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Messages - gcrook

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251
Dissolve / Re: Introducing Dissolve
« on: May 13, 2015, 14:39 »
They recently started automatically downconverting hd from 4K.I was told off the record during an email conversation a few weeks ago, but i dont think they announced it publicly.
If this goes south i will (again) halt my uploads there.Sold a few 4K clips during March but im waiting for the April report.

Again i dont trust them,but at least i am taking full responsibility for continuing to upload there knowing that i cant pull back and delete stuff.
Also the hd and 4K prices are fixed (for now) .
Lets see...

252
Why do you guys seem to think that a footage portfolio can be copied so easily to the point that the sales can be overturned to ones favour?

If you believe that it's almost the same as admitting that there is no differentiation at all,everything is a gimmick,everyone can do the same stuff and shoot the same way as someone else,
everyone has the same access to everything including weather,place,time,gear,talent,and finally sales are just random.

Like If someone came across your stuff and was bored to look any further he would buy it because it's the same as the next one so why bother wasting time?
I can see that applying to photos a bit more but even then not all tomatoes on white sell the same even with the exact same keywords.
Not to mention video where the are a lot more variables.A whole lot more.



253
Shutterstock.com / Re: ftp speeds
« on: May 12, 2015, 22:54 »
When my speed drops there it goes to 30kb/s but not that low.Internet speed doesnt matter midway i had my adsl upgraded,which i would do anyway and the drop in speed is the same when it happens.
The only way uploading kind of worked for me eventually as i've mentioned in the thread there was to upload one clip at a time.
Sadly that doesn't help since you need to babysit your uploading workflow but it's the only way to ensure that the speed wont drop.
Speed drops -as i found out- when you have a batch of clips and the next file starts to upload.Never happens midway the uploading process.
So..goodluck i guess...

254
I am not expecting to get rich over night, but its an interesting concept, so I will upload some files and check back in 6 months. As long as i can delete my files, its ok.

I am not criticising you, i might do that as well at some point since you can delete your clips from the console.


255
Shutterstock.com / Re: ftp speeds
« on: May 12, 2015, 15:00 »
There is the ftp thread,if you have time to read it ti will pretty much tell you everything you need to know.
But yeah ss is definitely working hard on the issue.

It took them a month to admit that there MIGHT be a slight issue for SOME people after accusing them,their internet connections,their isp's and even the filezilla updates and settings.
And another a month where they are still trying hard to fix the issue that they are now pretty much sure that it affects people.

Lol this is so ridiculous on so many levels that i've stopped bothering with them.The answers on that thread resemble the monty python parrot shop sketch.

256
If it's a new marketplace or agency I would expect sales to go up and down, while they are building a customer base.

ok, I'll bite, I am sending up a few files provided I can delete them anytime and they are not distributed to other sites.

if they have sublicensing Deals, then please direct me to the opt out button...

ETA: already found something I dont like: visible download numbers :(

They dont help the customer, because the content could be downloaded millions of times on other stock sites, and encourage copy cats who can easily pick and see what is worth copying.

Shutterstock doesnt have them, no high end macro site has them...please reconsider...

Shutterstock lists clips by popularity which happens to be sales numbers among other stuff.At least for my portfolio it is prerry indicative of what has sold the most.Pond5 also shows number of sales.A few other sites also list views and sales.
SO it's not very difficult pretty much in every agency out there to pretty much find out what sells best.

Why am i not still convinced about this videoblocks deal?
Being on par with ME tells me nothing since ME is pretty much non-existent.Dont know about fotolia and revostock,i dont have a personal experience, but it seems that there are not many sales there for those who report so videoblocks can't be judged by the number of sales compared to these sites or any other site for that matter.

Anyway im not anxious to join them anyway.



