|
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 - sharpshot
Pages: 1 ... 8 9 10 11 12 [13] 14 15 16 17 18 ... 263
301
« on: March 08, 2017, 04:42 »
The first deactivation day after istock cut below 20% was a milestone for me. Until then, contributors had a few successful battles with the sites, changing things for the better. A lot of us deactivated images on that day but most people just carried on uploading. Some people were venting about the cuts in this forum while they were uploading new images. That made it clear to me that the problem is us and not the sites.
I don't really think the problem is us or them its just inherent in the type of market it is...the cost of entry declines with the relative cost of cameras going down and more people in less affluent countries are more able to access. Was entirely predictable from the start. We see this across all web based industries so why should this be different?
Google pay 70% for paid for apps. I think Apple are similar? People make apps all over the world. You don't have to buy expensive cameras and lenses to make apps. People from less affluent countries can make apps. Perhaps not as easy as using a camera but the difference between 70% and 15% seems too big.
302
« on: March 08, 2017, 04:12 »
The first deactivation day after istock cut below 20% was a milestone for me. Until then, contributors had a few successful battles with the sites, changing things for the better. A lot of us deactivated images on that day but most people just carried on uploading. Some people were venting about the cuts in this forum while they were uploading new images. That made it clear to me that the problem is us and not the sites.
303
« on: March 07, 2017, 06:24 »
Such a shame that they didn't try the same strategy they have with stills for video. I'm sure they could of been successful if they had done that. Severely limiting content was never going to work.
304
« on: March 07, 2017, 05:02 »
A lot of the clips I have seen in use are less than 5 seconds. They are probably edited from longer clips but I don't think buyers will mind shorter clips a lot of the time. Must be easier for them to download and deal with the smaller files as well.
305
« on: March 06, 2017, 11:22 »
messaged 3 times about closure of my account, being ignored for over 3 months, ?
I had no luck until I emailed them here [email protected]
306
« on: March 06, 2017, 03:43 »
And given their attitude towards contributors I wonder if I should be concerned about the 'exclusive' agreement anyway, they don't seem to concerned about any agreement they have with their contributors. 
I'd definitely take the high road there. If they catch you and decide to make an example out of you, I can't even imagine the grief an army of Getty's fire breathing lawyers could cause. Best just to close up shop with them and move on.
[/quote I think their fire breathing lawyers would struggle to justify letting Yuri stay on other sites while being "exclusive". The same rules should apply to everyone. I wouldn't want to be the one to test that though.
307
« on: March 06, 2017, 03:39 »
My question to Getty management is "How can you sleep at night?" giving us pennies. "Do you know Dracula?"
Probably better than you sleep at night accepting them  I'm sure I sleep better since leaving.
308
« on: March 06, 2017, 03:34 »
They're like a long term investment. Nothing much happens early on but as the years go by, they slowly increase sales. They're one of a few sites where I think there's still potential for me to increase my earnings. They also prove that a site can do very well paying 50%, that's good for contributors.
309
« on: March 06, 2017, 03:28 »
That's good, will make a big difference.
310
« on: March 05, 2017, 17:37 »
People have looked at class-action lawsuits against some of the sites before. There was one I remember that didn't interest me but I signed up to the mailing list to keep an eye on what they were doing. It stopped when the lawyer requested funds to start the ball rolling and I think most people could see that it was high risk and the only person guaranteed to have a good outcome was the lawyer. We have the option to leave sites if we don't like what they're doing, I just wish more people used that option.
311
« on: March 05, 2017, 08:54 »
There have been times when some sites have gone too far even for the TOC's to cover them but lawyers aren't cheap and they are the only guaranteed winners.
312
« on: March 05, 2017, 05:17 »
Are you exclusive? If not, there's lots of other sites to sell your images. Leaving was an easy decision for me. I understand how it isn't as easy for exclusives but I would be concentrating on building up an RM portfolio with other sites or selling prints, as relying on istock doesn't look like much fun.
