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Messages - Roscoe
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301
« on: August 04, 2021, 01:22 »
WS doesn't know every plant and the scientific name. We still need to do some detail work, and they can fill in the obvious after that.
It helps to add the scientific name, or keywords you really want to include in the notes for the reviewer. Of course, that's already half of the work so little extra effort to to the full keywording (which is needed for that image if you want to upload it yourself to agencies not supported by Wirestock)
302
« on: August 04, 2021, 01:15 »
I don't know if it's the same but OlegRi has been discussed lately for his unusual high rank for his images. The SEO and backlinks makes for a good logical reason why. Maybe there are other things that he does as well.
I checked it for two of his images (keyword woman, first and third place in ranking in my search): not a single backlink.
303
« on: August 02, 2021, 12:11 »
Edit to add: I wonder if people would be more upset or less upset if they saw the stats for their downloads in the "free" sections. I did contribute to a few places like Unsplash to see how they worked (and whether I could monetize somehow). I can honestly say that the massive downloads are the exception rather than the norm, at least in my case.
I only see two ways to monetize free content: as a stepping stone to paid content, or donations. Pexels for instance offers the possibility to donate to the contributor. Not my game, but some contributors seem to be happy with that, receiving "a few" donations per month.
304
« on: August 02, 2021, 12:04 »
You seem to be talking about abstract backgrounds. Not my turf, but there's a market for that, as there is for nearly everything. It does need different keywording and probably also different editing. "Grotto Passages Surrounded From Flowing Stone Walls And Dripstones" will not do the trick if you want to sell it as a background. See how others keyword their abstract content, and take yours from there.
305
« on: August 02, 2021, 11:40 »
I misunderstood then. Sorry! Although I don't see the difference between Freepik and other programs (except Adobe currently having a 1-yr limit). I see DP has the worst plan (IMHO) so far where you get a % cut instead of a flat amount. SS already has a program too, and while I have not seen any details about it, I doubt their terms will be very good, going by their history.
No worries. I think the confusion comes from Freekpik buying images for their free collection from Wirestock via the Instant Pay program, but at the same time also having a premium and paid collection. I have no problem with the first, as I get to choose myself which images are included. Same for Adobe or Shutterstock. They can only buy it because I enlisted it. Content from Freepik's premium (paid) collection can only be licensed via their subscription plans. 9.99 Euro per month, or 89.99 for 12 months. Content in the premium collection comes from contributors who upload to Freepik (and maybe via partnered sites, I honestly don't know). I compared that plan to streaming services like for instance Spotify. A flat fee for unlimited access to the content where contributors/artists are compensated in proportion to the downloads/streams they had. I read from Freepik contributors that it's terrible, and I hear from artists with content on streaming platforms that it's.. terrible. (unless you are able to pull off a huge amount of downloads/streams)
306
« on: August 02, 2021, 11:03 »
I get that people don't like Freeepik's/Adobe's/Shutter's one-time price model or "free" sites, but I have yet to see any demonstrable correlation between those places and a decrease in earnings for "most of the artists". I'm not trying to pick and argument, but I don't see how you can claim this.
I believe the over-saturation of supply, few innovations by agencies, plus the (ever decreasing) subscription model have done far worse than art sites like Unsplash or this instant pay model. My stats actually show a solid uptick these days.
I didn't make myself fully clear. I was referring to the flat fee unlimited downloads plans, where the income afterwards is divided over contributors in proportion to their downloads. Freepik offers such a plan. (which I don't like, from a contributor perspective) And for the record: I'm more positive on instant pay programs. They are a good opportunity for squeezing some money out of buried content. How these free collections will impact future sales? I have no idea to be honest. Edit: a lot of fellow contributors seemingly had a good month in July. Same for me. Certainly not only due to instant pay income, sales in general have been pretty good across all agencies for me in July. Surprising, because it's generally speaking not a good month in microstockworld. I can only hope it lasts.
307
« on: August 02, 2021, 04:22 »
So, perhaps the new travel trend will be for smaller cities/towns...I'll look to explore first in Iberia then elsewhere. Oh and I hope to get a drone soon together with a pilot's license so that should open up some new opportunities. Whether I'll get a ROI, not sure but I'll give it a shot!