257
Maybe the sales are overwhelming they don't have enough time to process them.  I may see many sales posted suddenly.  Crossing my fingers.
::)

Or maybe other contributors read your glowing reports of how many sales you were getting and uploaded so much content that now yours is just a drop in the proverbial bucket?  ;D

A few days ago i checked and the market place hadn't grown since its opening i remember it was like 150-160k files almost the same as the day it started.
I just went back to check and they have changed the number now it says 10K+ for both libraries,but still i dont think it has changed much.
But seriously do you truly believe that a marketplace that has been open for a month suddenly grew too much as to dilute the sales?
So everyone who contributed there from the start is now an established seller there?Like seriously?
I don't recall saying anything about whether the contributors were established sellers or not, so I'm not sure where that comes from.

So your logic is, the number used to show 150-160K, it now shows 10K+, and you "dont think it has changed much". Like seriously?  ???

Neither of us has a clue what is really going on there. I just offered what seemed like a possible explanation for helloitsme's sudden drop in sales. It seems logical to me to assume that the pool of buyers hasn't increased significantly in the past month, but the number of files in the marketplace surely has. Perhaps that doesn't explain the sales drop -- of course I honestly don't know.

It could just as easily be that helloitsme was very lucky. One or two buyers perhaps found his port, and continued to buy from it for a few days. When they were done, that was that. Maybe they'll find my port one of these days (I should be so lucky).

Or perhaps you have a better explanation? Let's here it then.

Hey i dont have any explanations either.We are making assumptions based of a few facts here.
Im saying that the number of clips online was almost the same when it started as it was a few days before,which was the last time i checked.
Unless something dramatic happened during this week such as online files going from 150K to,i dont know, twice that? then it's highly unlikely that the drop in sales is due to the cmpetition.
Does that make more sense now?

Having sold even one clip in a month on a new site seems pretty remarkable  to me.I mean the topic starter sounds as if he was contributing there for like ages and suddenly his sales dropped hence the tongue in cheek joke about "established seller".

258
Maybe the sales are overwhelming they don't have enough time to process them.  I may see many sales posted suddenly.  Crossing my fingers.
::)

Or maybe other contributors read your glowing reports of how many sales you were getting and uploaded so much content that now yours is just a drop in the proverbial bucket?  ;D

A few days ago i checked and the market place hadn't grown since its opening i remember it was like 150-160k files almost the same as the day it started.
I just went back to check and they have changed the number now it says 10K+ for both libraries,but still i dont think it has changed much.
But seriously do you truly believe that a marketplace that has been open for a month suddenly grew too much as to dilute the sales?
So everyone who contributed there from the start is now an established seller there?Like seriously?

259
You realize it's been open for like only a month right?

260
Im actually a bit bummed about ME.
Was really hoping it would worth the effort and time i spent there uploading most of my port,but in my case that didnt work.
I have deleted everything since, and i have yet to receive an official answer (sent an email 1+1/2 months ago) as to why i cant delete the clips from my portfolio that have had a sale,and as to how i can pay back the -10usd fee from a footage reversal.


261
Pond5 / Re: Files not uploading.
« on: April 28, 2015, 07:03 »
Looks like its working now.
(Not going to make the correlation between p5 and ss server troubleshooting right now, although i should)

262
Pond5 / Re: Files not uploading.
« on: April 28, 2015, 05:20 »
Yup,cant upload anything at all via ftp (too many users connected) or even http since 12 hours ago.
May need to give it a day,experience says that whenever this happens at pond5 it is usually for a short period of time.

263
Pond5 / Re: Pond5: What should we improve?
« on: April 23, 2015, 14:37 »
Well I don't really agree because if someone sells his clips at 20$ it makes a really big difference and it destroys the market and our business even selling at 40$ is very bad for us so I would really say that everything depends on the price and not the number of clip sold


Inviato dal mio iPhone utilizzando Tapatalk

Yes you are absolutely right,but for the drop in earnings discussion what i meant was that numbers dont mean anything because we dont know for how much everyone sells at p5..
If someone wants to openly discuss numbers there's no point in throwing figures there,he should translate that to number of sales.

