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Messages - MichaelJayFoto
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276
« on: November 10, 2014, 10:09 »
^ do you know anyone who has ever actually paid. I doubt that many investors are paying for it. The stuff he had on Getty midstock last year seemed more surmised than researched. It seemed to have been extrapolated from the freely available Moody's report. Why "investors"? Photographers if I'm not wrong. There is a world of photographers who are not really into microstock, you know. They are not reading forums or blogs. And the newsletter has been around for a long time, so there are likely a lot of subscribers from the good old times. Besides, I did pay for single articles. Occasionally there is some interesting stuff you can't just get from some forums that I found worth a few dollars.
277
« on: November 09, 2014, 12:56 »
However, I did find Mr. Pickerell's lack of preparation on the topic he wants to report on - for pay - irritating in its laziness.
He wants us to give him information and he can't even be bothered to ask in terms that a contributor could provide. If he had even one contributor show him the interface we get to look at, he'd know that what he's asking for is impossible for us to answer. In which case he would do better by asking for specific information we do have - which people could then decide to provide or not as they see fit.
He also doesn't offer anything in return, which seems a bit entitled to me, especially as he expects to sell his intelligence.
Yep, well said. I am getting a bit frustrated by his lack of interaction and communication following up his regular requests to us to provide information that he is going to put up for his paying clients.
278
« on: November 02, 2014, 09:32 »
It's a bit hard to judge the actual sales since there has been a clear and strong trend from credit sales to subscription sales before the September changes already.
My download numbers in October are down almost 50% from the spring & summer months. Then again in September I had more subscription than credit downloads on iStock itself (not including the partner program). So the download volume could be the same or actually a bit higher than before the change.
Obviously the higher number of subscription downloads leads to lower average sales, so the royalties will suffer a bit.
But I end up with about 60 credit sales, 70-80 subscription sales and about 200 sales through the partner program. That is about 25% in credit sales and 75% subscriptions, so we are reaching about the same distribution that Shutterstock has. I guess there soon will be a point when this move from credit to subs is going to be over and then it will show how iStock will build up on their new offer which obviously is meant to mirror Shutterstock's offer.
Only then we will be able to judge if the new system is going to help iStock get back to a growth path or if they lose the race against Shutterstock after all.
279
« on: November 02, 2014, 06:34 »
However, if their attititude to potential buyers is that poor keywording is unimportant, they're as bad as iS. Considering that your keyword whining goes back to the phase when iStock grew from 50 to 300 million in revenues, I'd say listening to what you consider important is not actually helping a business. Maybe you could take your personal issues to sites/agencies you actually participate in. Or try to match the number of images with the number of posts. Everyone would win.
280
« on: November 01, 2014, 13:37 »
Good luck to them finding 'a' keywording expert whose expertise extends to all subject areas. Luckily, it's not a requirement to cater your pet peeves. The results have to be good enough for buyers only to find what they need and that's far easier to achieve. Otherwise all agencies would be bankrupt already.
281
« on: November 01, 2014, 06:17 »
Well I woke up this morning and my contributor level in Oct was 2 with around 290 credits but November 1st it jumped to level 4 with over 2000 credits 
Anyone else had this sudden jump? i.e. without trying to tote up all the previous 12 months I don't reckon it's realistic.
Interesting. I was around 400-500 all the time, now it shows 1336, so I jumped from Level 2 to Level 3. Since I occasionally calculated my own numbers and they were correct for the prior months, and I had rather low sales in October, I assume there is a bug.
282
« on: October 31, 2014, 09:05 »
Sorry to say but I'm not warming up to the app yet...
Now I have an issue because 123RF apparently had a bug this week, so for a day or so the app read my balance as $0. The next day, 123RF was up again, my balance was $31. The app apparently considers the $31 as new income because of the 0 value the day before. So as a result 123RF is being reported with $60 this month, $29 from the time before the bug appeared plus $31 from the day after.
I think that is a general flaw if you only check the account balance in comparison to the data stored for the day before. I didn't try this yet but what if I'm traveling for a day or two and don't have the app update its data? I guess the day I come back all data will then be reported as new income on a single day as well, right?
The app is still a nice toy for those who want to check if they had new downloads during the day. So the average hobbyist will probably be fine with this. But I think the stats part needs to be worked on, otherwise it will just be wrong numbers in nice colors.
283
« on: October 31, 2014, 05:08 »
They have around 23 Million files (that includes Vector and Video) currently but the count is increasing by more than 100-150K per week since they accept pretty much everything.
