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Messages - MichaelJayFoto
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301
« on: August 11, 2014, 06:49 »
That would only be valid if there was a direct relationship between revenue and royalties.
For the majority of sales (subs, OD, EL) this is not the case, those sales are paid with fixed rates, independent of the revenue.
I disagree - the number (revenue per download) does not reflect that they are making more money from the same download category. It reflects that there is a long term shift from low-paying downloads to higher-paying downloads. As a company you can't really make customers download less images in their subscriptions. And we all know the price for subscriptions has not risen, that's public knowledge. So the only way to achieve a higher RPD for the company is to attract more clients to make higher priced downloads. So we can conclude that SS had a higher percentage of ODD, ED, Video, Offset etc compared to the low-end subs downloads. At that also ends up with contributors making more in royalties as that higher percentage of higher-paying downloads also is visible on our end. Correct me if there is a flaw in my way of thinking?
302
« on: August 11, 2014, 03:59 »
1. How does it make it more attractive to buyers? I don't judge. I don't even really care.
303
« on: August 11, 2014, 03:23 »
30% dl increase, 42% collection growth = 9% fewer sales per image, therefore you need to grow your portfolio 9% per quarter (about 40% per year) just to stand still, if my arithmetic is any good. As I read it, those numbers are year-on-year comparisons. So both, DL and collection increases are compared to 12 months ago. Consequently, the average download/image would have dropped by 9% over the course of one year and you would "only" need 9% more (equally well selling) images to compensate for the loss in downloads to achieve the same number of downloads. Then again, the average revenue per download has risen by roughly 9% (from $2.33 to $2.52) in the same period, so you could assume to make a similar amount of money from the same images without adding any at all. Though this number might not be interesting for everyone because it probably also figures in higher paid downloads like video, audio, Offset etc.
304
« on: August 07, 2014, 14:06 »
More attractive to buyers who do their designs on their mobile phones rather than desktop screens, I suppose. I don't judge. I don't even really care. I'm just saying: People are demanding that iStock does more to attract buyers - but when iStock does, they come up complaining because they have to make a new bookmark. Or speaking of that: Who made their bookmarks on the homepage anyways? So, basically: People complain because they feel the need to complain. Not for reasons. Okay, not news, I know.
305
« on: August 07, 2014, 05:04 »
Just noticed some PP sales on the first of July! What about the subscription sales? Do they come in as well?
Oh, just seen, my subs seem to have turned up already ... don't know if it is all of them, because they all get dumped into the first day that you get any, they aren't spread across the month as they ought to be.
I have a few for the 9th, no other days so far . . . . .
You won't get any on other days. It's a bug since the start: Whenever you had the first download in that month, all other subs will be shown at the same day for the month. Also in the annual overview all are added to the first month you had subs downloads (most likely April for the majority of us).
306
« on: August 07, 2014, 01:15 »
Yep, pretty annoying. Wish they'd spent that time/money/effort attracting more buyers. Hm. So they change something on the front end which makes it a bit more complicated for contributors (like "oh my god, now I have to bookmark the my_uploads page in my browser") but which is obviously aimed at making the side more attractive to buyers. But you complain like this was made with the only goal to make it hard for you to get to your data...
307
« on: August 06, 2014, 01:49 »
Algorithms can be incredibly complex and they can be tweaked to maximise profits for istock at the expense of photographers be they long term faithful contributors or newbies. They can share the views and downloads around to increase production amongst new or part-time contributors. You need to exchange "can" with "could". Like in "hypothetically". Given iStock always having been "technologically challenged" I have serious doubts they actually can do anything like that. Even if they wanted to, why would this be the only technical plan that they didn't screw up?
308
« on: August 05, 2014, 01:29 »
Except that if you have limited time, it's a hell of a lot easier and quicker to submit to multiple agencies using ftp and iptc encoded images than to submit to is alone - even with deepmeta.... Well, if you have limited time, you could also stop keywording and uploading overall and do something more valuable than shooting part time stock...  No, seriously: It isn't more efficient to upload non-exclusively because you'd still have to upload to iStock, Fotolia and Dreamstime to make the most out of your images, and all three are rather time consuming. So to save time you'd have to skip three of the top five earners...
