I try to not overdo it, but I definitely want to have a highly appealing image, yes.
I found it out the hard way. Travel related buyers want to sell a dream, not reality.
My editorials are kept to basic editing. Maybe adding a slightly amount of punch with the contrast or saturation slider, and some highlight dimming (I tend to slightly overexpose rather than underexpose) but that's about it.
I don't spend hours of editing on removing brands or people, I feel like it isn't worth my time, as the image might not sell all.
So those shots get uploaded as editorial. But I do try to frame shots avoiding brands or people. Wherever realistically possible.
Edit: the shots of Dinant you showed are not far off of how I would do it by the way.
Maybe I would have warmed them up just a tiny bit while being a bit softer on the blue (seems a bit harsh?), but hey, that's just personal taste.
And if it sells... well, then you did the right thing!
240
« on: March 20, 2022, 02:47 »
Got a small portfolio there. uploading to twenty20 they do not read metadata, so it is manual typing, only allow 10 keywords per image. Even with that small portrfolio i have made at least one sale per month, and up to 10 sales per month. No matter the amout of sales I always get 1 dollar. One dollar for one image is fine with me, but one dollar for 10 images is just the same as shitterstuck. I do not uploa more to that site, but keep observing.
Yap, time consuming and very low return,I mean very lowwwwww .....
It's worth saying.. They have an App and usually about 5 competitions a week with monetary prizes. I've won a couple of prizes and it's returned me a few hundred dollars for probably about 30 competitions that I've submitted a photo to. Top 10% also get a prize share too I think, I got a portion of the pool the other day.
Literally tap, select photo from library (or upload), submit and that's it.
Uploaded a couple of (non-exclusive) images there which are pending review for months now. I guess they never will be reviewed. I also participated in a few competitions or challenges, not sure how they call it, and got some "honors" saying the image ended up in the top 10% (some of them in the top 4% to be precise) but I can't recall seeing any commissions for that. Without putting too much effort in it: I really can't figure out how it works.
241
« on: March 20, 2022, 02:34 »
Fairly good month at iStock. They are definitely performing way better than last year (at least for me).
What I did see: a lot of 1,2 cent (yes that's right, I triplechecked) sales from China.
Does anyone know what the deal is here?
242
« on: March 15, 2022, 03:43 »
Actually I've seen a change and more rejections, which look more and more like SS rejections for stupid AI reasons. Focus? Downsize and they pass.
Two like this and I don't really feel hurt: Limited Commercial Value: Low likelihood of generating sales based on our downloads and profitability data. They can take or leave what they want.
Two like this, and same as SS which doesn't know focus from a leaf, grass, sand, water or a number of other subjects. Dumbots on duty.
Rejected for focus?
I'm only using WS for Alamy, Extra Channels (123RF and ?) P5 and DP now. Just an added benefit.
My main image agencies are still all mine. AS and SS. Just added Vectorstock and I have my fingers crossed. 
Yes, Wirestock became stricter, with nonsense rejections as a side-effect. Reuploads fly through very often. Due to a bugs it's also impossible to delete rejected images, so it all looks pretty messy. I have a bunch of pre-keyworded images in review for two months now. They don't even push the forward button. Some other images are reviewed and forwarded without issue. Extra Channels is indeed claimed to be specific images that get handpicked and uploaded to 123RF or other agencies they have some sort of deal with. Transparency? None. Just "trust" them. No idea what their plan is, but it all looks pretty messy at Wirestock. Seeing it as added benefit is the right strategy, but I'd advise to not go full in on them, and certainly keep the major sites under your own control!
243
« on: March 15, 2022, 03:36 »
Same issue here: approved images do not appear in my image portfolio.
244
« on: March 14, 2022, 03:08 »
The trend seems to continue: amount of sales relatively fine (slight drop but not dramatic), while RPD really suffers from 10 cent subscription trains while SOD's are missing.
On the positive note: Adobe Stock still holds strong and is growing and what surprises me the most is iStock/Getty.
I'm seeing a very significant rise in sales and interactions for my portfolio there.
245
« on: March 14, 2022, 02:56 »
I can understand that the are lazy to keyword stuff they might think does not sell well, but that is and cannot be their mission! There should be not that big difference between keyworded stuff and easy submitted stuff.
