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Messages - LesPalenik
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276
« on: March 21, 2014, 10:10 »
It they wanted to go up against SS and Getty then why not launch a stock site like all the hundreds of others in the lower tier. Because that would reek of desperation (trying to compete on the lower end). There is nothing inventive about going lower and lower.
277
« on: March 21, 2014, 09:50 »
Someone will offer us 110% and take 30% of the sale. Impossible? Heck no, competition. We sell for $10 if it sells we get $11 and they get $3. Which looks good but it's really just a math game. Picfair is already selling on 100%, plus 20% markup. It works. I think, FAA/pixels could become a much more disruptive player, because with turn of a switch they'll have a collection with several millions of images. Even without any advertising using their existing SEO, if they will sell 1% of that collection, that would bring enough money to fund an advertising campaign, and then the sales could spiral up. If they go ahead with it, they could seriously impact marginal stock agencies. In addition, if Dick sells a picture of a tomato for $28 on pixels, and Harry gets 20 cents for his tomato on Thinkstock or other low-paying agency, he will get really pissed off and he'll pull his images from those places.
278
« on: March 21, 2014, 07:33 »
As far as I know there is nothing published about it yet. The link that I posted, is a fairly long thread with Sean's announcement and many artist's posts on FAA forum. It is not an official announcement of working system yet, more like a beta test.
280
« on: March 14, 2014, 17:33 »
They must have made some changes how the embedded images are displayed.
Looking at the above article, I see the Getty notice underneath each image, the only difference being that the second image is smaller in both dimensions.
281
« on: March 14, 2014, 15:13 »
Dear tickstock, you are making so much efforts to praise Getty no matter what they do.
Why? Gullibility, codependency with the devil, or simply a delusion.
282
« on: March 14, 2014, 00:50 »
The biggest damage was inflicted by using the word FREE.
We understand the non-commercial and embedding rules, but many users will notice only the "free" part, and with free they will do anything they like.
284
« on: March 12, 2014, 15:39 »
Thank you Jo Ann,
you summed it better than I could have.
Predatory pricing or behaving in other predatory ways - it always hurts the suppliers and the customers.
The book distribution and publishing analogy is not that farfetched. I don't know if you still know of any independent bookstores in your area, but in Canada pretty much all privately owned bookstores disappeared over the last ten years, the only private stores here are now small shabby shops selling used books. Before, I was selling consistently books through the independent stores (always more copies than through Indigo), but now with only one player remaining they keep new books on their shelves only for a year or two and basically cut you off from any potential buyers.
285
« on: March 12, 2014, 14:00 »
the publishing industry has not recovered at all in the last years, it's still a dead man walking and i can't see any reason for it to recover anytime soon, now everyone and their dog has a smartphone and access to free news and ebooks and this is the new normal, there's no going back. Publishing industry (and I mean books, not magazines) had been killed by Amazon and Indigo-Chapters (in Canada). First they drove all independent bookstores out of business and then hundreds of publishers followed. They employed the same predatory tactics as Getty.
287
« on: March 09, 2014, 06:07 »
Many SS investors will now demand that SS do something similar to what Getty has just done. And that pressure will only build. They'll see it exactly the way Getty is promoting it - as a new way to monetize images with ads, without the cost of royalties - and be afraid that SS will be shut out of this new revenue stream if they don't act quickly.
In the technology business there are no white hats or black hats and it's actually very rare for one of them to come up with a big new idea that hasn't already occurred to the others. It's usually just a matter of who decides to move on it first.
It will be a sad day if SS starts doing what some investors come up with. And a beginning of a decline.
288
« on: March 09, 2014, 05:31 »
it's not that photographers are de-valuing their work -- the world has changed. when creating stock was time consuming and expensive (physically mailing slides to customers, so that only a handful could see them at a time), simple stock images could command $100 or much more. digital stock changed that -- you could then buy a cd with 100 images for that price!
it's not that the images are worth less , rather too many photographers still believe their images had that value in the first place; forgetting it was the process, not any intrinsic value in the image.
technology, not microstock agencies, has torn the innards out of the photography business -- agencies, flicker, getty et al are merely RE-ACTING to the reality that photos ARE now a commodity.
so photographers need to decide which path to take -- find the few remaining areas where individual photographers can still command a livable sum; or find ways to make money in this new world.