309
« on: August 05, 2014, 01:23 »
They don't need to do anything as specific as that.
The RC system keeps their contributor % payouts at a level that is manageable for them. Each year they can control how many are at each level - they don't care how many are at diamond level as long as the aggregate payout % of all contributors is within specified acceptable/sustainable boundaries, which they can control by raising and lowering the RC level tiers.
Adding to that: Ever since they introduced it, they never had to raise the limits. Actually they had decided to keep contributors at least on their older levels. Which shows that people on average are doing even worse than what they had calculated at the start. Funny enough "not raising the bar" is an indicator of the business running not as good as expected in this case, isn't it?
310
« on: August 03, 2014, 07:12 »
My current DL rate is averaging just over a DL a day, has anyone experienced the DL rate climb?
Has going exclusive increased your royalties to offset losing PP sales? I went the other way (from exclusive to non-exclusive) last year and my DL rate climbed after that. No surprise, non-exclusive files are cheaper (and got even cheaper since). So I would expect the number of downloads rather to drop than climb when you go exclusive. The higher image prices plus higher royalties compensate for that and the PP, of course. If you end up making more or less money at the end, probably depends heavily on the kind of images you have and how they compete against the cheap non-exclusive stuff. There are some exclusives who are making good money because they have unique images that customers are willing to pay a higher price for. If your main subject is apples on white background, the customer will have to choose between buying your apple for $30 or a non-exclusive apple for $5... And as it sounds from other beginners, the PP seems to make an ever bigger part of their total income from iStock these days. I don't know how many PP downloads you get but if you make $20 from iStock and $50 from the PP each month, it's gonna be tough to make up for that. Though, I believe there still is some value in going exclusive - mainly if you have limited time and want to focus on one agency. Financially it seems unlikely to pay off anymore unless you shoot high-end stuff (and even then...?).
311
« on: August 03, 2014, 07:06 »
312
« on: August 01, 2014, 09:42 »
now i compare the numbers to my own , and i feel like drinking a very large jug of ale... Well deserved, I guess then...
313
« on: July 30, 2014, 12:18 »
Congrats!
But show us the numbers, what we can expect on Stocksy, they still don't have any poll results visible...
Probably because the number of contributors participating in it is too small and/or the global impact compared to all others is too small. And quite honestly, it's not comparable to all the other numbers in the list. Mostly you are submitting non-exclusive images to those agencies, so you have to add them up. With Stocksy, you submit images (series) exclusively, so you can't sell them anywhere else. Then again, you can sell other images at other places. So what would be the use if you get a number saying "the average Stocksy contributor makes 5% of his total royalties compared to Shutterstock"? It wouldn't say anything because it could be that (like in my case) they have >2.000 images on micrstock and <200 images on Stocksy. Or it could be that they have about even numbers on micro and on Stocksy. Or they could have images on Stocksy only. So what use would it be to compare an image exclusive agency to all those non-exclusive microstock platforms?
314
« on: July 29, 2014, 02:19 »
I submitted a dozen photos to IS. There was information missing in the MR. I had the talent fill in the missing info and uploaded it.
The problem is when you upload on IS itself you can only upload one release. So I got the e-mails saying that another release was required for the other person in the photo. So I manually went through all 12 again and uploaded the other release. Then I got the same e-mail again. It seems when I upload the second release, the first one disappears. I tried this several times just going around in circles. I even tried adding the new MRs in Deep Meta and sending the updated file information to IS, but this didn't seem to work.
Finally I just cancelled all of them, and plan to upload them again later. My question is, is there any way to upload multiple MRs without resorting to cancelling and re-uploading? You have to make a composite JPG consisting of all MRs required for that image, so you end up with one single JPG containing all releases. Alternatively, you can use DeepMeta for uploading, it will create the composites for you.
315
« on: July 29, 2014, 02:16 »
I want to make some composites using photos from a few different people shoots. This shouldn't be a problem on any of the other stock sites, but IS requires that the image date corresponds with the shoot date on the MR. Since IS doesn't have a Notes to Reviewer function, how could I upload composites of images from various dates without explaining it to reviewers?
