|
MicrostockGroup Sponsors
This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.
Messages - Shelma1
Pages: 1 [2] 3 4 5 6 7 ... 116
26
« on: September 21, 2020, 05:47 »
I'm not familiar with the company. How do you feel about companies taking this firm of a position in politics? Reading further into this shows it's not really about supporting Biden but removing Trump. Would you continue to support them if they firmly were against your preferred candidate? What if it was one of the top three micros wanting to get rid of Biden?
I have a feeling this will quickly go off the rails into hate but I wanted to see if we could have some debate on companies openly trying to influence elections.
https://www.featureshoot.com/2020/04/introducing-photographersforbiden-a-new-project-by-feature-shoot/
Likewise, Scientific American has come out for Biden, which is really a position against Trump's anti-science stance.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/16/prestigious-us-science-journal-breaks-with-tradition-to-back-biden
Trump has an Anti-Science stance or the liberals are selling and telling us that he has an Anti-Science stance?  Is Biden really suffering from dementia, or are the Republicans just promoting that myth?
Yeah who would have expected that academics who live in the mostly liberal hives of "we know better than everyone else" would support Biden? PBS that the taxpayers pay for, is far left. Talk about Anti-Science, because the shows have a political agenda that ignores anything that doesn't agree with them
Before anyone thinks I'm in favor of Trump, no way. The truth is, I don't like either of them, and we don't have a choice. Same as the last election, when I didn't like either of the candidates.
Here's the way it's looking right now. "This year, Trump will not be able to vilify Biden. The swing voters do not dislike Biden the way they still disliked Hillary Clinton. And, so, Trump is taking a different approach, casting doubt on Biden by focusing on questions of his mental acuity and verbal mistakes. And he will likely get far by alleging Biden's lifetime in politics has not having yielded a single, career-defining achievement." paraphrased and quoted from Rich Thau
Choices: angry, loudmouth (sometimes uninformed) tweeter or someone who has the force and personality of a brown paper bag. Biden is viewed by many as nothing but a mouthpiece for special interests and activist groups. Defunding the police? That will send voters to Trump. Rioters attacking Federal buildings and retail shops? That's going to get more people to vote for Trump. Kind of a backfire for the protesters, isn't it?
Here I am someone who hates the hate in politics and abhors the division that has taken place in the country. We used to fight together, to make the country better. Someone won, they were Our President. Now all I see is people split and fighting each other, mostly for their own gain and self interests. That's not united. Polarization is the worst enemy for our country the way I see things.
If nothing terrible alters the way things are going and mostly progressing towards November. The election will be very, very close. No one is leading or going to overwhelm the other. The side that gets out the vote will win, regardless of policy or promises. We are that equally divided.
What country have you been living in? When did we used to fight together to make the country better? Was it when Obama was POTUS and the right questioned where he was born and went nuts because he wore the same type of tan suit every other modern president had worn at some point? Was it when Reagan had the trickle down approach that led to the current tremendous gap between rich and poor? Was it when women (were the majority of people in the US) werent allowed to vote? Or when slaves were counted as 3/5 of a person so white slave owners in the south would have power beyond their true numbers, outsized power that still, today, puts Republicans in the White House even when they lose the popular vote? Was it when the founding fathers enslaved people? Was it when Europeans invaded, murdered most of the existing population and forced who was left to live on reservations, then broke every treaty made with them? This country has always been about a small group of white men grabbing power for themselves and trying their best to keep everyone else from getting their hands on it. And its always been everyone else fighting them for some small chance at some type of equality or fairness.
27
« on: September 20, 2020, 19:42 »
I'll be moving to the U.S. soon (got a job there), and I have some rather simple questions in regards to taxation of microstock income. I will talk to a tax specialist there as well of course, but I thought to prepare as much as I can before I depart. So;
1. In which category does one report microstock-based earnings?
2. What's the rough tax rate? I know this might depends on the state (mine will be MD), so are there online calculators to give an estimate? If one earns $3000 per month, how much can he expect to keep after the IRS takes their part?
3. Is there anything particular I need to keep an eye out on when reporting income from microstock?
Microstock-based earnings will be reported as royalty income. You should probably find an accountant in the U.S. once you get here who can give you an idea of how much you should pay in estimated taxes each quarter. I have no idea how any of it works if you're a citizen of another country. I do remember a partner of mine having to pay taxes both here and in Switzerland, where she was from.
28
« on: September 20, 2020, 07:07 »
Trump said today that Ruth know how to disagree but not be disagreeable.