Maybe his more expensive ones sold in April or maybe almost the same number of his his cheap ones,that's a variable of no actual meaning since sales stay the same only commission changes but that's not a drop.
But if you sell 50 clips montly and you drop to 30 even if they are the more expensive clips (commercial, talent released etc), earning the same amount of money means there still is a MAJOR drop in sales there.

264
Pond5 / Re: Pond5: What should we improve?
« on: April 23, 2015, 13:34 »
Earnings dont help this discussion very much though.300usd doesn't tell me much,number of sold clips is more helpful as data.
Pond5 has dropped 20-40 percent for me while i was growing my portfolio, 500 clips end of 2014-900clips now.
I was used to getting 15-20 sales a month near the end of 2014 (it had stabilized pretty much) but february and march was more like 13-15 although this week it looks like it has picked up a bit.

Seems that someone doesn't like me being open with my sales figures.Is it my accountant?Sorry Nick, lol.

265
Shutterstock.com / Re: Shutterstock sales map bugged or?
« on: April 23, 2015, 13:24 »
Most of these sales show from south africa where i dont pay tax.

so why is it unusual? there are businesses in south africa too. in fact many are british businesses .
i am not sure if i get what you are saying. why are you worrying when your earning is not taxed?
would you prefer that 100% comes from US?

there is life in south africa, it is not just full of lions and giraffe and black people and pirate ships like some silly implications here

You lost me there completely.No way did i even come close to implying that.
The south africa thing doesn't concern me at all,the sales could have come from alaska or from the middle of the pacific as far as i am concerned, i just mentioned the tag in the map to explain that even though almost all sales seem to come from a country where i dont pay tax some of them propably have been made from all over the map including usa,and it would be nice to know where i have made sales in the world especially if some of these places are in usa so i can know my tax deduction beforehand.

I thought i was very clear with my post and the answers from other contributors were clear as well, how in god's name did i imply that i consider africa as a place highly unlikely to purchase my footage?


266
Shutterstock.com / Re: Shutterstock sales map bugged or?
« on: April 23, 2015, 04:17 »
And if someone uses an IP blocker, it will put the thumbnail in the ocean next to Africa on the left.

I thought most of my files were downloaded from a pirate ship sailing around Cape Verde.  ;)

If you sold empty glass bottles with a cork expect a sale reversal and a note.

267
Shutterstock.com / Re: Shutterstock sales map bugged or?
« on: April 23, 2015, 04:16 »
Thought so,but still this map thingy started very recently,it was,or appeared to be spot on for quite some time.
Normally i wouldn't care but us tax deduction pisses me off,and i would like to at least be able to calculate my taxes before "earnings summary" does.
Well, anyway.....

268
Shutterstock.com / Shutterstock sales map bugged or?
« on: April 23, 2015, 03:53 »
During the past couple of months ,or less, at shutterstock, it seems that almost all of my sales are showing in the same place on the map.

That is highly unlikely to be happening (same individual/company downloading my clips) because the content is totally random in nature,that never used to happen, and 3rd and the most intruiging part:

I am based in a country where i pay 30% tax for sales in usa.Most of these sales show from south africa where i dont pay tax.

Now,every time i have a sale from usa ground i deduct the tax so at the end of every month i know how much i am taxed before ss calculates the taxes,but during the past 2 months i had a lot deducted from tax,so i assume that some of them must have come from us source,but us source on the map showed only a couple of times and the rest were south africa and a few from europe and asia where i dont pay tax as well.

Has anyone experienced something similar lately?I might even mail to ss but i kind of know the (non)answer.

269
2 more sales today.  Already more video sales revenue than at Fotolia this month!!  Keep it coming!

I am glad you guys get sales.If this keeps up maybe us non believers will jump ship eventually.
But for the time being i've decided -and thats something propably only my shrink can explain-
to continue my uploads at dissolve (yeah i know) and clipcanvas.Yes, clipcanvas,despite the fact that they have sold nothing for me in 6 months.
Denial perhaps?
Anyway....

