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Messages - Black Sheep
26
« on: June 06, 2011, 20:53 »
i've been in so many forums in the last 10 yrs but this guy Lobo wins the award of the most idiot dumb moderator i ever dealt with.
oh and yesterday i posted a mex in the alamy forum, checked 1 hour later and it's disappeared ? what is wrong with these guys ?
27
« on: June 06, 2011, 20:51 »
Once I put my designs, which there are about 1500 of, I don't have to think about them anymore. Yet despite this I haven't touched the site in several months, but the sales continue to march on. Have I paid for all my efforts, probably not, but unless the sale dry up unexpectedly, eventually I should. The same could be said for the micros.
hmm .. so with 1500 designs on sale you make less than 300$/month ?
28
« on: June 06, 2011, 19:59 »
i'm convinced these RC targets are just BS and their real goal is a flat 15% fee for everybody in the near future, and if you complain they will tell you the usual mantra "better 15% of something than 30% of nothing" and bla bla bla.
29
« on: June 06, 2011, 19:55 »
hahaha excellent cartoon.
30
« on: June 06, 2011, 10:48 »
Right. I think the evidence points to buyers leaving. Sales are dropping, views on images are down. Several brave (or maybe lost) buyers even posting their goodbye notes on the forum.
I agree. There are definitely falling sales which seems to insinuate buyers have left. IS was only about 16% of my earnings last month. It has steadily fallen from a high of 30-40%. Before it was too hard to leave because of the money, but if it continues to fall what will be the reason to stay? With the possibility of a severe summer slump, I could see their house of cards collapsing in the next few months.
all the indicators are pointing in that direction as many are saying they're having increased sales at SS etc so it can't be just oversupply to blame.
31
« on: June 06, 2011, 10:46 »
swedes are pretty funny, the boring ones are eventually the Finns and the Belgians and sometimes the brits when they're sober ho ho ho  mickey mouse country, oh really ... go there first and see by yourself, stockholm for instance, the paris of the north... not to generalize but the problem in sweden is they've become a bunch of feminist liberal hippie as-ho-les.
32
« on: June 06, 2011, 10:42 »
As for fast food i guess it's only a matter of price and lack of spare time.
It's unclear why yanks eat so much s-hit considering fruit, vegs, and meat are of first choice there
and there's also decente californian wine.
Are eating habits so different in Halifax? 
no idea but cartainly they are in old europe, middle east, asia, oceania, south america. but again, it's strange, i've met many americans only eating junk food, others following a strict vegan diet (no eggs no fish !), some lunatics even abolished sugar and salt from the diet, but why they just don't cook fresh vegs and fresh fish and meat ? i mean if you look at the aussies they're all usually in good shape and eating fresh, despite their traditional dishes are quite similar to england and america.
33
« on: June 06, 2011, 10:38 »
Seems like there's a consensus here, that the problem with Zazzle is the prices. I have some cool coffee cup designs, and some ability to promote them myself, but $15 for a cup is a non-starter.
yeah i think they target "vanity buyers" who are willing to spend a lot for hard to find items.
34
« on: June 06, 2011, 09:36 »
well i prefer to take the risk of being sued for nothing rather than the certainty of having to wait a few years before even going in court as in europe.
35
« on: June 06, 2011, 09:30 »
My opinion ?
Big car == small dick.
As for fast food i guess it's only a matter of price and lack of spare time.
It's unclear why yanks eat so much s-hit considering fruit, vegs, and meat are of first choice there
and there's also decente californian wine.
I blame the british founding fathers for the bad food manners in USA.
36
« on: June 06, 2011, 08:17 »
37
« on: June 06, 2011, 08:13 »
38
« on: June 06, 2011, 05:29 »
the only way is a DMCA.
39
« on: June 06, 2011, 05:23 »
what i really fail to understand is why all these buyers complain but don't move a finger to find other alternatives.
how come most of them never ever heard of shutterstock or fotolia or ... ?
i mean google "stock image" and they're all on the top 5 results.
jesus, if you spend a lot of money buying images it would be obvious and lggical to make a quick market
research before wasting time and money but no, they stick with istock no matter if istock is throwing s-hit in
their faces and then they go in istock forum complaining 10$ is too expensive.
40
« on: June 06, 2011, 05:19 »
indeed, when they ban me from a forum it's usually run by americans.
41
« on: June 06, 2011, 04:32 »
why should they bother ? after all they will never meet in person all these angry photographers, only the fanboys flock around them at photo fairs and other public events.
