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Messages - Adeptris
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26
« on: January 02, 2010, 04:46 »
@ Keith, Good luck for the future to all that were at Zym, and with any other ventures.
@ FD, put your generic images on microstock, treat your travel shots as 'niche', self promote and put them with macro agencies like Alamy, if they are not there at $0.25 the publishers will have to find them and pay the rate for the right image.
The main problem with microstock is the artists not understanding the market and the value of each asset, and uploading everything everywhere, the question each artist needs to ask is "what is the availability of images with this content and where best to place it", handshakes and headsets to microstock, the local interest images that a travel magazine or local company would use, send them to a specialist or macrostock agency and self promote.
The microstock market was and is still dominated by the established big agencies, any new websites cannot compete with them on price and attract enough buyers to make it pay, contributing artists should avoid these new sites unless they have a specialist market or an existing customer base, in the future look only to the big sites for global generic micro content images, using the better paying microstock, niche and specialist sites for other travel and more artistic content that is not on the big sites.
27
« on: December 27, 2009, 11:31 »
Professional Buyers would be hard to attract away from existing suppliers and the general 'search found' buyers do not care who runs a stock image website, photographers, plumbers or monkeys, they are interested in the buying and search experience, as few hoops as possible to get the image and the cheapest package. The co-op that might survive would be by invitation like FD-Amateur wrote, with a caveat of unique and niche images, a way in or foothold in the specialist marketplace, images that are so unique you cannot purchase them from any other stock sites general search. We have seen many proposals and many good idea's 'bang and fizzle' on this forum, but none have built the required momentum to succeed, because the artists of stock images come from diverse experiences, high earners, low earner, large portfolio's, small portfolio's, part-time, full time, hobbyist etc: There have been many new offerings over the last two years, some embraced by the artists because of the nice upload, none have taken the market by storm, and it would require a new model, markets and method of delivery for any success. 'Microstock Co-Op For and By Photographers' is not enough to bring the artists or buyers flooding in, as a high percentage of nothing is still nothing! David 
28
« on: December 20, 2009, 06:00 »
I just looked at the price in my account - would be 107$ for 12 months to renew. I have the platinum package which means is pretty much loaded with everything. Of which I am using... somewhere around 1% I guess.
Anyway, the point was - would smugsmug be a viable alternative? I need to build the website fast, to have it promoted, to have a shopping cart based on paypal and to do all these without wasting too much time or programming it myself (I'm having enough of this at my main job).
Only you have the answer, what type of website do you need, how much marketing are you prepared to do, can you transfer your old domain name to SmugMug, how much non photographer traffic can you send to your website? It is not just a matter of setting up SmugMug and the buyers will come, you said "to have it promoted" who is doing the promotion, SmugMug only provide the software they do not market your images for you, I read that they add 700000 images a month and have over 7bn images stored, in 2006 they were uploading 10tb of images a month, so they cannot promote portfolios, their SEO prefixes with SmugMug/Photographer name. If you have images that may sell as prints and you can market them then SmugMug might work for you, to get any value from SmugMug you need to drive the traffic yourself and not rely on casual browsers or search results for general images, if you have a niche market, cover events or local interest subjects and will market the website then it is a good move, if you just want a portfolio website then there are many cheaper options like ClickPic and many other Portfolio websites. As already said shared hosting is very cheap, a bit of space, a portfolio template, upload and online, many ISP will have self installing software like gallery2, Joomla, wordpress etc: so you are paying to much, the key is what do you really need and how will you market your portfolio. Have a read of this Microsock Insider post, and some of the links there might help you. Regards David
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« on: December 10, 2009, 11:08 »
I'm still fighting the first one !! I think !? 
Try to read your spam inbox. No not the Nigerian banker nor the mortgage enlargements. It starts with V and it's blue.
