|
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 - Jo Ann Snover
2701
« on: June 07, 2015, 23:09 »
Ah. I'll bet that's it. Thanks
2702
« on: June 07, 2015, 21:06 »
Is Canva still doing weekend intake of uploaded content? I uploaded 30 images on Friday and I don't see them as pending in my portfolio (it's already Monday in Australia)
2703
« on: June 07, 2015, 18:21 »
What would DT do if you made an icon set out of color variations of a single icon. For the camping one, for example, colors that were spring, summer, fall, winter; night vs. day and with different colored tents. I know any halfway competent Illustrator user can do that themselves, but might it give you a way to sell one piece of work in a way that DT will accept?
I'm not seeing anything encouraging in DT sales, but assuming they're doing well for you, perhaps it'd be worth an experiment?
2704
« on: June 05, 2015, 00:50 »
It obviously depends on what rights are licensed, but it's entirely reasonable for a single RM sale to be for much less than RF - if you get limited rights for an image over a limited period of time, that should cost less than a much broader set of rights in perpetuity. That's Canva's model (which I think of as micro-RM).
The whole point of RM is that you keep track of what rights went to whom and for what period, but that says nothing about the price for a given set of rights. The problem with offering lower priced RM deals (which Canva has sidestepped because of their platform) is tracking usage so that buyers don't pay small amounts for limited rights and then use the image beyond the scope of the license (whether that's inadvertent or not).
2705
« on: June 03, 2015, 10:39 »
[For me I don't miss them one bit nor do I miss the measly $60 a month...
It's not so much one $50 a month or $100 a month but multiples - it adds up (or subtracts) when you do this for multiple offending agencies. Or, in the case of Deposit Photos, don't upload to them in the first place because of their crappy reputation. In my case (agencies I left): iStock - Getty-Google deal with no opt out BigStock - crappy subscription royalty scheme with no opt out Veer - crappy partner program (fixed royalties, no opt out and no list of partner sites given to contributors) Fotolia - wouldn't have me back Envato - fictional nonsense that I'm the seller not them
2706
« on: June 01, 2015, 19:49 »
Thanks for the replies. It really doesn't matter except that I was curious as to whether there was some new program - the big deals for large customers are at every agency. I'm not at iStock for the money any more (I only have those files shot at iStockalypse online there as i couldn't sell them anywhere else); I can better keep an eye on what's going on with an account, but I don't upload there.
2707
« on: June 01, 2015, 10:40 »
...I've thought about this and adventure, coast, continent and ocean are all perfectly reasonable keywords to describe one of the greatest sea going explorers of the last century and isn't a statue of a person fairly symbolic? Thanks for the critique though 
I think the best way to think about keywording is to think about doing searches as a buyer and trying to help them find your image when appropriate and not find it when it's clearly not what they were looking for. If I search ocean or coast and see a statue in a park I'm going to view it as spam and not in any way the kind of image I want. My goal - in addition to selling licenses to my images - is never to piss a buyer off with the way I've keyworded something. I don't want to think of them clicking on the thumbnail to see what numbskull put the keyword ocean on a statue picture on dry land.
2708
« on: June 01, 2015, 10:30 »
I periodically check my iStock account and this morning noticed that I'd had a sale May 29th that netted me 63 cents for an XXXL image.
I'm paid at 18% which means the buyer would have paid $3.50 for that credit which seems impossibly low.
Looking at the current packs, 300 credits can be purchased at $8 each - more than twice the amount in my case.
Is there some new pricing scheme I'm not aware of? This was a blue bar - i.e. not subscription or partner program. Royalties have typically been $1.40 - $1.60 ish.
What is the lowest buyer price per credit people are seeing now?
2709
« on: May 27, 2015, 16:43 »
Lets not forget, people who try to stand up for their rights got booted off. Maybe I was the only one booted off, I dont know, but I wish they would see it from my perspective instead of kicking me out for wanting to protect my own property.
No you were not the only one. Fotolia shut down my 8000 file portfolio the same day as yours.
Without notification or communication.