Can confirm. Never ever sold a shot from Venice for instance (and I have quite a few, some are very decent too). While my shots from Galicia, Extremadura, Castilla y Lon and other less traveled places sell weekly across the agencies I signed up for. The thing is: for some of these places... there's little or even no competition. If you manage to snap a decent looking shot, and a buyer happens to need it for an off the beaten track article: your image gets the sale. (edit: and I don't include them in any instant pay program )
308
« on: August 02, 2021, 03:13 »
I'm betting on travel to return in full swing and as most of my port are made of travel images, hopefully get back to something resembling old normal results.
Brutally honest question Alex: do you think that's still possible, considered the half-life of images? The pandemic impacted travel for one year and a half now. Of course, travel contributors were also impacted with travel restrictions that made it impossible to shoot new content. Nice reference to peer-to-peer sharing and torrent sites btw. How the licensing of artistic work went from illegally-free over piracy to free or almost free legally. Dirt cheap streaming services (more or less similar to the shared income and download percentages some agencies like Freepik are trying to pull off) might have knocked piracy down, it also killed the income from licenses for most of the artists. For movies and series it's a slightly different story. You need a lot of streaming subscriptions to cover all the releases, so not that dirt cheap anymore, and in addition, releases are not worldwide, so some regions have to wait longer. Piracy is still pretty strong in that area. Another difference is that music or movie enthusiasts and collectors still like to have a properly licensed copy with artwork (vinyl!!) in their collection. Anyhow, keep up the good work, I love reading your articles.
309
« on: August 01, 2021, 07:06 »
Shutterstock isn't charging buyers $10,000+ for 12 months access to the keyword tool. The issue here is them making money they don't share with the contributors who created the source material.
If I'm not mistaken, there's noting mentioned how keywords are handled as intellectual property or how they can be subject to royalties. Initially, keywords are were meant to support the visibility of the content in the database, they had no other value. Developments of AI and the need to have big datasets to train algorithms changed that. Shutterstock is sitting on such a such a set of data. It would be foolish of them not trying to monetizing that opportunity. And it's a dick move to no share that revenue with the ones who built up that dataset: the contributors. On the other hand, how much would we get? Let's say the Shutterstock database contains 400 million assets. That means, on a 10.000$ deal, the keyword set per asset would be worth 0,000025$. If Shutterstock takes 85%, and gives 15% to the contributors... how much would be left? It would require Shutterstock to sign a lot of those deals before contributors with big portfolio's that match the category restrictions start seeing some significant income from their... keywording efforts. I understand your point and agree that it's again a greedy move of a company that milks their sources dry. But I can only apathetically shrug my shoulders, and move on after yet another case of exploiting contributors.
310
« on: July 31, 2021, 02:31 »
I wonder if hidden in one of the changes to the TOS was something saying they could profit off our keywording (intellectual property) without paying us.
Aren't we already sharing our keywords, or allowing others to use our keywords, via the Shutterstock keyword suggestion tool?
311
« on: July 31, 2021, 02:27 »
WS says in their forum, "The prices will be $5 for images and $50 for videos. Please also note that in case of direct portfolio sales, Wirestock commission will be 30%."
A good time for some people to sign up: https://wirestock.io/?ref=terry.davis1
You probably mean their Slack channel? I didn't receive any official communication yet, so curious to see the details. If I understand it correctly, Wirestock is becoming a standaard microstock agency too, apart from being the distributor they already are and the "Extra Channels" deals they offer.
312
« on: July 23, 2021, 09:12 »
Curius to know if anybody got that 5 $/image from Adobe uploaded via wirestock and how wirestock inform about it.
I got a few 4.25$ commissions last month, so these might be Adobe instant pay. Got a few 3.4$ commissions this month, and I guess these are from Shutterstock. It's only guessing, as these two are buying images for their free collection nowadays. WireStock doesn't seem to report in which free collection the image ends up, so it might be Freepik as well.