Do you have a solid base for that or is it an estimate? My estimate for the end of 2013 was 17.5 million ( http://www.michaeljayfoto.com/agency-news/how-did-the-istock-collection-develop-in-2013/) and based on that I would come up with a range of 24-25 million at this point. Not far from yours but I'd be interested to know if you have a better base for your number.
284
« on: October 31, 2014, 02:50 »
Oh, just another little note: How do the higher cost and risk involved would affect the copyright holders' right to be credited for the images he/she produces?
I can't see why removing the copyright notices from the image is somewhat a requirement to provide client visits and image research, is it?
285
« on: October 31, 2014, 02:42 »
Hi everyone,
I've been following the thread and I hope I would be given the opportunity to jump in and clarify a few matters.
Yes, you're right to view Inmagine as a sister or parent company, whose main product are PREMIUM RM and RF images and have the same shareholders. However, that's where the similarities end - Inmagine and 123RF do not share manpower, infrastructure, sales or marketing budgets, marketing activities, strategies etc.
Being experienced contributors, you would understand that every business is carried out differently - Inmagine's target audience are customers of a different segment with different needs. With 123RF, we're largely a self-serve, pay before you consume, volume based sales approach. While Inmagine has longer sales cycles, heavily reliant on relationship based sales, requires a lot of extensive image research, travelling and pitching before a client finally gets on board and the customer care that entails after the sale is very protracted, a lot of manual invoicing, mailing and follow up is required even if only a single image was sold. A majority of Inmagine's customers demand credit terms ranging anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months. This is because, Inmagine's own customers (the agencies themselves) have to be paid beforehand. Once they're paid then only Inmagine gets paid.
However, the 123RF Partner Reseller API (the bridge between 123RF and Inmagine) immediately registers a sale whenever Inmagine records an image purchase. 123RF is then committed to pay the commissions to you regardless of the ability of Inmagine to collect payment with credit terms mentioned above.
The image that I'm trying to paint here is:
1. Inmagine's cost of sales is very much different from 123RF's. It's a lot more involved - client visits and servicing are imperative to the business.
2. Inmagine's undertaking of RISK is also very much higher because there is a significant chance that clients might default or even go bust before payments are collected. This is a very real risk during bad economic downturns when a large number of agencies stopped operating.
3. 123RF has to pay commissions upon record of sale and charge Inmagine immediately, but Inmagine has to take a long time to recover the sales as Imagine have to abide by the credit terms given.
4. Inmagine and 123RF are incorporated in different parts of the world, we cannot "merge" the accounting systems between the 2 companies as easily as some might think.
With the 4 points above, I hope you can somewhat relate that we are unable treat the businesses as a single entity. Inmagine has to retain that margin because of a larger cost of sale required to sustain its business. Please also note that we feel that Inmagine should retain itself as an API Partner Reseller because we believe that every sale we can fight for our contributors and keep it within the community would be beneficial and count towards your earnings.
Thanks for lending us your ears.
Alex
Well, you are making a point for why macrostock images are priced significantly higher than microstock. So why are you selling high-res images at $10 through Inmagine then? I somehow doubt that you can pay many client visits and image research from then additional $5 you take out of this. How about pricing those images at $50 - $500 like all other macrostock images you are selling on Inmagine? Because as you say, the higher price is not justified by the images themselves but because of all the additional services and risks you are taking. I might consider it a good idea if you start selling my images for $50 up and might agree that you take a higher share out of those sales for the additional customer services you are providing.
286
« on: October 28, 2014, 01:31 »
Well that article would explain it then, because I see nothing in the IS portfolio that I would consider any thing more than just "average" or "barely adequate", when taking the whole of the photographs into consideration.... Well, that's the beauty of microstock, isn't it? Anyone can play along, and in the end it's up to the customer to decide which of the images they are going to license for their project.
287
« on: October 26, 2014, 04:18 »
Thank you for buying StockAgent!
However, I don't like the idea of paying for an app and then have new features (in this case agencies) added which I have to pay for again...
I think, "paying again" would be the correct description for a subscription pricing model. That's where you have to pay every year for the same old features. In my opinion, this is unfair, right?
Paying for new features as an option does not hurt anybody who does not need them.
I implemented the new agencies on customer demand. So it is just a little compensation for the extra work.
The other thing ... So basically I now have one giant bar on the day I started to use the app and the following days will all look tiny...
That's a problem of the first month when you start using the app. Next month will look much better for you. 
To be honest, I have no idea how to overcome this. There could be two other ways to handle it ...
- Move the income from the first run to the month before
- Or skip the first run completely.
What do you think?