No worries.  It's good not to have everybody uploading to VideoBlocks.  Less competition = more sales for us!!

No need to be vitriolic.After all the sales you make at vb you (propably) lose from somewhere else and i wish in the long run that doesn't come back to bite us in the ass.

270
Pond5 / Re: Pond5: What should we improve?
« on: April 22, 2015, 10:23 »
Earnings dont help this discussion very much though.300usd doesn't tell me much,number of sold clips is more helpful as data.
Pond5 has dropped 20-40 percent for me while i was growing my portfolio, 500 clips end of 2014-900clips now.
I was used to getting 15-20 sales a month near the end of 2014 (it had stabilized pretty much) but february and march was more like 13-15 although this week it looks like it has picked up a bit.

271
2 more sales today.  Already more video sales revenue than at Fotolia this month!!  Keep it coming!

I am glad you guys get sales.If this keeps up maybe us non believers will jump ship eventually.
But for the time being i've decided -and thats something propably only my shrink can explain-
to continue my uploads at dissolve (yeah i know) and clipcanvas.Yes, clipcanvas,despite the fact that they have sold nothing for me in 6 months.
Denial perhaps?
Anyway....

272
Pond5 / Re: Pond5: What should we improve?
« on: April 15, 2015, 22:52 »
Stop traveling, start SELLING !!!!!!!

You seem to be very knowledgeable on how the stock media industry works,how sales happen,how companies micromanage,how investors ceo's and employees behave,you propably even knowwhen and where they take a dump.
When it comes to pond5 and shuterstock you knowledge surpasses our collective knowledge, that's pretty much proven here.You know everything about them yet you love one and hate the other,but nevermind that.You must have your reasons i guess.

So then,why dont you share all this knowledge and enlighten us,as to how one company pushes sales and the other one doesn't since these two are the major video agencies.
I'm really curious to know the inner working of this business.
Please elaborate,from your own experience if you may.

273
Im not the right person to answer the question above, but i suspect that these 3 are the peope with the less to lose in this game (if any) .
In a different tone im very happy for the people that sold clips there so fast,and i wish them to prove me wrong.
I truthfully,sincerely, hope so.
After all i just voice an opinion in a public forum and that opinion needs public criticism,meaning that the people who contribute there have a moral obligation to
inform us all about the bad, AND the good.

274

Quote
At the risk of sounding simplistic...if they have to charge a commission on sales in the end, we're not going to be worse off than we are with any other agency.

Too many "if's" though.Lets just all zoom out a bit and look at the big picture.Are we suddenly already wishing/waiting for a soft backlash?
I wish they had said from the start that they would give us 50%commission.I would alreeady have uploaded everything i have.

275
Quote

Hmm...
Polite reminder that those agencies were once beginners too!
Sadly there seems to be a trend going around Top and Mid tier agencies not to answer any question.

Nothing wrong to give new folks a chance.

Time will tell!  :)

VB is not a beginner though.
They have been around for years,they just operate in a different business model,they hire people to create content to which they have exclusive rights to sell in bulk or per download.
Nothing wrong with that,its just that now they try to steal a piece of the shrinking pie of the other stock agencies (again nothing wrong with that) ,but they havent proposed a model for doing that,that makes sense for THEM.
They will pay contributors full commission,but thats impossible financially and ethically (i dont trust anyone in this business,economy,and universe, who wants to make money from my work ESPECIALLY when he proposes a win-win scenario)

How will they cover expenses if suddenly 2 million files find their way there in 6 months time?Do we know anything about them?Can they expand to cover this amount of work?
Apparently no because these things dont make sense,and thats why i believe that their major concern is to "steal" traffic from ss and p5 and the rest.
After all the 3 major producers of video someone posted earlier have uploaded 25-30% of the total clips on the marketplace.Thats major traffic by itself.

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