313
« on: July 20, 2021, 11:55 »
Get enough eyeballs on a product and no matter how sh*tty youre going to find takers.
Ha! You just revealed Shutterstock's business plan
314
« on: July 16, 2021, 08:23 »
You want someone you don't know, who's your competition, to be keywording your images, for 10%?
Mostly I still prefer to do my own keywording, mainly because Wirestock's keywording is either very generic or just not accurate enough. They might be my competition, but on the other hand, the better they do the keywording, the higher their potential incentive would be. And there still should be a final quality check by Wirestock's moderators. In the end, Wirestock wins, because they don't have to pay flat fees for inhouse or freelance keyword personnel. The contributors win, because they will get better keyworded content and they have the possibilty to generate an extra potential income stream by doing keywording jobs. It looks like a good solution to me, but maybe I'm missing something here. I remember Dreamstime providing keywording by contributors, paying 2$c per keyworded image. They seem to have dropped it though and they probably had their reasons to do so. The 2$c flat fee was also way to low to really motivate anyone to start doing keywording. A percentage of the commissions would be a better idea. Personally, I don't really mind keywording that much, and after uploading thousands of files to various agencies, I think I developed a pretty efficient keywording habit. I would participate in some spare time to see how it goes.
315
« on: July 15, 2021, 02:06 »
Even nowadays, I see things that make me cringe...but they have improved and are improving. Also put out an ad for a freelance keyworder, although the pay isn't very high which may mean that only monkeys accept to be paid in peanuts.
Without sounding like a frustrated socialist, we should be helping Wirestock to help us! They will listen and will take on constructive criticism to improve.
For specialist editorials, best to upload ourselves to places like Alamy and keyword ourselves. They aren't geniuses to know details of relatively little known places, unfortunately.
WireStock has a referral program. 10% nowadays! Why not expand it to keywording? Let the keywording be done by contributors and give them a percentage of sales keyworded content by them generates. Only thing they have to do is a final check and distribution.
316
« on: June 25, 2021, 06:17 »
Had a bunch of instant pay sales on WS too. Didn't know they came from Shutterstock though. I only select Instant Pay for content that never significantly sold before anywhere else and lower quality content. So good to see that also these images bring in some extra cash.
317
« on: June 21, 2021, 08:44 »
Oh, yes: When was your last photo changed from selected for partner to Partner? How long they stuck as selected for partner before?
I had an image selected for partner changed to partner a week or two ago so the process still seems to work. But indeed, not all selected images make it to a partner collection and I guess that's what you are experiencing. They mainly seem to focus on Getty, but I also saw a few Adobe partner sales on Eyeem. So not sure how they report partner availability. One partner that selects your image makes the status in your dashboard change from "selected for partner" to "partner" would sound logical. Regarding Eyeem market sales: still happening, relatively decent commissions, but yeah, very scarce for me. Earlier this year two of my images were selected by their curator and ended up in one of their own collections, resulting in a spike of likes and comments. Thought I would hit a small jackpot there, but in the end I didn't sell a single license for those shots. I can't really tell you what to do, but I generally prefer submitting to agencies directly instead of using something in between. The exception is Wirestock, where I cherry-pick submissions for some of my content. I gave up Zoonar because of no sales. And regarding Eyeem... well, being deadly honest with you: I have images on Eyeem which were previously uploaded to iStock, yet, they still made it to the Getty collection. Never got a complaint. A lot of others did and were asked to delete those images. I decided to keep them and I'll see what happens - I couldn't care less. Eyeem accounts for only a tiny fraction of my MS income, monthly coffee money at best, so if that gets suspended I would probably not even notice it. I understand why you want to expand your exposure, but Eyeem should be very low on your priority list if you ask me. Submit to iStock directly instead. Way higher acceptance rate and a better monthly income. Unless you don't want to deal with their complex keywording interface. In that case: dump it on Eyeem and don't look back.
318
« on: June 19, 2021, 10:46 »
I don't know your port but I am convinced that $500 for an image these days is more like a fantasy even for the best contributors.