313
« on: March 05, 2017, 04:58 »
I think that all posts about unions, business plans of starting a new little Northern Korea, dropping istock, telling Videohive is awful, Shutterstock 20 minutes long FTP upload problems should really be posted in off-topic automatically, right next to Trump thread and Happy new year everybody.
This forum had (and still having) a lot of really precious info not only for the newbies. Every time you post some hilarious BS like this just because you are bored in front of your computer and have nobody to complain to at home at the moment you bury that info deeper and deeper.
So why do you bother looking at this thread then? I don't think these threads go anywhere but I would much rather see people complaining about sites like istock and thinking about what could be done than just putting up with it and letting them take all our money. You might be happy with the little bit they let you have now but many of us aren't and pretending everything is great isn't going to get us anywhere. I also don't understand why threads like this make it any less easy for newbies? If it did, this forum would be nothing but threads like this
314
« on: March 05, 2017, 03:59 »
It is so much easier than this. Just refuse to sign up with agencies that have terrible terms. They would soon be back to taking 15-20% as they should be (which is what we would be paying for marketing anyway). But no, we can't even do that, let alone the massive effort and expense of setting up our own agency.
I agree. We could also put more pressure on buyers not to use sites that make it very difficult for us to make money. It would be easy for them to switch to sites that have similar prices but pay us more, enabling us to supply better quality images on a higher budget. It isn't just contributors that lose if they keep using istock.
315
« on: March 04, 2017, 16:20 »
They never slashed my royalties. They increased them from 50% to over 50%. I agree their lower tier sub rates are too low but their on demand rates are higher than most even at the lower tiers (istock pays 15% ss says around 20-30%). I don't think we can expect agencies to keep paying 50% if we take 15% off istock. They have to drop it to compete unless they need to pay more to keep people uploading. If we want better it means not supporting DP, IS or BS for starters.
I dumped istock, I'm in the bridge with BigStock, so get a better deal. Only uploaded a small amount of my portfolio to DP. I'm sure that sites can afford to pay us 50% and make a good profit. Anything below 30% seems wrong. Sites that cut too low will lose a lot of images and I think that does hurt them.
316
« on: March 03, 2017, 06:06 »
If you don't tell them what camera you have, then they won't know... then it'll get accepted or rejected on its merits, rather than some mystical list. Tell them you shot it on a Hassleblad or something.
I've never tried removing the EXIF, maybe (?) that would be an auto-rejection (?)
No, I do that sometimes when I join photos together and they never reject them.
317
« on: March 02, 2017, 17:25 »
Got PhotoDirector 8 for 39.99 and impressed so far. Going to take a few days to adjust from using my usual Photoshop elements and camera raw. Seems more like Lightroom but hopefully with this and The Gimp, I wont need to get another version of elements. Anyone else using it? Seems great value compared to other software I've used.
318
« on: February 28, 2017, 18:05 »
This week I sold a photo I took years ago on SS for $60. That doesn't happen all the time but just shows that there's still money to be made with stills and there's no need for non-exclusives to think that they have to accept pennies for their images.
Good that you got $60 for a sale. 
But I bet most of the rest of your sales this week were for pennies, and you had to accept that (AFAIK, you can't opt out of subs sales on SS [or any other micros]). or remove your port from SS.
I don't mind subs when there's high sales volume and a minimum $0.38 is much better than $0.02 with istock. I average $1.28 per sale with SS this month, so they do have more than the occasional higher priced sale and I get dollars, not pennies.
319
« on: February 28, 2017, 07:26 »
Irina, I started 10 years ago and the amount I make per sale with SS has gone up a lot over those years. This week I sold a photo I took years ago on SS for $60. That doesn't happen all the time but just shows that there's still money to be made with stills and there's no need for non-exclusives to think that they have to accept pennies for their images. I understand that getting a few extra dollars a month from istock might seem like a good idea but I think it just gives the other sites an excuse to pay us less. When there's lots of places to sell, why waste time with a site that isn't as good as the rest?