42
« on: June 06, 2011, 04:28 »
Perhaps we should use (SARCASM) brackets?
i've the same issue with the yanks...
43
« on: June 06, 2011, 04:24 »
Wouldn't big sites like Zazzle make more money by advertising? It would also encourage more of us to sell more stuff there. I can understand the small sites not spending money on advertising but Zazzle is huge.
no, they expect YOU to make free advertising for them, that's the whole idea behing most of the POD sites. besides, they also get further free adertising by their affiliates too. you can also count sites like Etsy on this and on top of this they ask for a monthly fee. so all in all it looks like a it's a ripoff apart rare cases.
44
« on: June 05, 2011, 22:36 »
@archibald I've heard of plenty of people making a living in microstock, but I've never heard of anyone making a living with the sites you mentioned. I'm sure there are a few who can manage to make a living with things like zazzle, but I highly doubt anyone can make a living participating in crowdsourced design contests.
you could make a living with these POD sites but they simply DONT advertise and don't bring customers in. as a matter of fact their whole business is luring contributors in and wait for them to bring buyers (friends etc), same s-h-it wth FineArtAmerica and many more who also demand a 12-months fee. AllPosters is a real agency instead, but of course they don't allow anybody in unless recommended by one of their partners. If you join LonelyPlanetImages they also resell some photos via AllPosters but you've no control about it. And at the end of the game the prices for the stuff sold in these sites are just too high in my opinion. I think you can seriously make more money selling them by yourself on eBay or similar.
45
« on: June 05, 2011, 22:30 »
there's no solution until you "own" your business relationship with your clients that means until you sell directly and keep 100% of the sale price (and you decide what price for every photo).
after all it's the same problem in every industry dealing with middlemen eating up most of the revenues.
see farmers angry about milk prices for instance, supermarkets sell for 1$/liter and farmers get 0.10$ or 0.05$ for that !
solution ? none so far.
46
« on: June 05, 2011, 22:07 »
Well, these replies doesn't seem very encouraging  It's strange that many of You are dissapointed with Zazzle and Redbubble - because i've read many success stories about it. Well, maybe not all of them are true And as i understand, other similar sites aren't gainful either? I guess i'll have to keep looking for other alternative ways to earn from design, because i'm not happy with my microstock earnings yet
judge by yourself looking at the recent sales on redbubble, they had a page for that. last time i checked if was mostly made of cats, dogs, sunsets and other crap.
47
« on: June 05, 2011, 21:42 »
but that guy on istock makes a bit too rosy picture of the music industry as 20-25% of a music income can be true if you're Lady Gaga not certainly if you're an average indipendent producer.
a friend of mine who's under contract for an indie recording studio is selling and distributing his dance music by himself, he produce the whole product, contact his web distributors, announce the release on a dozen social networks, upload low-fi short versions on another dozen music websites, reply to hundreds of messages and comments, and at the end of all this he's lucky to make 500 downloads on Beatport and 2-300 downloads in all the rest of his network of social sites and niche distributors.
then he has to pay taxes and all his bills, a wife and two babies to be fed, etc
suffice to say he makes more money working full time in his music shop than producing dozens of new dance tracks a year.
48
« on: June 05, 2011, 21:36 »
surrender yourself to the sad fact that nowadays anyone can do microstock and the supply greatly exceeds demand.
i'm more and more interested in fine-art and art galleries, after all i've always been a creative and not much cut for cheesy microstock-like studio and business shoots.
nothing against studio shoots but if today this means getting paid 1$ per download we must realize this sort of photography is simply going down the drain and it's getting worse and worse.
clients complain about rising prices, photographers about miserable 15% royalties, let's face it this is a dying business unless you can produce industrial quantities of images per year just to stay afloat.
49
« on: June 05, 2011, 21:32 »
excellent link, Lisa, thanks.
i'm surprised it hasn't been locked or deleted already.
50
« on: June 05, 2011, 12:55 »
software is following suit very quickly, thousands and thousands of "apps" sold in the Apple and Android stores for 1$ or even less ... and last week microsoft shown a preview of Windows 8 with the hint they're also bundling a sort of microsoft store to get cheap apps for tablet, mobiles, and windows itself !
now, all these business models are well tested at this point since more than 10 yrs.
where are we heading ? judging from the situation i don't see any improving in the pricing, quite the opposite
if we look at the Apps market the prices are going down due to cut-throat competition !!
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