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Messages - Fredex
26
« on: January 03, 2017, 03:12 »
Good folder organization and a free FTP client. Anything more or anything less is suboptimal imho.
folder structure is an archaic way of trying to organize content
Thats how I do it whats a better way?
Depends how you are doing the metadata. If you're keywording files and adding titles individually in Lightroom or just in windows then it takes a lot longer than batch editing them in a dedicated program, assuming you upload a lot and aren't exclusive that is. Obviously though if everything is just jammed into one folder rather than being organised it's going to waste time.
27
« on: January 03, 2017, 03:04 »
Give Xpiks a try. http://www.microstockgroup.com/software/xpiks-open-source-software-for-microstocker/Saves me a lot of time keywording and submitting to multiple sites. I'm sure StockSubmitter may have more features but this does everything I need and it's free. On batches of maybe 50 or more in one go I often just use it to add the metadata and then use filezilla to actually upload as a couple sites occasionally have timeout issues with it on large batches and end up dropping files but mostly it works fine.
28
« on: January 02, 2017, 23:23 »
Also seems like it is physically impossible to bypass the pointless 6 month wait time. After lengthy back and forths with support I ended up changing all my titles, keywords and descriptions to criticism of DT and adverts for other stock sites and linking them to the images to show how I should be banned. They didn't care... the images stayed online like that for the next 6 months.
29
« on: January 02, 2017, 22:23 »
Codec differences aside, another thing worth checking is the monitor settings. My LG monitors on HDMI automatically change the Black Level setting to high when some video players are opened. I always use them on low as it has better colour saturation but they don't actually tell you they have changed setting and it still actually says it is set to low so you have to change it to high and back to low or the colours are washed out.
You can actually drag the player from one screen to the other and see it suddenly change but if the player is less than 50% on one screen it will stay set to low so you can place it between the two and see the huge colour difference.
This drove me insane for a while until I worked out what was causing it. Haven't been able to find a way to stop it changing either. Some video players with some codecs cause it to happen on playback but others don't. Photojpeg mov played with quicktime caused it to happen but a h264 mpg played with media player classic or VLC didn't as I recall so the difference between the two codecs looked far higher than it actually was.
30
« on: January 02, 2017, 19:32 »
I saw the email about changing the information we could see but I assumed that meant moving it to a better system - not completely removing all reports of earnings. I came to update my earnings spreadsheet today, which takes about a minute per site but then spent a good ten stumbling blindly around Istock only to find any mentions of earnings had vanished completely. I can't even see total earnings for each image any more, Microstockr no longer works and I have to use Deepmeta just to find my current balance.
It looks like the only thing you can do is view the payout report but those figures have never represented that month's actual earnings due to the delay in subscription and partner program sales reporting and occasional sales taking months to report.
The royalty changes already looked dodgy as hell and now we can't even put them to the test and see how much we are really getting. How have they managed to make a bad system even worse?
31
« on: December 22, 2016, 19:48 »
Theyre in the process of changing numbers for whatever reason. 
You could write to CR and explain that you can't find the files using the numbers they sent you. Eventually you might get a reply.
'For whatever reason' is usually my reasoning for everything Istock does.
32
« on: December 22, 2016, 15:36 »
You can't petition a business to change their model. They will only change anything if they start seeing their profits decline.
Istock has always treated non-exclusives dreadfully but even so they make up 30% of my total earnings... at the moment at least. We'll see what happens after the change.
33
« on: December 22, 2016, 15:32 »
I find it interesting when it is about a specific site and my own figures (for better or worse) show the opposite.
Highlights how much the industry can vary wildly person to person.
34
« on: December 22, 2016, 15:31 »
I'm not sure what hoops you have to jump through to get a refund there but I am guessing it isn't that easy or more people would abuse it.
I think I've seen two total. I've seen more emails about 'sales which did not occur through the site' adding royalties than I've lost through refunds.
35
« on: December 21, 2016, 06:53 »
I get the impression there is no point getting into selling vectors unless you either make them extraordinarily complex and high quality... or just spam the same basic icon a thousand times. That seems to be the only way to compete.
The ones with a hundred different background colour variants are one thing - you could potentially justify a use for those as jpg downloads for people without vector editing software. The ones that just add a hundred variants on some random 'EPS 10 Vector' logo are the worst.
It's clear their tactic is not to create good images that get popular but to just hope that a new batch of the same images will rake in enough sales this month before uploading the same images again next month, so on and so on.
That kind of behaviour doesn't help anyone so it is odd no action has been taken against this yet...
36
« on: December 21, 2016, 06:41 »
This November was actually slightly lower than last year even though the number of downloads was 30% higher. The number of on demand sales were lower and SOD sales made up a stunning 0.49% of the total compared to the previous months where SOD was between 20 and 40% of the total. That sounded like a weather forecast didn't it?
SOD seem to have dried up equally in December and with the low sales it would probably be the worst month since the start of the year if not for an inexplicably large 4K sale.
Other sites didn't suffer so bad in November so the total isn't dramatically lower than normal but now December is looking to be pretty poor for them. Should have spent more time doing Christmas images...
37
« on: December 21, 2016, 06:24 »
TinCan01.jpg
Repeatedly have to type underscores slows down typing speed so it makes it a pain to search for files and I've noticed a couple programs that struggle with them.
It's just personal preference really though.
38
« on: December 21, 2016, 06:20 »
I've never bothered totalling every site day to day but the $127.50 4K sale at SS this month and the EL at 123 on the same day must have pushed the total to around $200 I guess. I've no idea why the royalties were that high when 4K apparently costs $130 but it's nice to be able to say I earned $200 whilst sleeping off a hangover...
39
« on: December 21, 2016, 06:10 »
That site has never looked like anything other than a good way to let people steal your images to me.
No watermark and just a feeble right click copyright warning that's easy to bypass?
Even if the sales were great there it's reasonable to assume your overall sales would drop across all sites with people having such easy access to unprotected images.
40
« on: December 21, 2016, 06:04 »
In the last six months 123 has picked up massively for me. For a period of three months each month more than doubled the last and now it seems to be gradually increasing from there. I'm not really sure what has happened because for the first year there I think I only made payout twice. Now it's nicely filling in the gaps from other agencies that are seeing slow months (as well as totally messing up my graphs). It's the only site that's had a perfectly consistent increase month by month.
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