I guess Firn didn't mean getting 500$ for one image with one sale, but getting 500$ for one image with combined sales spread in a one year period. And not at Adobe obviously, but at another agency. Now, that would still require an exceptionally good selling image, but it's not completely unrealistic either. Lower the bar with a factor 10, getting 50$ for one image (combined sales at another agency) instead of 5$ at adobe with the instant pay option is still a no-brainer: keep it for sale, not for free. Much more realistic, and I'm sure a lot of the images selected by adobe fall within this category. I fully understand that contributors don't want to potentially compromise their sales at other agencies. Another factor: by selecting high quality images for the free section, you basically "teach" customers that also high quality images are available for free, so we're all lowering our own bars here and raising the customer expectation's bar. They already have their images dirt cheap, now they also have an increasingly growing number of quality images for free and that expectation is not gonna go away after one year. As I said before: not saying it's a bad deal by adobe, but let's all handle it with care. So what I did: I manually selected the images that are 1. lower quality and 2. don't sell at other agencies either. Let's see how many of them make it to the final selection. High quality images are out of scope for me, also the the ones that didn't sell. I sold some EL's this year at Shutterstock for 30 dollars or more, images that never sold before and then suddenly got a big sale. I don't want to compromise that. Many say customers don't shop around, and I'm willing to go along with that for subscription sales, but EL's are a different story I think. So I'm still very careful here, and take for the vast majority of my images the long run instead of instant gratification.
319
« on: June 09, 2021, 10:38 »
Does anybody know how big this collection is going to be? I'm offered to nominate a huge number of pictures, about 20% of my portfolio. If everybody accepts the offer in full capacity, free section will be so big, noone will need to buy anything anymore. That's what I'm worried about, but maybe I'm wrong and I hope Adobe knows whats it doing.
I think your worries are justified. Adobe sure knows what they are doing, but do we, contributors, know what we are doing? At first sight, the 5$ fixed fee seems to be a fair price for images that are not considered as regular sellers. They try to get as many on board as they can with first nominating images, and afterwards making a selection. And I have to admit, it looks appealing. Having 1000 images nominated qualifies for a potential 5000$ payout. That's a lot of money in one go. But beware! Probably only a fraction of the nominated content (selected by AI I guess) will make it to the collection, resulting in payouts. Adobe can cherry-pick the content they want, and in the end, like you said, they will still have a big collection of high quality images covering a very broad amount of topics which they can offer for free. That collection will compete with the paid section at Adobe AND at other agencies, and I cannot imagine this will have no impact on our sales. In a lot of cases buyers are not looking for one specific image, but for just "an image" that supports their content or helps them telling their story. It's a pretty smart move by Adobe. When I look at my nominated content, the vast majority are decent enough to very good images and all of them sold before, but not a lot. Now, the trick is: these images might not have done very well on Adobe, but some of them are doing well at other agencies. A matter of algorithm luck I guess: got the image up at the right time at the right place. They didn't underperform at Adobe because of a quality or usability issue, but because of the way the algorithm ranks them combined with strong competition. I'm not saying it's a bad deal, but I would advice everyone to think it over, and manually nominate the images you want to have included in the free collection. Big collections with high quality content might become the future of microstock, and we're not gonna stop it, but make sure you protect your best-sellers and high quality content the best you can for as long as you can. Keep control of the content you care about. Firn already gave a very good example of what free images (unintended in his case) can do, so be warned. Upfront royalty payments/Instant Pay programs are fine, and can be a nice addition to your income stream, but let's keep them what they are meant for: as honeypots (with mediocre content) for paid content (with high-quality content).
320
« on: June 08, 2021, 02:11 »
As my old grandmother used to say to me "my boy, if it looks like a con it is a con".
What makes you think they are a con? Sure, they are not perfect and they have some issues. But hey, it's microstock. The complete industry behaves like a con artist. They seem to care more about contributors than the standard agencies do. The few times I reached out to their support, I got fast and to the point answers and flexible problem solving. The point is, for most contributors it's a matter of using Wirestock wisely, as an addition to the accounts they already have at agencies. Cherry-pick the advantages they offer.