That's rich, coming from Trump.
29
« on: September 18, 2020, 19:53 »
Heartbreaking. 
30
« on: September 18, 2020, 05:47 »
I feel all slimy just reading the explanation of how the site came to be. Blech.
31
« on: September 15, 2020, 16:22 »
Negative comments because if everyone had sacrificed a few weeks of income SS would have been forced to roll back their draconian royalty cuts and we'd ALL be back to higher royalties.
but that was NEVER going to happen - boycotts never get that sort of cooperation and a boycott with a publicly stated end date tells the boycotted they can ride it out. In addition, the vast majority of contributors likely never even knew there was a boycott.
that still doesnt excuse the negative comments and ad hominem attacks on those who think differently
Instead, the vast majority stayed, accepting a big loss this year and an even bigger loss come January, rather than a temporary, much smaller loss for a few weeks in June. We own the content. The agencies are nothing without us. But whatevs.
and again, you're mis-stating the case by presenting it as either /or rather than a large loss for everyone AND a slightly larger loss for boycotters
Well, today's a sad day for me. I just read in the Stock Coalition Facebook group that your work is featured in the Coalition Collection on Pond5. You argue against boycotting and haven't had much nice to say about the Coalition, but you stepped right up to take advantage of the deal they got with Pond5. So now someone who thinks boycotting Shutterstock is useless reaps the reward of the hard work done by others who sacrificed their income and worked their butts off to try to make a difference. From now out I'm looking out for number one and nobody else. Because what's the point if my work benefits someone like you? I gave up thousands of dollars in income so YOUR work could be featured while you continue making money on Shutterstock? Ehf that.
32
« on: September 15, 2020, 14:23 »
It was in the works long before Pavlovsky became CEO, IMO. Getting rid of customer service for contributors, tons of rejections for established contributors, flooding the site with similars, allowing 50 identical keywords until we put up a big stink, smaller and smaller royalties and fewer and fewer big sales...that all started years ago.
Shutterstock was never about helping contributors make a living or being a viable business long term. Its only purpose was to make Oringer, the investors and a couple of chosen others rich.
33
« on: September 11, 2020, 19:45 »
Cranky, crotchety old crone here too.
Cathy, here's a thought:
Maybe we cranky and crochety old crones should start our own microstock sales site.
Just think of the fun promotions we could put out!
PS: Shelma probably isn't a cranky and crochety old crone just yet, but she might want to consider joining us, too. 
Definitely cranky, crotchety, outright b*itchy and over 60. So I guess Im a nasty old hag.
34
« on: August 24, 2020, 13:04 »
Looks like you had an awesome time. Your wife did a great job modeling. 
35
« on: August 23, 2020, 10:07 »
Awesome.
36
« on: August 18, 2020, 17:47 »
So its better to get much less over a period of years than to sacrifice two weeks of royalties once? If you disabled your port for the second half of June, at worst youd lose 4% of your Shutterstock income for 2020 (actually less, since you made higher royalties the first half of the year and June is usually a slow month). Instead most people stayed and are reporting 30-50% royalty decreases, which will only get worse in January.
Instead of losing two weeks pay, youre losing 13 weeks pay if you had a 50% royalty decrease for the second half of 2020. And in 2021 it will be much worse, because the vast majority of people wont get back to their old royalty rate, which is still 50% lower than it used to be, for months, if ever.
It doesnt work like that. For some people once june hit, suddenly, their June dayjob income became 0. Nothing. Zilch.
Suddenly SS became their only source of income. So the choice of getting a few hundred or more dollars a month where you can actually pay the rent, electricity and food vs guaranteed 0 where you can do none of that isnt a hard choice - you'll take some income and survival over zero income.
We're not talking of income averaged annually here, its real world income for this particular month.
There's also the fact that SS had planned all this and there is no way in hell they'll go back on it regardless of people disabling profiles. There are always uploaders, always new recruits and the bigger, important studios they'd have done private deals with anyway. All planned, wargamed and accepted before they introduced it.
The op had their payout set to $100. So disabling their port for 2 weeks would have cost them around 50 bucks. We all know the vast majority of SS contributors make very little there.
Yes, there are other uploaders, but even with the relatively small number of people disabling their ports it took weeks for SS to scrounge up some new people to upload a bunch of almost identical vectors or a load of bad snapshots to try to make up the loss. You cant instantaneously replace all those files. It would have taken time, and their 2nd quarter announcement would have happened too quickly.
