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Messages - PixelBytes
Pages: 1 [2] 3 4 5 6 7 ... 74
26
« on: May 26, 2017, 17:11 »
I'm not on Canva but some photogs seem to report doing well there. Most of my images are model released. Many are isolated but none are png with background removed.
Is it worth uploading there in my situation?
27
« on: May 18, 2017, 13:39 »
Got lots of photos and video today (removing the plane). I'm sure once I upload I'll be a millllllllllionaire. LOL. The guys who removed it also removed the jet that landed in the Hudson River (piloted by Sully).
So cool! Must be a very small group of guys qualified to do that work. Either that or a helluva coincidence!
28
« on: May 18, 2017, 13:36 »
Awesome post EmberMike! Thanks for a great read, hope there's another 10 years left in this for all of us at least!
Yeah, I'd love to see another 10 years ahead to go with the 8ish I've had. I'm old enough that should almost put me to retirement age. But things would have to change drastically, IMO, to squeeze another decade of good income out of micro. The direction things are going in for me, and other pros I read is the opposite. We'll be lucky to get 3-5 more decent years. Sad to say. Thanks for the history, Mike. Makes for interesting reading.
29
« on: May 17, 2017, 15:38 »
Wow! That's crazy! Glad you and everyone else is okay. Very sorry about your water tho. Can you get onto city or county water? BTW, did you manage to get Harrison Ford's autograph? 
30
« on: May 11, 2017, 09:55 »
31
« on: May 09, 2017, 21:38 »
Ha, ha! The joke's on the thief. Bigstock doesn't earn enough money for contributors to be worth stealing from! 
32
« on: May 06, 2017, 19:40 »
GL had always been fair to contributors. Good to hear you will be continuing the trend and all the best for more sales!
I agree. Your customer service and ethics are top notch. However I am becoming very alarmed at the total lack of sales. I have a portfolio of over 6k high commercial value, professionally produced images. I used to get a payout nearly every month on GL. Lately I have not had a single sale there in months. Even tho I am on other low earners, yours is the ONLY site where I have ever, in 8 years, gone a month without a single sale. I am a patient person. I can hang in there on a site with slow sales but it is getting pretty dire to go months with NO sales. Do you have any plans to invest in marketing to attract customers? If so, what sort of time frame are we looking at before sales resume/improve?
33
« on: May 05, 2017, 12:01 »
This thread reads like my own experience. I used to upload around 20-25 images per week consistently. Then hit the wall and started uploading a couple dozen once a month. Income continued to drop like a hot rock. Now my income has steadied to a slow decline. My uploads are the most consistent they've ever been. I religiously upload the same number of files daily....0. It's the most fun ive had doing stock in years.
34
« on: May 04, 2017, 12:22 »
Where's the apology? SS is going the iStock way.
Apology? ROFLMAO! Apparently we don't even get an explanation.
35
« on: May 04, 2017, 12:19 »
My ports all gone, nice though they keep sending me emails telling me to check out what's happening in their forums.
Yeah, me too. I was set to automatically get payouts each month. About a week ago they sent me an email explaining that my payout request for $0 was below the minimum threshold so I would not be getting a payout. Talk about rubbing salt in the wounds! Just a reminder that every other month from the time I started til the time they booted me my payouts were between $100 - 300. I still don't get why they'd dump contributors whose work was selling well. I'd sure appreciate it if they'd fluck off with their obnoxious emails tho. 
36
« on: May 04, 2017, 12:10 »
Thanks for the analysis, JoAnn. It just sounded like a lot of horsecr@p to me.
But finely honed corporate horsecr@p no good for the roses though.
At SS they got the quote wrong. "A rose, by any other name, would smell like horsecr@p ". 
37
« on: May 04, 2017, 12:07 »
Dont know if you know? but a lot of high ranked contributors quit Fotolia with their dollar sales thing and according to their own forum things are not all that rosy. Many Emeralds complaining actually.
Was this directed at me? If so, it doesn't contradict anything I said. Supports it, actually.
38
« on: May 04, 2017, 12:00 »
Almost every old contributor I privately know is down almost the same percentage 40-50% and its been going on so long now that it cant be the search. It seems that its a cut-off thing either to give new people a fair crack or its geographical it goes to certain countries?
I really dont know and have stopped caring about it since I stopped uploading mainly because I find HCV files with MRs and PRs just dissapearing.
I lay my efforts with a couple of macro agencies and thats that. 
Down 40-50% over what period? I'm a relative old timer and I'm down 75% from my SS heyday, but only about 10% from last year and just a slight drop from March, which is historically a top month for me.
39
« on: May 04, 2017, 11:56 »
Thanks for the analysis, JoAnn. It just sounded like a lot of horsecr@p to me.
40
« on: May 04, 2017, 11:51 »
FWIW, I'd like to see Fotolia stay open too, but history is clear all these sites look out for their own bottom line and not ours. If recent history is true, all the begging or protesting in the world won't make any difference. Especially in this case when the pool of negatively affected contributors - European and/or extremely high ranked - is so small.
41
« on: May 03, 2017, 14:27 »
Have spent several weekends in auditoriums and conventions centres at dance competitions. My daughter has been dancing pretty well. Has won two scholarships and we need to add an additional shelf for trophies. It's a real privileged to watch kids from our City blossom/grow up.