Best regards,
Volker
I'd think the easiest implementation would be to just use the first run as a starting point and not show them in the graph. The point in my case is that I happen to have a larger amount of royalties sitting in my accounts than I would typically make in a month. So even if I wait month, the November bar will still look small compared to what I see for October right now. And the distribution pie chart will only start to show realistic values in 2015 if I understand the calculations correctly. So for me the value of the app is limited to quickly check how much I made today which is quite okay because that's the main purpose for me. But if you have nice charts in there, I'd love them to show realistic values.
288
« on: October 25, 2014, 05:24 »
Given that the app is for a special purpose and not a mass market game, I believe the price is justified and I had no problems paying for it. However, I don't like the idea of paying for an app and then have new features (in this case agencies) added which I have to pay for again...
The other thing I notice is that when setting up the app I don't get any of these nice graphs you are showing because apparently it doesn't actually check my daily sales but only compares the amounts I have in my account. So basically I now have one giant bar on the day I started to use the app and the following days will all look tiny...
289
« on: October 24, 2014, 03:55 »
I have no doubt that my money accounts are 100% safe! But what is happening with the data itself? It must be very precious! Having access to this data of so many contributors would give any contributor or stockcompany a huge advantage over the competition how this is handled? Is the data only available on my computer and as long I protect my computer nobody can see this data even the developing-/tech- team of Stockperformer? My technical background is poor I'm just trying to understand it I have no doubt that Stockperformer is a great program!
Exactly, very good question!
Data is being collected on a server. Otherwise it wouldn't be possible to slice and dice the numbers for Top Sales or Collections. Then again, it also means I can log in from everywhere with any device and get to my numbers. However, as Cobalt described: When you don't have StockPerformer open (or have it open but aren't logged in to the stock sites), it can't collect additional data from your accounts. The data collection is being done locally on your computer and then sent to the server for analysis. And just like Cobalt I know Luis and Oliver in person, so I have a lot of trust (rather than with a company from some country 5,000 miles away).
290
« on: October 16, 2014, 04:12 »
exactly! and if I remember right it costs you a Dollar well worth it though! 
Nope. It does not " cost" you a dollar. You buy a share in the co-op for a dollar. So technically, if you'd ever leave the co-op, you should get that money back. 
291
« on: October 14, 2014, 11:38 »
The question isn't if a camera is good enough for stock. The question is if your image is good enough for stock. All cameras have their limitations, and as long as you stay within those, you can get good enough images out of most of them.
I don't know how the G2 compares to the G3 but with the latter I had images accepted at Shutterstock and Fotolia. But it is quite aggressive in noise reduction, so I have to avoid large areas with a single color when I shoot for stock.
That's what I noticed. Images look a little smushy from noise reduction. Wonder if there is a raw app?
I didn't find any. It appears to be slightly better with Camera FV-5 and Google Cam than the standard camera. But from the internets it sounds like noise reduction is a big issue on all of the newest models, Galaxy S5 and iPhone 6 included. Suiting the masses but unfortunate for serious photographers.
292
« on: October 14, 2014, 10:10 »
The question isn't if a camera is good enough for stock. The question is if your image is good enough for stock. All cameras have their limitations, and as long as you stay within those, you can get good enough images out of most of them.
I don't know how the G2 compares to the G3 but with the latter I had images accepted at Shutterstock and Fotolia. But it is quite aggressive in noise reduction, so I have to avoid large areas with a single color when I shoot for stock.
293
« on: October 05, 2014, 04:08 »
Michael, I looked at that link to your pasta photo, then tried to click onwards to the rest of your port via the MichaelZwahlen/EyeEm link, but got
"Server Error in '/' Application.
The resource cannot be found.
Description: HTTP 404. The resource you are looking for (or one of its dependencies) could have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. Please review the following URL and make sure that it is spelled correctly.
Requested URL: /photographers/Michael Zwahlen / EyeEm/search"
Yes... sooooo...? I can't change my username nor do I do the programming for the Getty website as you most likely know. No point in telling me that things don't work as they should. 
294
« on: October 03, 2014, 09:25 »
The EyeEm Market is now working for the photographer side, and just end of last week I saw the first of my images showing up on the Getty Images site as part of the EyeEm collection.
I was asked to write down my experiences with the EyeEm market and how things work over there. In case you are interested, here is the article now: http://www.mystockphoto.org/eyeem-market-contributor-guide/
Hello Michael, I know this is an old post, but since it is now several months since you posted this, wondering how you are finding the EyeEm market on Getty? I have some photos sitting in limbo which have been selected for the Getty collection, but which I have not approved yet. I was waiting for EyeEm to launch their own market, but this keeps getting delayed. Any updated thoughts?