Yes, this was all planned in advance...but even so, SS failed to forsee all the tweeting that casued them to close social media accounts. Theyre not infallible.
37
« on: August 18, 2020, 14:46 »
Reality. With so many people or their spouses out of work due to pandemic, some people simply cannot afford to close of any avenue of income-- it can mean the difference between being able to eat or not.
You can bet SS knew that and used the timing to their advantage.
That being said, earnings on SS are pathetic. Sales with low earner agencies now overtaking SS. I just had 1 sale on new to me agency---that sale alreadhy more than made on SS this month.
I am not uploading new work to SS. As soon as sales with new agencies add some income, wil lbe ditching SS.
Reality sucks for me too. I was a very successful vector artist on Shutterstock. Disabling my port will cost me tens of thousands of dollars this year. Im currently unemployed. My guess is that the vast majority of contributors dont count on Shutterstock royalties to eat, though Im sure a few do. Im not talking about a permanent disabling of accounts, though thats what Ive chosen to do. Im talking about a large number of people making a temporary sacrifice for two weeks. The fact is that if most people had disabled their ports on June 15 things would have turned out very differently. Their library would have shrunk tremendously. Buyers would have been completely frustrated. Investors would have been asking what the heck happened. They would have had a massive loss of sales and would not have met or exceeded profit expectations. SSTK would have dropped instead of rising. They would have been forced to roll back the royalty cuts, and everyone might very well have regained their temporary loss when buyers either came back or switched to other sites for the assets they needed.
38
« on: August 18, 2020, 12:17 »
If you and everyone else had disabled your ports on 6/15, how different things would be today.
Because in June when a large number of people suddenly had no day job and no income at all they couldnt afford (nor would it be sensible) to deliberately stop the few hundred/thousand dollars they'd get from SS just to make a point...
You need money to pay rent and buy food, not likes.
SS timing for them was either very lucky or very deliberate and i cant decide which.
So its better to get much less over a period of years than to sacrifice two weeks of royalties once? If you disabled your port for the second half of June, at worst youd lose 4% of your Shutterstock income for 2020 (actually less, since you made higher royalties the first half of the year and June is usually a slow month). Instead most people stayed and are reporting 30-50% royalty decreases, which will only get worse in January. Instead of losing two weeks pay, youre losing 13 weeks pay if you had a 50% royalty decrease for the second half of 2020. And in 2021 it will be much worse, because the vast majority of people wont get back to their old royalty rate, which is still 50% lower than it used to be, for months, if ever.
39
« on: August 18, 2020, 11:13 »
For me, the sheer anger that any of my sales at Shutterstock just help make Oringer a billionaire keeps me from selling there. Of course, the reason hes successful is that most people would not make a temporary financial sacrifice in June in order to reverse the direction things were going. Instead people stayed, the library size remained 300 million, and the stock price shot up.
If you and everyone else had disabled your ports on 6/15, how different things would be today.
40
« on: August 12, 2020, 10:36 »
Oh, totally pushing up the stock price so they can get out. Grabbing as much as they can from contributors over the next year so they can make hundreds of millions and be set for life. Then Shutterstock collapses and they just walk away from the wreckage.
42
« on: August 06, 2020, 12:49 »
I feel really stupid for not buying SSTK in June.
43
« on: August 06, 2020, 07:43 »
He took the money from our pockets and placed it directly into his bank account. This is capitalism at its finest.
44
« on: August 06, 2020, 06:24 »
" On May 1, 2020, Mr. Oringer adopted a written sales plan with Charles Schwab in accordance Rule 10b5-1 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and Issuer's policies regarding stock transactions (the "2020 10b5-1 Plan"). Under the 2020 10b5-1 Plan, Mr. Oringer intends to sell up to 1,020,000 shares of Common Stock, subject to certain market conditions. Sales may commence on June 1, 2020 and would be completed by May 31, 2021, subject to earlier termination in accordance with the terms of the 2020 10b5-1 Plan and applicable law and regulation. The 2020 10b5-1 Plan is intended to permit the orderly disposition of a portion of Mr. Oringers holdings as part of his personal long-term financial plan for asset diversification and liquidity. All sales under the 2020 10b5-1 Plan are to be made in the discretion of Charles Schwab and in accordance with the terms, conditions, and restrictions of such plan. Mr. Oringer does not have any control, influence, or authority over sales made pursuant to the 2020 10b5-1 Plan." https://investor.shutterstock.com/node/10841/htmlRoyalty cuts announced three weeks after he planned to sell more than a million shares of SSTK; deeper royalty cut to come January 1.