No, I haven't met a Mom from another school that comes close to the tv show. We are more of a "make friends backstage and support everyone" kinda town.
Congrats to your daughter! And you too, her proud mom. Nothing beats the feeling of seeing your kids succeed. 
43
« on: May 01, 2017, 09:46 »
I haven't done my stats workup yet, but like others I had a dismal first couple weeks due to Easter and Spring Breaks (I assume), but things picked up late in the month. I'll finish below March, but still made a decent amount overall.
Istock was a surprise. Ive been waiting to see what sales did before removing the rest of my port. The April payout for March was almost as much as I made before the changes. They came in as my third highest earning site and within a hundred or so $ of SS and FT.
So far still making enough there to justify leaving my old stuff. I expect this will bring me some heat here, but I made enough there to pay my mortgage. If they keep selling my 5-8 years old pics and I don't see the expected drop in earnings, I'll stay put.
44
« on: May 01, 2017, 09:23 »
Ive been lagging behind. Never even visited the Adobe contributor portal. Guess I'd better sign up. Will my Fotolia login infi get me on the site or do I have to sign up new and somehow link the accounts?
45
« on: April 29, 2017, 11:20 »
Everyone who's contacted me via microstock about doing custom work seems to expect near microstock prices. When I quote them a reasonable price for custom work, I never hear back.
46
« on: April 29, 2017, 11:05 »
According to Shutterstock's annual report, God exists and that God is a risk. Strange to refer all unidentified risks to something as indistinguishable as God, without therefore pointing out which of the Gods is concerned.
Page 39:
"Our computers and other technological systems, as well as our data centers and the computers, systems and data centers
of our third-party service providers, could be damaged or interrupted by fire, flood, power loss, telecommunications failure,
earthquakes, acts of war or terrorism, acts of God, computer viruses, physical or electronic break-ins and other similar events or
disruptions."
LOL! God has nothing better to do but disrupt Shutterstocks computer systems. 
47
« on: April 28, 2017, 22:40 »
I had two three figure sales on Alamy along with the usual low $ ones. First time that's happened in a looong time.
Non stock related, just got news my neice is getting married to her boyfriend of several years. Both medical residents and sweet kids. So happy for them!
48
« on: April 27, 2017, 21:24 »
I have done some serious thinking after taking part of all the knowledge and thoughts in this thread and trying to line up the pros and cons about going exclusive on IS. It seem to me I will be better of uploading images in the way I do to day in terms of income from sales.
But Im pretty tired doing all the boring work....uploading.....keywords.....etc. etc....to different agencies.
I dont think I ever will be a top producer of images that sell in thousands, so I would probably be comfortable in uploading to just one agency but a very poor exclusive contributor 
If you put your titles, descriptions, and keywords in the metadata once in photoshop or lightroom then you won't have to do it on each site. I haven't uploaded anywhere in awhile, but istock always used to take as much time/effort to upload to as the next 6 or 7 sites combined. With the ESP upload do we still have to deal with the CV, disambiguation, etc.?
49
« on: April 27, 2017, 21:09 »
I agree I havent been uploading for some time and it doesnt have any effect on sales. its a fallacy.
You can never know for certain - if you had continued uploading maybe your sales of existing images would be twice what they are. There is never a way to objectively know about the path not taken unless you do an experiment with two identical portfolios.
I have stopped uploading for long periods of time and haven't seen too much of a dropoff, but I have no idea what might have happened if I had uploaded continuously since I didn't do it.
It's interesting that the poll now has FT ahead of iS and 50% of SS - that is not my experience but the trend is similar at least.
No, we can never absolutely know what might have happened, but if you upload weekly for a number of years and then stop for a year, you have a pretty good base for comparison.
50
« on: April 25, 2017, 22:09 »
Nope. Does nothing at all. I'm an Emerald. Sales are horrible there for me.
Same here also Emerald and sales are almost non existant! I was earning far more three years back. The one and only reason I still stick with Adobe-Ft is because I cant really be bothered deleting or uploading. Theyre just there so to speak.
The key to success is to consistently upload which helps keep your content near the top of the search results. If you have stopped uploading, it's possible your existing content is being pushed back in the search as new, relevant content continues to flow in thus making it more difficult for customers to find your work.
-Mat
The key to success is to consistently treat content on it's own merits and not assign arbitrary expiration dates to their search viability, in other words, new content isn't necessarily better. If our existing uploads that took our time and money to create and keyword sold well before and then suffer unnecessarily due to Fotolia's search algorithm choices, then yes, it will indeed be difficult for customers to find our work. It also shows a lack of appreciation for our past contributions and trust in the company, unevenly marginalizing those with higher rankings and thus higher royalty %.
It's a short-sighted, greed-driven "keep the contributors on the hamster wheel" approach which also encourages repeated, near duplicate uploading of already saturated topics to "keep up" instead of inspiring innovation and contributing to more lacking subjects.
Very well said and exactly right. Far from encouraging quality uploads, an over emphasis on newness discourages them. At micro pricing it takes time to recoup the cost of HCV shoots. Profitability for contributors relies on the long tail and the prospect of future passive income. Not worth doing good work if it will just be buried under a pile of other stuff within a month or two. I mean in the relevance or default search. Newness is of course the factor in search by age. Please don't ruin Adobe by following SS policy of forcing contributors to constantly feed the beast rather than planning and uploading quality work and giving it the chance to find it's buyers.
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