Found it, starts with V and blue, so the first thing to go is the desire to Travel? Got-it
30
« on: December 10, 2009, 05:06 »
Intellectual Property
Copyright legislation is part of the wider body of law known as intellectual property. The term intellectual property refers broadly to the creations of the human mind. Intellectual property rights protect the interests of creators by giving them property rights over their creations. Unlike protection of inventions, copyright law protects only the form of expression of ideas, not the ideas themselves. The creativity protected by copyright law is creativity in the choice and arrangement of words, musical notes, colors and shapes. So copyright law protects the owner of property rights against those who copy or otherwise take and use the form in which the original work was expressed by the author. Since the legal protection of literary and artistic works under copyright, by contrast, prevents only unauthorized use of the expressions of ideas Quotes from here: Understanding Copyright and Related RightsIn short if you copied the original artists 'expressions of ideas' then you violated their copyright, so as said a handshake can not be IP protected as their is nothing original, there is nothing wrong in looking at other artists work for inspiration then using a number of inspirations to produce your own unique works that will identify you, but if the Photographer is know for a style of content or a particular image, if you then copy that and people could think that the work is from the original artist, you have infringed on their Intellectual Property. There are many iconic photographs where the photographer can be identified just by the content and style, you would not copy them, just because a photographer shoot stock does not mean they should not get the same respect and protection. Only you know how close your work was to the original, and you are correct not to link to or show this work, as public display could be a further infringement, it may be wise just to be happy that a Cease and desist route was chosen by the Photographer and not one of compensation, there are many that would have asked for a settlement. David 
31
« on: December 02, 2009, 03:36 »
In this case I don't get the point "I may never reach a payout" since they pay you each month no matter what you made, in other words there is no minimum needed for a payout.
Note: That is for PayPal payments not other payment methods.
32
« on: December 02, 2009, 03:31 »
Answered the last post on page one, missed the second page! David
33
« on: November 30, 2009, 08:24 »
"we arent here to compete against istock, shutter, or any other stock site."
What does that imply, or mean? I.M.O. and at a guess, the model is not to rip-off of the big microstock websites, and it looks like they are not trying to emulate the microstock business models of needing a large quantity of downloads to get a pay out. The3Dstudio are different in a few ways, as you set your own prices and the commission is set at 60% is much higher than other sites, the comision rate at the time you add your asset to the collection is set for life, but you will never get the sales volumes you get from the big microstock websites, when you do get a sale you get a fair return, it took me three times longer to reach a payout level on the big microstock websites compared to The3DStudio. If you look at what they are saying, you will never get the same volumes of downloads with them, I read a lot of posts on here where contributors to a new site have high hopes based on the look and feel of a site, expecting the new site to grow fast and take over from one of the big players, where all any new site can really expect to offer is to supplement your income from other sources and not replace them. The key is not to expect to much to soon, and have another look in a year or a few months time, organic customer growth takes some time, but it can happen. David
34
« on: November 28, 2009, 08:04 »
I promoted them as I had good sales, now they have a few hundred thousand more images my sales have flat-lined, one sale last month compared to 3 or 4 a month when I started, the buyers are there but with the new assets the dilution happens. As I have invested the time to upload and they have invested time as well, leaving my assets there for a year is no problem, if I was thinking about exclusive there would be no problem getting them taken down, as a new player in stock images they will need some time to sort out the search the collection and the buyers experience, to find the right market. David
35
« on: November 21, 2009, 03:40 »
David,
This thing about business vs social has been bugging me since letting DT hook my sales/uploads to Facebook. I could not see how that would benefit me. However, I had tinkered with creating a "Facebook Page" in the name of my website "WarrenPricePhotography" where I have a very popular Vintage Motocross Series of blogs and photos. My lack of technical skills discouraged me and I left it dangling.