Put a remark in the description starting with "NOTE TO INSPECTOR:" and explain what you did with the image.
316
« on: July 29, 2014, 02:08 »
Jim, I wanted to share some more information privately but apparently you are blocking personal messages. If you're interested, contact me.
317
« on: July 29, 2014, 02:03 »
Is Most Popular based on the number of downloads of a particular image in the last 30 or 60 days, or is there no basis on popularity whatsoever? If iStock felt a need to add a new search option why did they have to eliminate the Most Downloads option that many customers have come to rely on? There is no indication that iStock has explained, or intends to explain to customers or contributors -- the logic for this change. Is there a good reason for keeping everyone in the dark?
...
Check out your portfolio and some of the search terms customers are likely to use to find your images.
Well, I checked out my own portfolio since searching for a certain term won't help me because I will never know how many times each images was downloaded for that particular keyword. However, having a look at "Most popular" it is pretty apparent that there is something like "number of downloads in the most recent timeframe". The new system may benefit photographers who are pumping lots of new images onto the site, particularly if those new images have been shown for a while near the top of the Best Match search return order. Photographers with a few best selling images, who may have cut back on the number of new images they are contributing could see a major decline in sales as it becomes harder and harder for customers to find their images. There are lots of unanswered questions.
I don't think it necessarily benefits people with high upload volumes. I think it benefits people with a high hit-miss ratio in their uploads through the last couple of year(s). Masses of images with 0 downloads won't make any of them appear in the "Most Popular" section. Two searches for keywords returned pages of images, none of them having 0 downloads. So you have to upload images that will be found and downloads through other search methods successfully to help your images advance in the "Most Popular".
318
« on: July 07, 2014, 13:23 »
A one man COOP may not make sense, doesn`t it? ;-) "One man" not. But "too many" won't make it either. As I keep saying when posts like this pop up... ask too many people and you will never get them to agree with anything. I believe someone has to start something, define a set of rules and the say "play with me or look somewhere else". You can finetune later but before someone standing up and making a clear point, there is no point in saying "I would like to".
319
« on: July 07, 2014, 13:02 »
For those of you that are on Stocksy already - Are you getting any sales?
I'm trying to find out what the fuzz is all about  Yes. Consistently some. With an upwards trend.
320
« on: July 07, 2014, 12:59 »
My cell phone has got a camera. And I carry it around everywhere anyways. No extra luggage.
321
« on: July 04, 2014, 02:54 »
My experience is actually "supporting" Tudor's point: The "less commercial" images used to be the ones sitting in my iStock portfolio with 0 downloads. However, the conclusions I drew are slightly different: Not "shoot more commercial images" (especially if that means to focus only on stereotypical stuff in studio) but "find a better place for the less commercial images". I am convinced they would have a chance if they were accepted in Vetta but they weren't. Now some of them ended up in the Stocksy collection and they are not selling often but if they do, it equals 10 or 20 or 250 downloads on Shutterstock with one single sale. That's what those "less commercial" images need: A higher price. Putting them on microstock is going to kill your images (and your mindset). If your vision is blinded what sells in microstock, you won't understand that there is a group of buyers out there who are not looking after the common stereotypes and clichs that make microstock images successful. I am still with microstock and continue to shoot for microstock. But I am well aware these days that some images will not make more than 38 cents (if at all) in their lifetime if I put them onto Shutterstock & Co. There is a market for microstock images, and it has been growing over the past years. First iStock, then Shutterstock were very successful. And they have a huge volume in downloads that never existed before. But after all, adding up the revenues, they only make up for about 25-30% of the market volume. It's just that you won't hear a lot about the other 70-75% of the market because most of them are not going to talk about it in MicroStockGroup.
322
« on: June 30, 2014, 03:28 »
Hi guys,
I am thinking of getting a mirrorless camera, like olympus em-1 or sony A7
basically i am thinking to get it more for ease of using and light to bring around.
anyone have experiences to share of it?