There is a difference between keyworded images and easy submissions, and it's also justified. Wirestock is a private company who's mission is not to keyword crapstock with very little sales potential and upload that to agencies. Their mission is to make money for themselves. Period. So they have the right to reject images with no commercial value and avoid wasting time on them. It's a different story for pre-keyworded content that gets uploaded. They still have the right to reject it (and actually, every now and then they do!) but as it is just a matter of forwarding it to agencies, they can be less strict on that content. So there is a difference, and it's fully justified if you ask me.
246
« on: March 04, 2022, 05:49 »
You are the one that is delusional. The same thing happened to Getty/Istock they were the absolute leaders in selling stock when SS was just I tiny blob in the radar. They have fallen to 3 position...
Please tell me you're not basing the financial performance of stock companies on a monthly poll, on a forum (that while containing about 50,000 members, probably less than 10% are active) that some people fill in, some people never fill in and some people fill in intermittently?
Perhaps the survey results are not entirely accurate because too few contributors are participating. And because no one can say for sure whether all contributors enter correct numbers there.
But: In the past shutterstock was always on position 1. Now AS is on position 1. I assume that at least this position swap is correct and realistic.
It applies to me anyway. For years shutterstock was ahead, now it is AS. And that's not because AS has improved so much, but because shutterstock has deteriorated so much.
The screenshot shows the problem in direct comparison. There are too few large SODs coming in at shutterstock. And they are just not enough to take in what is coming in at AS. I have more downloads at shutterstock than at AS, but they don't bring in anything.
3,30 vs. 21,90 for the last 20 sales.
I'm having the same experience Wilm. Amount of sales at Shutterstock is fine for this time of the year for my portfolio, but SOD's are lacking and the vast majority are cheap subscription sales in the 10-20 $cent range, making my RPD plummet to an all time low at Shutterstock. That brings Adobe and iStock on top of the table with Wirestock (I contribute to Adobe Editorial and Alamy over them) on number three. Never expected iStock to be in that position, and certainly not at 15% commission rates. Yet there they are for three months in a row best or second best earner. We don't have the sales report from February yet, but my amount of sales in February on iStock looks promising. The growth at iStock and Adobe compensates for the shrinking Shutterstock earnings.
247
« on: March 04, 2022, 02:28 »
Obviously none of the current sanctions.
How about doing the right thing?
Not strong on politics or economics here, but I think we all overestimate the impact of the sanctions. I get regular downloads from Russia too, subscriptions, which are probably already paid for before the sanctions and SWIFT ban came into action. When money talks, the right thing has to shut up. Unfortunately.
248
« on: March 02, 2022, 04:57 »
I'm not big on filters. Some people just take a good image and throw some filter on it and Oh Wow, look at that. Same as the other two, a good choice of a filer that is appropriate for the subject, is a good idea.
My personal approach on this: I do creative editing (yes, filters) on many of my images in highly saturated and competitive area's. I want it to stand out and be ready-to-go for those who prefer having a custom edited image. I keep most of my images neat and clean on less saturated and competitive topics. Or editorial, of course. Does it work? Well, they do sell despite fierce competition. Admittedly, some more than others. One of those images, classic orange/blue split-toned, vignetted (Yes, I know!) dodge-burn landscape image in a highly competitive area is selling on daily basis on Shutterstock, found with very generic keywords, and does relatively well on other agencies too. Is it the right strategy? I don't know for sure, but I'm willing to believe that submitting those images neat and clean would not result in the same amount of sales I'm getting now.
249
« on: March 02, 2022, 03:38 »
I experimented with long tail keywords some time back, but couldn't really notice any difference in sales. So I - generally - don't use them, except for keywords that really belong together and don't make sense in having them separated. No people or blue sky for instance.
250
« on: February 26, 2022, 02:38 »
I had to chase up the sale - saw the image in use but no sale in my list.
Can I ask you how you do that Jo Ann? I mean, if I understand it correctly, you saw the image in use, credited on your name via Alamy, but did not see the sale in your report? I assume you use Google search alerts, but matching new entries with sales reports is still a lot of work? Maybe not for Alamy, as sales are rather slow, but if you do this for all agencies... Impossible to keep track I would say. Unless I'm missing something here.
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