And after I returned as an indie after being an iStock exclusive, Fotolia refused to let me back as a contributor. I did ask. They had earlier warned me that if I kept trying to organize contributors they'd close my account; that was before I became an exclusive). It's not the same as booting an active contributor, but is very different, IMO, from contributors who are removed because of copyright infringement or something that affects the legitimacy of their supplied content and violates the artist supply agreement. The Dollar Photo Club mess was even worse than described above. At first, Fotolia said they had nothing to do with DPC. Then they acknowledged it was a subsidiary and told contributors who asked to opt out that they could only do that by removing their portfolio from Fotolia. When enough people did that, Fotolia grudgingly introduced an opt out. We could go further back to see similar problems - the introduction of subscriptions, which had no credit at all towards rank (an upload boycott got increased royalties and the crappy 4 for 1 rank credit). I seem to recall that during one of those dust ups, Matt became quite snippy about how I really didn't have much of a stake in the Fotolia community anyway (I was still a contributor at the time). Possibly he just didn't like me for some reason (we've never met) and possibly his bedside manner in his new job will be different from the situation back then, but my takeway was not positive when Matt was confronted with someone being blunt about what was going on (versus the happy talk Fotolia was peddling). At a minimum, please would Matt have Tyler give him an official "I'm a representative" badge so everyone knows he's Fotolia's contributor liaison.
2710
« on: May 26, 2015, 09:34 »
I have contacted BlueHost directly but I got a different e-mail (Account Notice : Error № 6341) that ended up in my spam directory - this was about too many directories (and they gave me a link to click)...
Edited to add that BlueHost confirmed this is phishing
2711
« on: May 15, 2015, 19:27 »
I was going to look at the video you pointed us to, but you can't watch it without signing up for a newsletter - I don't need more junk in my inbox, so I've skipped it.
I do think that sites offering various formats of content other than JPEG files (for images) are an interesting branch - Creative Market lets me sell PSD files, for example. Canva takes PNG.
I don't see photos and 3D objects as being in competition, because generally speaking if you want one, the other won't do. These 3D renders don't look anything like a photograph (and vice versa).
I did look at some of the selections in your advanced folder, and although the idea is great, the edges are very rough - jagged edges and a series of straight lines around a curve (at least in the diving bell example). Probably fine for some uses, but if you're going to the trouble to deliver PSDs (i.e. not the casual user) I wonder if they'll be OK with the selections.
If a user buys one of the 360 objects with via choosing a view with the spinner but later decides the angle isn't right or they need a different one, do they need to make a second purchase?
You include objects for sale in the basic license, something that almost all sites require an extended license for. I certainly wouldn't be OK with a basic license covering print on demand uses.
2712
« on: May 15, 2015, 11:16 »
... one year old image is dead.
That's just rubbish. Perhaps if your port is only a year or two old you haven't any experience in how this works? Or by "dead" do you mean something other than "is no longer selling"?
2713
« on: May 15, 2015, 09:52 »
I will continue to read the New York times via their mobile app (I subscribe). Why would I go to Facebook for news? That's for family pictures and other people's links to click bait stores on Huff Post and Buzzfeed.
Facebook has ambitions and publishers are scared. I don't think any of that means this new initiative will succeed.
2714
« on: May 15, 2015, 09:49 »
I don't know anything about trademark application rules, but reading through the seemingly endless description of where this trademark applies, it includes:
"... Software for processing images, graphics and text;..."
Isn't that so broad and general that he can't succeed?
Mostly I'd like to ignore him, but I don't plan to change my site right now, so I don't want to alter the references to Symbiostock that I have. There's no sliced-up hummingbird anywhere on mine though, so perhaps it doesn't matter?
2715
« on: May 14, 2015, 11:43 »
I opted out of distribution sales - I think it's a broken and outdated business model that gives a reseller a larger percentage than either the agency or the creator of the work. Supporting the distributors in any way seems like it's working against my own long term interests.
2717
« on: May 06, 2015, 18:26 »
Sean, what's a found image?
I believe he means an image you happened upon and took pictures of (versus a shoot you set up, styled, staged, etc.). Not a snapshot, but not an organized shoot either 
2718
« on: May 06, 2015, 10:32 »
I noticed if you are logged in you can not see similars. If you log out you can see them. Probably to increase speed.