I have a question that sony is full frame camera..which mean a bigger sensor and won't have crop factor on lense.
will a full frame camera provide more details and resolution of images? there are a lot of talks about A7 and A7r, it seems A7r will give better for big printing output so for digital usage it is not necessary?
I have no doubt the image quality will be on par with DSLR cameras. I have a Sony NEX-5N (with APS-C sensor) and image quality is great and it's a nice gadget that I can easily take anywhere. However, personally I found that I use my smart phone far more often in those instances rather than the mirror-less camera, and then again I rather carry my DSLR (with far superior lenses over the kit lens I have for the NEX) when I plan to shoot. In general I would say: Pro: Smaller, lighter, electronic autofocus allows more focus fields, enlargement during manual focus Con: Electronic viewfinder (only works when powered, slower, it's a screen not real light), limited choice in lenses (the good quality ones not cheaper than for DSLR), often limited in studio work, electronic autofocus is slower and requires more light. All in all it might be a good solution if you are traveling a lot and use the camera for spontaneous shoots. For planned shoots and I would still go with a DSLR.
323
« on: June 19, 2014, 07:37 »
ss should sand a very polite e mail to contributors opted in and ask them... very very politely - to opt out
Why should SS do something so unprofessional on many levels?
1. cold calls/emails are never polite;
2. asking to boycott competitors is never professional.
Should they do - but I am sure they won't - this would diminish my opinion of SS, not FT.
All I expect from SS - and luckily they are already doing - is to find new ways to increase earnings on their OWN site.
Yes. I also think Getty should send out emails to all photographers, asking them to remove their images from microstock altogether, so we can finally go back to sustainable license pricing...
324
« on: June 04, 2014, 03:35 »
Yuris Numbers
With his original Yuri_Arcurs collection Yuri hit 1.5 million career downloads on iStock sometime in the first half of 2013. He is still listed as having 1.5 million plus downloads which means that he has had something less than additional 100,000 downloads in the last more than one year. When he went exclusive he had about 18,000 images in his non-exclusive collection on iStock.
After going exclusive iStock created a separate Yuri collection. His 1,257 best selling images from the Yuri_Arcurs collection were moved to the Yuri collection. All of them have been downloaded from iStock more than 200 times and 294 of this group have more than 1,000 downloads each. Currently the Yuri collection has had between 54,000 and 55,000 downloads since it was established. It is not clear why there are two collections as all the images in both collections are exclusive. Yes. All his "original" work he had already submitted while being non-exclusive was moved to a new account, first called "Urilux" and then renamed to "Yuri". Ever since the move of those images (including all his prior bestellers) the new downloads on those images are added to the profile page of the new account. So to me it reads: "With his 70,000 images he generated 54,000 new downloads within about a year" The original "Yuri_Arcurs" account still gets fed with new images, though. The oldest image in that account is dated February 2013, so there was an overlap when his team had probably sent 60,000 images to iStock/Getty directly - those were added to the Yuri account - and at the same time maybe newly produced images continued to be uploaded to the existing account. That is my thought why the old account has so many pictures again. In the new account, you can see that just 100 out of his 45,000 new images have generated more than 10 downloads. Roughly 8,000 images have had exactly 1 download, and about 4,000 images had more than 1. Using some guess work and statistics, you could assume that the downloads on this portfolio would add up to about 8,000 * 1 + 4,000 * 4 + 100 * 40 = 28,000 downloads. Give or take, maybe 30,000. So my guesstimate would be that in total he had about 80-85,000 downloads on 115,000 images within the past year on iStock itself. Far from the download numbers we used to expect in microstock but considering that the average royalties paid to iStock exclusives are more in the range of $12-$15 these days plus IS exclusives are making an additional 10-30% of their royalties through the GI Sales, it's still more than a million dollars in revenue.
325
« on: June 03, 2014, 09:55 »
Typically, if you think it has a wide variety of commercial uses, RF. If it is a rare image or has limited use, RM. But deciding is just something you have to learn from experience.
Yep. Upload a thousand images to RM, thousand to macro RF and thousand to micro. Then just wait five years to compare the results. 
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