Hey there, someone pointed me to this thread. Unfortunately I'm not on MSG regularly these days, so if you have questions to me personally, my blog (and all the social media channels attached to it) is the best way to get in touch. However, since I found it now: I can't tell you a lot more as I don't know any details of the progress yet. It's all a startup thing, so I'm pretty patient. I have some 120 images approved for the market, 110 of them supposed to go to Getty and 80 made it there. From the images I have at Getty, I can see they are priced within the usual price range, no discount because it was shot with a mobile. Check one out here as an example: http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/directly-above-shot-of-pasta-on-table-royalty-free-image/511833425I have found one of my images in use a couple of weeks ago but as we all know, selling through Getty can take some time until the money arrives. And we won't be able to draw any conclusions as Getty is often discounting images heavily for larger buyers... But given the standard prices, I'll be happy if some of my images sell every now and then. It's basically not the kind of image I would plan to shoot or invest money in. It's just on top of the regular stock images, random shots I find somewhere or experiments with the mobile.
295
« on: October 01, 2014, 06:57 »
Hello
Today I've logged into my account and my balance has disappeared.
I have 1$ from today's download.
Anybody has the same problem?
Best regards
I assume you are pretty new...? It's October 1st, Shutterstock pays out at the end of the month when you reach payout levels. You should get an email with the amount you will be paid within a few days, and the payment before the 15th.
296
« on: October 01, 2014, 06:53 »
Could be correct to compare portfolios not people who earn money, and to compare image by image and sell by sell then to see the true
But to me the real question now is what kind of photography would like to do. I'm trying to curate my shots before shooting on the way they to be like Stocksy curated.
In the next years will come a huge Stocksy success and want to be there when it happens, also I want to be there on the way of this success
Yep, it's not about "who earns where what amount". In September, I have earned more royalties on Stocksy than on iStock (even considering the PP still coming). But less than on Shutterstock. But I have ten times more images (even more) on Shutterstock than on Stocksy. But none of the images I submitted to Shutterstock would have made it to Stocksy. And probably all images I have on Stocksy would not sell very well in the microstock agencies. So... in the end it's the best to have as many different channels as possible to give most of your images the chance to find the right buyer at the right price. Not an "either here or there" or "this is better than that" thing.
297
« on: September 10, 2014, 07:56 »
I will also be there. I'll be giving a presentation on mobile photography for CEWE (photo print company). Those will be held in German, though. The presentation will be held twice on Friday and once on Saturday: http://www.cewe-fotobuch.de/news/9232-photokina-diese-fotografen-teilen-an-unserem-stand-ihr-wissen/I'll be around from Thursday to Sunday, so if you want to meet for a coffee, drop a note. And I'll be at the dinner Jasmin is organizing. Hope to see many of you there. Cheers, Michael
298
« on: September 05, 2014, 04:04 »
Why wouldn't I stay with iStock after the change?
So far in 2014, my average royalty per download has been $0.91 with iStock.
With the new system all of my images will be priced between $8 and $15, of which I will get 17% which would be $1.36 up to $2.55 - in this scenario it looks like I will get a higher average royalty per download after the change. And those royalties are actually in line with what I get at Shutterstock for Image Packs.
Of course it also means we are likely to see a heavier shift from single image sales to subscriptions but that is already happening step by step since April and might only speed up now.
And it's hard to predict how the download pattern between non-exclusives and exclusives will shift, given that exclusive images are now becoming a bit less overpriced (with the exception of the maybe 200-400k real premium images they have which now are becoming heavily underpriced).
299
« on: September 03, 2014, 02:01 »
It was long expected they will drop the RC system.
They call it "locking RC current level"
They have locked it every year since it started, IIRC, inasmuch as no-one dropped a tier, but some rose.
This is certainly not the case, most people I know, including myself, have dropped a tier. I'm sure some have dropped more.
Yes but only when they introduced it. After that, everyone was grandfathered year after year. Which basically is an indication that they are paying out less royalties than they originally expected they had to...
300
« on: August 15, 2014, 02:21 »
Seriously, they have all it takes to win - great interface, search, fresh content, recognizable brand, contributors' support. The last one may turn out to be the most important these days. Pond5 give fair 50%, allow to set your own prices and have clear distribution network. Once again, a contributor over estimates the importance of contributors' support for success of a company. To be successful, a company first and foremost must find customers... I like Pond5 but if you also read their press release, you will notice that they are forecasting to make about $20 million in revenue this year. Compare that to the $300 million Shutterstock is making or $800-900 million Getty is making. Even if Pond5 is growing 100% per year (and why should they...) it would take them until 2018/19 to become an important player in the market. I wish they can do that but it's a very long way to go.
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