Assignments, Prints, Exhibitions, that's where the money is.
Assignments - maybe for some. Prints, Exhibitions - in your dream!
289
« on: March 09, 2014, 05:29 »
Shutterstock is spending half of their earnings in advertising and then they've to pay for a whole data center, employees, engineers, and all .... in the very best scenario they're making a 20% net gain per year and this is sustainable only because they're paying us a pittance. If Shutterstock moved from the Empire State Building somewhere to a Buffalo or Syracuse suburb, they could save a lot of money and return some of it to their contributors.
290
« on: March 08, 2014, 19:26 »
Before jumping and screaming in horror we should wait 6-12 months in order to move accordingly, this whole embedded stuff could just be yet another fiasco for all we know.
You're probably right the impact could be very small. The real scandal will be when the advertising platform kicks in and the percentage payments to photographers will be unknowable. I still have no idea what the Getty Connect royalties really are or what advertisers actually pay for these clicks? They are such an opaque and powerful company they are impossible to prise open.
In the meantime I'll be scouring news sites to see if they switch over to these embeds, that will be when the sh*t really hits the fan.
Getty's royalties to photographers ? At least an order or two of magnitude less than what you are getting now.
291
« on: March 08, 2014, 16:21 »
Seriously, agencies owe us nothing, even more nowadays when good images are dime a dozen.
Still, they have no right to give away our images for nothing.
Added: I mean 'moral' right. Apparently they gave themselves the legal right when they forced us to agree to letting them use our images free for whatever they might designate 'promotional use'.
It's immoral but what else do you expect from companies like Getty ?
Besides that, promotional use with the photographer's credit line is also promoting ourselves, correct me if i'm wrong.
We all know what "credit" will buy you...
Just sold two blog sized images through my Symbiostock site. Guess I should have been giving them away for free. What was I thinking?
Congratulations to your Symbiostock sales, Sean! Two Symbio sales will beat 1 million free Getty rentals. And no blog stats are passed to Getty!
292
« on: March 08, 2014, 16:17 »
But you have to admit it's a revolution not the kind I would had hoped for but as a blogger I would be super excited about this move. Wordpress will offer PlugIns etc in no time this embedding feature will rule the blogs and small newspapers in no time.
Maybe some gullible bloggers will get excited. As a blogger myself, I would never use such surreptitious elements (being exposed to future changes of the embedded images and contaminating my blogsite), and give Getty free stats on the traffic on my blogsite. On top of it, also the response times for the retrieval of embedded images will suffer.
293
« on: March 08, 2014, 14:17 »
BaldricksTrousers on: March 05, 2014, 20:12 I take it this includes iStock "from Getty". Does it? I made a few searches for my istock images on Getty and couldn't find any there (although some were on Thinkstock).
294
« on: March 02, 2014, 21:47 »
Since this is a hypothetical discussion, a more interesting question is what would you do if they increased all subs to $25.
295
« on: February 27, 2014, 10:05 »
Thank you, David!
I have priced my images anywhere from 2 to 20. The one that sold was 5.
Below 10, I don't think the price is a problem, but it seems that the site doesn't get too many visits yet (except some images that were featured somewhere else and linked back to Picfair).
> Edited Euros to .
297
« on: February 27, 2014, 08:53 »
Sold my first image on PicFair.
Support Benji, send him some images.
298
« on: February 26, 2014, 00:36 »
I am also disappointed by the slow sales at my Symbiosite. But these things take a long time to get noticed and I'm not blaming anyone.
I'd like to thank Leo, Steve, AJT, JoAnn, Christine, Chromaco, Martha, and many others who helped us all and kept the spirit high.
If more people on the network had taken such positive actions, we might have been further ahead.
Keep on shooting,
Les
299
« on: February 23, 2014, 04:16 »
Symbiostock com and org are down as well
It might be a good idea to put each of these two sites on different servers in case it happens again.
300
« on: February 18, 2014, 00:23 »
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