320
« on: February 27, 2017, 18:30 »
Sounds heroic. Another frustrated little person desperate speech. I guess istock wouldn't notice that but people here would like it, one more competitor is gone. How many people who liked your post still keep their own portfolio online on istock?
I liked the post, and my portfolio has been gone from there for a few years. I dont see leaving as frustration, I see it as good business sense.
It's quite a strange business sense to waste some more time with instant portfolio deletion instead of simple stopping new uploads and getting some residual income as some sort of compensation.
I guess you missed the part where I said I don't want to do business with a company who treats me poorly...I am just not into abuse. Along with MY business sense is also something called ethics and pride in product. If you think "its far better to make a penny than nothing at all", then you can have it. istock must LOVE you.
Well, that's definitely not a penny, although my portfolio there is less than a year old. I don't defend that crappy greedy site, but you and many other decent people here take it too personal. Why? You are not raising your chidren with them. It's just some pictures which sell elsewhere too. I've noticed some time ago that words "ethics" and "pride" are often used in cases of hobby-businesses instead of words "new car" and go along with just couple of hundreds of income Somebody talked about undercutting himself or herself. Be honest to yourself, are your pictures that unique the buyer would go looking for them on a cheaper site? The market is oversaturated and the answer is no in 99,99%.
I disagree. Many professionals never used istock because they didn't like 20%. Many more left when they went below 20%. I left for a logical reason, nothing to do with being precious about my images. If they had enough sales volume to justify paying so little, I would of stayed but the fact is they don't. Selling less for lower commission and at lower prices doesn't appeal to me. Unlike you, I can see that there's still lots of buyers willing to pay more and lots of sites willing to give me a bigger cut.
321
« on: February 27, 2017, 14:34 »
Sounds heroic. Another frustrated little person desperate speech. I guess istock wouldn't notice that but people here would like it, one more competitor is gone. How many people who liked your post still keep their own portfolio online on istock?
I liked the post, and my portfolio has been gone from there for a few years. I dont see leaving as frustration, I see it as good business sense.
It's quite a strange business sense to waste some more time with instant portfolio deletion instead of simple stopping new uploads and getting some residual income as some sort of compensation.
It takes less than a minute to send an email requesting to leave. It makes no business sense to be undercutting other sites that have higher prices and pay a much bigger percentage. My only regret about leaving istock is that I didn't do it a few years earlier.
322
« on: February 27, 2017, 05:23 »
I really don't see the dilemma, non-exclusives shouldn't be paid 15% and sell their licences for almost nothing. If you tolerate that, then the other sites will be next. Fight back by leaving or we might as well write off microstock.
323
« on: February 27, 2017, 05:08 »
Well done, did the same at the end of 2016. Ignore Irina, one of us leaving makes no difference but lots of us have done it now and I'm sure that does make a difference in several ways. Can't say I have noticed a loss of earnings, I'm sure most buyers are happy to use at least 2 sites and hopefully when they see what the competition has to offer, they wont need istock as much.
324
« on: February 26, 2017, 12:36 »
I think the worst thing about selling photos with istock is that it shows you're prepared to accept 15%, or a little bit more if you sell a lot. The other sites see that and when they want to increase profits, guess what they will do. Leaving has given me a burst of enthusiasm to work with the sites that pay us a much bigger cut.
325
« on: February 24, 2017, 02:50 »
I think you need to spend quite a lot to get decent quality video. I have a Ricoh Theta S, the stills are OK but video is low quality. Stitching the video looks tricky, the Ricoh has software to do that but the joins are obvious. I like the design of the Ricoh, if they increase the video resolution, I will try it for stock. Two 180 lenses have just one join and I prefer that to having more cameras.
Don't know about the 360Fly, why not ask the sites if they approve it?
Pages: 1 ... 8 9 10 11 12 [13] 14 15 16 17 18 ... 263
|
Sponsors
Microstock Poll Results
Sponsors
|
Show Posts