That's what I see, but only for some images. Even for images showing the new ADP, I don't see similar images for all of them. For the ones I do see similars for, if I log in, the similars go away. Think about that - why would a buyer (who would be logged in) not want to see similars? You can always increase speed by removing functionality, but if something is useful, arguably that would be a poor tradeoff.
2719
« on: May 05, 2015, 12:56 »
If you look at the current license comparison page, it appears to exclude templates from a standard license, although the wording differs slightly http://www.shutterstock.com/license_comparison.mhtml?hsb=1(I kept a screen shot in case it changes without notice) The fact that they're telling buyers about license changes and not even putting something on their blog for contributors is pretty cavalier, IMO. Isn't there some VP with the title of Contributor Success? Does this person realize that includes our long term financial well being as SS suppliers? More rights for the same money is a royalty decrease, masked the same way boxed products do it - same price as before, but now there are only 80 tissues instead of 105 in the box...
2720
« on: May 05, 2015, 12:44 »
easydigitaldownloads is interesting indeed
It's possible you could make something work with a solution for digital downloads, but I'm guessing (I haven't installed this to check it out) it won't do the work to generate the size you need on the fly if you're selling more sizes than just the "original". I'd also check carefully to make sure that your unwatermarked, full resolution originals aren't stored somewhere easily accessed (e.g. all those images in wp-content that show up in Google image searches). You'll also need to be able to indicate that what someone is buying is a license to use the image, not the image itself and possibly multiple license options (regular and extended) for the same product.
2721
« on: May 05, 2015, 12:36 »
PicturEngine
I don't think that's ever getting off the ground - I know it's still around, but it's slow, the image display is (IMO, if I think with a buyer hat on) not appealing and it'd be quicker to check 2 or 3 of your favorite sites
2722
« on: May 04, 2015, 12:41 »
Welcome.
It's not hard to learn to take technically competent photos. It's a lot harder to figure out how to style and shoot images that sell well.
I wouldn't worry about lots of agencies to start - it doesn't matter if you get accepted to the low earners as even really good portfolios don't make much money there. Look at the top and middle tiers (and I'd skip DepositPhotos and Envato, probably Alamy too).
1. It depends on your images and keywords. You could make that in the first couple of weeks or it could take you 6 months.
2. Keywording gets easier as you get the hang of it. Shutterstock has a nice keywording helper.
3. It's not as much about the quality (which obviously has to be there) but the sales appeal. Look at the top agencies and see what comes up (searching by popularity) for some keywords you might be interested in shooting - e.g. restaurants, high tech, climbing, or cosplay (Shutterstock has over 7,000 cosplay images). That's your competition.
Good luck
2723
« on: May 03, 2015, 18:46 »
Why does he have to introduce himself as long as the sw works?
Robin doesn't have to do anything at all. He can just make a plugin and try and promote it via WordPress and ignore prior Symbiostock sites if that's what he wants. When I buy software or install something free, I want to check on the track record of the entity providing the software. I use my computer for work and it wouldn't be around long if I just installed anything and everything that caught my eye. That track record might be reviews for paid software or the number of downloads and any comments on WordPress that things do/don't work well. Robin has no track record of any kind, wants to stay anonymous and doesn't wish to answer questions he feels display a lack of "humility" on our part. Even if he had a rude forum post or two to contend with, he needs to be able to handle that calmly and not post rude and condescending locked statements directed at his would-be customers. The fact that he was all upbeat initially and dissolved on contact with a few specific and direct questions does not send good vibes about installing what he's working on, IMO.
2724
« on: April 30, 2015, 01:16 »
...Jo-Ann, you still seem to think we're making rash or uninformed decisions. All of the contributors I briefed on this change were totally fine with it...
I didn't say anything about rash or uninformed in this post or any other, so I 'm not sure what your message is about i "still seem to think". I posted my reaction to the e-mail I received. My reaction based on my experiences.
|
Sponsors
Microstock Poll Results
Sponsors
|
Show Posts