My question is ... are you referring to that Facebook Page capability as Business vs Social? Is "Pages" what we are talking about linking to/between sites? ? Warren, It is about Networks, I.M.H.O. you have a good scenario to start with as you have a niche market, the non-photographer traffic coming to your website will be from searches and word of mouth, this is organic growth, so how to find and market to the people with a common interest that may want to purchase your assets. Advertising in specialist magazines and on specialist websites has a financial cost, where viral marketing through social and business networking has a cost of only time, so networking is a cheap form of marketing. This is an overview of the process to get started. Facebook: - Set-up your facebook page
- Add some interesting information about you and your services
- Add links to your Website, Twitter and Blog
- Go to the menu Friends > Find Friends
- Towards the bottom of the page there is a box 'Search for People', enter MotoCross and there are over 500 matches
- Select someone to add as a friend (See Note*)
- Now you can add more from the list Add as Friend > Send Request
- Now select Groups (Refine Search here to Location)
- Select and join these Groups
Note* The first friend you add a friend this will bring up the Captcha text, next to that is a link to verify, add your mobile number and you will get a text with a code add the code and you will not need to use the Captcha anymore. Many will accept as you have a common interest, they will have other 'facebook friends' that might be involved in motocross, event organisers, bloggers, riders, family, friends, pit crew, trainers, kit suppliers etc: They will find you on the friends of friends and will add you, I have little on my facebook apart from linking back to my websites, I have over 170 'Facebook Friends', these range from photographers, models, agencies, trainers, etc:, for me it is about my blog not my images, reaching as many people as possible when I have something to say, for an event or niche photographer it would be about reaching as many people to promote a specialist product or service. Twitter and Facebook have moved on from 'social to social' networking, businesses are finding these useful marketing tools for viral marketing, seed your network and watch it grow, many large companies leak 'thier next best thing' through social networking tools before going to market, NetworkedBlogs is an extention of facebook, bringing traffic to your blog and your blog readers to facebook! Many cannot see the worth of social networking and other can, on twitter Jack Hollingsworth has grown a following of 10000+ with the aim of providing photography related services, some of these tutorials and online seminars will be free, then others like e-books and photography tours will be monitised, giving a good balance with the free bits used as marketing for the monitised services, in the off-line world how much would it have cost 'PhotoJack' to reach over 10000 potential customers. David
36
« on: November 20, 2009, 18:05 »
0Thanks for the link, it looks like a new service, I have give it a go, nothing to lose, it links both ways if you add the widget to your blog it links back to facebook, and the other way from facebook to your blog. What use could it be is the question: If you are using facebook for Social to Social (S2S) keeping in touch with just family and friends etc:, then it is not much use as a business tool as you would not want shouts about the latest bit of kit mixed with a post about a family or friends social event. However if your facebook is used as a tool for sharing information on your stock 'Business' it could be a good tool, S2B or B2B networking is growing so it would depend on where you are currently getting the most connections, if your Blog has a good following then you need to consider if you want to connect your blog readers to your facebook, and likewise if you have many more 'stock business' connections on facebook then it could be a good tool to get you blog traffic and then readers, remembering that any facebook reader that links to your blog, the link will then be visible to their followers allowing greater networking. It really is a matter of looking at your existing networking and making a call. David
37
« on: November 06, 2009, 04:04 »
I do not use sites that are not transparent and have no price information on the website and only by email request, there are no examples I can see or minimum number of images they work with.
I wonder if the quote I get is inline with other users, or if I am going to get the hard sell, I recently emailed asking for a price for a domain I wanted, but the price was not within my budget, I had wasted my time and had to block a number of follow up sales emails from the site.
David 
38
« on: November 06, 2009, 04:02 »
I do not use sites that are not transparent and have no price information on the website and only by email request, there are no examples I can see. I wonder if the quote I get is inline with other users, or if I am going to get the hard sell, I recently emailed asking for a price for a domain I wanted, but the price was not within my budget, I had wasted my time and had to block a number of follow up sales emails from the site. David
39
« on: November 06, 2009, 02:59 »
That brings me around to the second part of the answer. After spending a year thinking "would this be a good stock shot" while I was driving, walking or doing just about anything.
>...
<...
I'm going to do what I enjoy and have fun. I was kidding myself and saying I'm shooting to sell things for microstock. I wasn't really doing that.
>...