321
« on: June 03, 2021, 11:24 »
It's not easy to say. Of course we are looking for newer content, less editorial, more stock. We are also sometimes picky and don't accept everything.
There is one more important thing. If you upload photos to agencies, then the listing in the search there and the additional work are also important. We actually offer AGE or Alamy more for German photographers because we do the translations. For English-speaking photographers it makes more sense because of the essential keywords (on Alamy) or the listings in the search. We set these, which takes a lot of time but then leads to different search results and often to more sales.
Thank you for further clarifying Michael. Not sure I completely get it, but I understood that depending on the language you submit your content (English in my case, both captions and keywords) there might be an issue? I submit my content with English metadata (title and keywords), and indeed noticed that Zoonar adds German keywords as well. This often results in a lot of keywords (50+ or even 100+), exceeding the maximum allowed keywords for most agencies and can, as you said, negatively affect the ranking of content. Knowing this, what is the best practice then for submitting, keywording and titling content on Zoonar? What I do: I prepare my content with English titles and keywords in the metatdata, optimized for submitting to the big three: Adobe, Shutterstock and iStock/Getty. This means that keywords are ranked according to priority/importance, and for iStock also some dedicated keywording. Same files end up on other agencies, and it seems to work fine for those as well. But not for Zoonar apparently, because another bunch of keywords are added afterwards, and I don't know which keywords will finally make it to Zoonar's database or the agencies Zoonar distributes to.
322
« on: June 03, 2021, 11:09 »
And you were right! as wirestock answered me today very clear:
Thanks for the questions. With our Instant Pay Program you receive a one-time advance payment of $4-5/image (minus Wirestock commission) from each agency that selects your images. The selected images may be listed for free download on the agencies that select them, and you will no longer be able to remove the images from those agencies after you have received the advance payment. However, nothing will change in regards to the other agencies you have submitted to before, you will still continue licensing your images through existing agencies as well as there will not be any issue with iStock. The time frame is 3-4 months.
Clear! Thanks for sharing this!
323
« on: June 03, 2021, 06:45 »
You can see very consistently on the right in the list that not everyone is like you ... But it's true, we are an SME agency and certainly not the right choice for all photographers. That's ok too.
No doubt here that Zoonar has it's customers, and some contributors are doing relatively well, otherwise you wouldn't be able to keep it up and further develop it. The point I was trying to make is that, taking into consideration that some agencies have their own niche, I've seen selling my content on all of them, except for Zoonar. I find it a bit weird, but as you said, it's fine. It is what it is and I keep an eye on further developments. Maybe you can share with the community what type of content tends to do well with you customer base.
324
« on: June 03, 2021, 06:37 »
Because I newly know that ALL images submitted to Alamy (directly or via Zoonar/wirestock...) appear on Agefoto! So, if you upload your images to Alamy AND Zoonar, your images will already online on Agefoto - maybe before Agefoto even view your images upload to Zoonar. But finally still interesting, if Agefoto at all still check the images on Zoonar or not.
Valid point, yet, I would expect rejections in that case instead of pending reviews. I use Wirestock for submitting to Alamy and disabled distribution via Zoonar. Age is still enabled at Zoonar. So it's a matter who's first at reviewing submitted content, and how fast the distribution and further cascading takes place. Funny to read though how images are further distributed amongst agencies. Before the commission ends up in the contributor's account, two or three other parties already took their share.
325
« on: June 03, 2021, 01:59 »
We have nothing against that! Good things take time
Sure, I understand. But I can only conclude that Zoonar is my worst performing agency. I like Zoonar's concept and the distribution to other partners like DDP, PA and Age, but none of my content seems to sell (while it surely does on other agencies). Age is not even reviewing submitted content. Why keep them on board? I only have a few hundred images at Zoonar, so I'm not expecting to rain gold. But after one year no sales yet? That's weird, and I've never seen this at any other agency I submit to. Hell, even that clunky 90's looking PantherMedia is performing better than you guys, and I only have a handful of images there. And yes, I manually edit the English title and set the releases.
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