45
« on: August 05, 2020, 05:52 »
Interesting but "about us" needs a lot more details ? Is this a type of Photo Union ? What are we signing up for ? Are you starting a new stock site ? How do you gain fair value for coalition members ?
The Stock Coalition is an industry body representing talented global photographers, illustrators, videographers, animators and other artists who contribute their work to agencies for distribution. Collectively, our work has been licensed millions of times by companies and individuals around the world.
Our goal is to ensure fair value and compensation for our collective creative works and to support agencies with strategies that align with these goals.
Our organization has had to form rapidly in response to one agency unilaterally changing their compensation agreement with contributors without any warning or consultation with catastrophic implications on the earnings for these contributors.
We have built a competent core management team to steer our organization and a constitution and full list of goals will be prepared in due course.
Have you been on the Facebook page?
46
« on: August 03, 2020, 08:15 »
Yea, no. If you have followed her in previous threads you'd clearly see what a troll she/he/it is.
perhaps, but i haven't seen that here - the original statement was a legitimate one and she got slammed based on hypothetical subtext and judgment
Then you need to read more threads.
why bother - you've obviously already condemned - maybe you should react to what's here rather than prejudging based on alleged past performance - another instance of majority suppression of non-conformists to the party line
either ignore or address the current topic
The topic was addressed by several people. Again, look at her posts in their totality to see what shes really about. Just because you also see no point in protesting doesnt mean shes not a troll.
47
« on: August 01, 2020, 17:29 »
its very cool that Im in the Times, but what will I get? 0.000001 cents or something?
Congratulations! At least you get good bragging rights for that. 
Yes, but bragging rights dont pay the mortgage! All this time I was so happy I wasnt getting these cr@ppy fraction-of-a-penny royalties. Are they still doing that thing where they let people embed your images for free? Is it possible I get nothing from the vaunted NY Times? Boy, is the joke on me.
Embed is only for non-commercial users, so no, you won't get nothing from the NYT. If an image has been legally embedded, it can only be a very small size and is surrounded by a Getty frame, so obvious in use:
https://www.bjp-online.com/2014/03/10-facts-you-need-to-know-about-getty-images-embed-feature
(I haven't heard anything about it for years, so not surprised that's such old info)
The teensy fraction of an image sales are the pay-per-view scheme, which I don't fully understand, but a prime user is Pinterest.
I guess it's not embedded, because it just says "Getty" underneath and doesn't credit me at all. I really can't even be bothered figuring out how to log in and see sales there. I'm sure it will be negligible.
48
« on: August 01, 2020, 15:35 »
its very cool that Im in the Times, but what will I get? 0.000001 cents or something?
Congratulations! At least you get good bragging rights for that.
Yes, but bragging rights dont pay the mortgage! All this time I was so happy I wasnt getting these cr@ppy fraction-of-a-penny royalties. Are they still doing that thing where they let people embed your images for free? Is it possible I get nothing from the vaunted NY Times? Boy, is the joke on me.
49
« on: August 01, 2020, 15:04 »
And today I found out iStock never closed my account. Jo Ann Snover let me know one of my illustrations was in the NY Times a couple of weeks ago. I thought it must have been one of these random Shutterstock sales and was shocked to see Getty underneath it. My first thought was that someone must have stolen it and uploaded it to Getty, but I checked and it wasnt there. So then I thought someone must have stolen it and uploaded it to iStock, and there it was, with my name under it. Back when the whole brouhaha happened with iStock I deleted thousands of my vectors, but it was too time consuming, so I emailed them twice and asked them to close my account. By then I had stopped using my old hotmail address so had no idea they were still sending me notifications there. I dont even remember how to log in to the contributor site or what my login info was, or how to see sales....hasnt that become more difficult somehow? I checked my bank account and saw theyd been sending small amounts all this time and I didnt even realize it. I dont even know who to email at this point to ask them to close it for the third time. Can someone tell me? I mean, its very cool that Im in the Times, but what will I get? 0.000001 cents or something?
50
« on: August 01, 2020, 14:53 »
I got one sale a couple of weeks ago for 64 cents or something. I only checked because other people were reporting sales. Jeez, if theyre gonna keep licensing my stuff at least give me a couple of bucks!
Pages: 1 [2] 3 4 5 6 7 ... 116
|
Sponsors
Microstock Poll Results
Sponsors
|
Show Posts