<... I think this scenario happens to a lot of Photographers just like me drawn in by the hype about the images on the hard drive can earn you money, but splitting the business side from the everyday side of photography becomes harder, I am not shooting stock anymore, my family were my models most of the time, and they still crack the "microstock smile" everytime anyone points a camera at them, everyday shots of my grandchildren just being children had that un-natural stock look as they become more aware of the camera and how I wanted them to 'pose' with a "smile grandad?", so I am back shooting what I want and how I want and the grandchildren are in recovery from ASSD (Afflicted Stock Smile Disorder). Playing to your stronger skills and being happy with what you are doing is key to enjoyment, I enjoy photography and my strong skills are software so combining the two is where I am heading now. Back on topic I am lucky to live a few miles from Brands Hatch and Canada Heights (motocross) I also have a few folders of similar sports bike images, panning the camera around druids corner on a bright morning where the rider leans-in almost horizontal, or capturing the motocross rider 4 meters in the air, is a great place to be. David
40
« on: November 03, 2009, 07:27 »
$250 for an EL is much higher than other micro sites, AFAIK. I'd be happy enough to set it at $100. $60 commission would still be 2x more than I get at any other site (and closer to triple what I get for most of them). Work on what the other sites charge, Istock EL = 125 Credits, I would have to Purchase 120 Credits + 10 Credits for 128.00. At todays XE.com rates 128.00 GBP = 208.738 USD, yes they are 20% higher but their '3D asset buying' Customers seem to pay more, difference is from Istock a contributor would get maybe $40 - $80 based on canister, with The3DStudio.com any contributor will get $120+. David
41
« on: November 02, 2009, 00:59 »
I have used http://www.redfoxhosting.com/ They are in the UK, the servers are also in the UK, they have shared hosted accounts to managed servers to suit all customers, I have a mid range reseller account with 5 live website all have asp, msSql, php and mySql, email accounts etc: I have been with them over 3 years and the best points are 'personal quick support responses', 'they delived what they promised'. I did look at signing up for one of those 'unlimited bandwidth' packages with a large well known ISP, but when I read the forums there were people complaining about service being denied for high use, so a Google search is a good first move before signing up. If anyone wants really 'cheap or free' it is out there but you will only get what you pay for, good service is something that has to be paid for. David
42
« on: October 30, 2009, 15:41 »
I guess next we will see free images inserted into the an ad created for free and there will be the free image with the ad plus logo, also for free ....... Nothing is free someone is paying, the free images that the websites are giving away were paid for by anyone that has made a sale or payout, all the rejected and the images with no sales have an associated cost, from the inspection, administration, bandwidth, storage, overheads and search delivery, the revenue to pay for these costs is generated from the sales of other artists images. Lets look at what we have now "Google", millions create websites, blogs etc:, Google crawls these sites pages often by invitation and create an image of the website, they harvest the keywords and index these for all people to find, all this they do for 'free', it is free to submit and search, so off we go to Google where we see the advertisments that the companies pay Google for, none of this revenue generated on Google's main page is passed down to the content providers as they get traffic, the providers who's content the searchers come looking for, what a super 'free' business, so why not images that are paid for each impression to the artist. The Dreamstime free images are following the Google business model, use free content to pull in and hook traffic, and you have to "register" to download a free image which will mean only serious people will bother to download, and maybe 0.001% of the visitors will make a purchase if not now then later, and for marketing they have the email addresses. David
43
« on: October 30, 2009, 15:07 »
If the sites really are marching us towards free images, can someone please explain the business plan? I think they make more money selling our images than they would giving them away. Giving your images away for free to pull in new customers is cheap low cost marketing for the websites. Next step there are a few others services that serve 'free image' that have an advertisment below, so if a Blogger who is writing a recipe for a cake, they can insert a free image with an ad for a white goods company linked. The sacary thing about some of these start-ups like PicApp is the images are sourced from Getty and Corbis 'wholly owned' content, cutting the artist out of any ad revenue. We could see a service like Google Ads, where each click earns you $0.01 paid for by advertisers, where you images are used to get the viewers attention. David 
44
« on: October 30, 2009, 14:48 »
Sounds obvious. But with the full 130$ purchase, you are free to sell as you wish? I don't like the workarounds, since it seems unfair to them. Next week or so, I'll try their demo.
Can I resell or redistribute exported Wordpress, Joomla!, Drupal and Web Templates?
Yes, as long as you do not include Artisteer photo objects within your header (Header -> Foreground Photo), as those photos are licensed from a 3rd party only for your own use or in your consulting work. You may re-distribute any other designs you create, including those with Artisteer header background photos (Header -> Background), glares, page backgrounds and other provided graphics, and your own photo objects.
NOTE: The above restriction applies only to templates created for sale. There are not restrictions on creating individual web designs and templates for yourself and your clients.
Can I use my own images within the header?
Yes, select the option "Insert Picture from File..." within the Image list.
more They say no problems with their graphics and your images! David
45
« on: October 30, 2009, 12:22 »
<..
..>
Second, note that they're not actually removing these images from their database, just marking them 'free'. Nothing is being 'cleaned up'.
It's just a gimmick to get more free images to attract new buyers.
<..
..>
Another Perspective! Dreamstime may have a different view on this, every forum you visit you will see post after post about removing 'the dross' and leaving the customers a tightly edited set of images, the main reason that images are not selected for deleation is one of cost, who is going to pay? I agree the way they are doing this is not right as they have not offered an 'opt-in' with 'opt-out' as default, many of the images will be from non-active contributors, those who may have changed e-mail addresses and will never know that their images are being offered 'free of charge' without permission, after they agreed to a 'sales contract' and have not accepted an updated one. The site has had these images without sales for a while and they have been a 'cost to the business', if they result in any sales for other contributors who's sales have supported the non-selling images, and attract some revenue for Dreamstime this may be seen as a little compensation. David 
46
« on: October 30, 2009, 08:05 »
The product I am using is Artisteer which creates templates for a few well know frameworks
Great link. Thanks. Does it also allow to generate templates for sale from our own image products?
You can generate the Joomla!, WordPress, Drupal, Blogger, DotNetNuke and HTML templates for 'Commercial Resale', you can use and include the Artisteer headers and backgrounds but you cannot include the sample images when you resell. There is a free trial download which watermarks the templates until you buy, there is a lite "Wordpress and Html only version" or the full package which I have, if you get some good design ideas I am working on a little contributor website for selling a limited set of web elements via PayPal PPD and a wordpress plug-in. You can also generate the template open up the folder and just replace the images with your own resized images. Regards David
47
« on: October 30, 2009, 01:34 »
I agree 100% wordpress, if you have your own domain with php and mysql and the skills to deploy the application, use the standalone from www.wordpress.org, this gives you more plugin options, and there are thousands, galleries, adsense etc: Anyone that has no hosting plan or skills can use the online shared version www.wordpress.com. To the OP: If you need a custom WordPress theme give me a PM, I am testing some template software and it would be usefull to me to have a small theme project to do. The product I am using is Artisteer which creates templates for a few well know frameworks, I created a template for my digitalweblogistics blog in an hour, there is an affiliate link to Artisteer on my blog post as well. David
48
« on: October 30, 2009, 01:19 »
Like all 'Free' accounts, free means limited, if you want a database backend then it is php and mysql, most of my websites require asp, I have a resellers account with http://www.redfoxhosting.com/ and like any good service you "pay for what you use" Looking at the op's offering is says upgrade to unlimited bandwidth and space, I wonder what would hapen if we opened a site with them and uploaded 500,000 items David
49
« on: October 27, 2009, 06:56 »
The biggest threat is that they have partnered with Google and YouTube where they publish the video content, now think Google Search, Google Images, Google tools and then think about what threat they could be to microstock to deliver online iage content. David
50
« on: October 24, 2009, 15:18 »
I found some 'Free' software today, had a play for a couple of hours, it is only 70% there, but if any other dot.net developers want to explore creating a MSG variant contact me, it is not powerful enough for a large stocksite but a small niche or specialist VA it could be workable. This is my online test environment everything you see there was free except the hosting: there is no contributors area as such yet that would have to be developed, but the guts of the package is there and it is free. It is only a test website, register or use ' [email protected]' and pwd: raindrops, Payment Methods: PayPal and money Order are active, use money order and you can look at order status, and download the cheetah at 500 * 344 David
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