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Messages - loop
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326
« on: October 22, 2012, 19:00 »
Maybe they got from Photos.com or Thinkstock and, being Getty companys, the put "Getty". Or may (I hope not) someone stole your image and uploaded it to Getty. Try Googe Image Search with the image.
327
« on: October 22, 2012, 12:21 »
I don't consider TS being better that SS, but the fact is that lately I've seen several magazines that used SS or Fotolia using now TS. So, in some way, TS is biiting on SS... what is bad, because with this status quo is difficult that any of them dare raise prices.
328
« on: October 20, 2012, 05:18 »
Well, so your numbers are different of those of my friends at SS. It can be, maybe different kinds of portfolios or whatever. Even so, if I'm not mistaken, you get about 2-4 $ for an XXXL OD sale. I get from 16 to 110 $, depending of the collection. At the end, revenue is not just dictated for % of commissions but for selling price too. I don't like sites that cut comissions, but it hurts the same if what they cut --or don't ever up-- are prices.
It depends on the license. They introduced some new licenses in the past year that are based on percentage of sale rather than a flat rate. IIRC, someone reported here recently that they made $95 on one of the newer license sales. I think it was Gostwyck, but he'll no doubt correct me if I'm wrong on that. Several people have reported $75 cuts on a new license also. I haven't had any of those myself yet, but I hope I'll see some before too long.
Congratulations on those $110 sales. They must be great to receive. I'm happy for anyone who does well in this game.
It doesn't happen very often, but it happens. By the way, I've read something about those SS 70/95 licenses, but I don't really know what thery are. Is this thing about allowing your portfolio for sensitive use?
329
« on: October 19, 2012, 12:16 »
@ loop
I'm not sure what confidence has to do with it... but honestly, it makes no difference to me what you call me. I'm just happy with a site that's my top earner and performing better all the time without cutting commissions. I'm not so happy with sites that either perform poorly (although I may still live in hope for them), and I'm somewhat miserable about sites that cut commissions. Nothing 'respectable' or otherwise about it. If SS started screwing me or anyone else and start cutting commissions across the board, I'd be really unhappy with them.
If it's of interest, my numbers are consistently around 50% to 60% PPDs at present.
Well, so your numbers are different of those of my friends at SS. It can be, maybe different kinds of portfolios or whatever. Even so, if I'm not mistaken, you get about 2-4 $ for an XXXL OD sale. I get from 16 to 110 $, depending of the collection. At the end, revenue is not just dictated for % of commissions but for selling price too. I don't like sites that cut comissions, but it hurts the same if what they cut --or don't ever up-- are prices.
330
« on: October 19, 2012, 11:34 »
It's very strange to me that all the SS bashers seem to have a blind spot when it comes to OD's, SOD's and EL's. As should be clear, in recent months Jon has increased the range of PPDs and there are more non-sub sales than ever.
No, you just don't understand what RPD is, see my post to Sharpshot above.
You do make an awful lot of assumptions regarding what people know and think. I wasn't actually referring to RPD at all, nor was I referring to you in my post. Over time there have been a few posters here (IS exclusives, usually) who speak as if SS as purely a sub site and nothing else. I shouldn't have said 'all SS bashers' in my post. That was careless of me.
If you feel confident enough to call "SS bashers" to the people that don't share your point of view on SS, I think you won't matter being called "SS woo-yayer", in the best tradition of what was said on IS contributors time ago. Now, there are a lot of SS woo-yayers... bot don't worry, it was allowed an applauded to make fun of IS woo-yayers, but being a SS woo-yayer is a serious and respectable thing. Abut SS being a subs site... It's a fact that it was a subs site for many years, it is understable that some people see this agency in that way. Now you have some indivividual sales or ELS? Good for you and for SS. But, as far as I know (for friends that have portfolios there) the majority of sales are sub, at 0.35 or whatever any size. Maybe in your case is different.
331
« on: October 11, 2012, 18:57 »
Funnily enough I don't recall getting an email from Brucie when he trousered $50M of Getty's money.
Bruce did his farewell in a very long post at the istock forums, thanking everyone, etc.
I don't consider that personal. Not everybody reads forum posts.
But everyone CAN read the forums.
332
« on: October 11, 2012, 17:45 »
Funnily enough I don't recall getting an email from Brucie when he trousered $50M of Getty's money.
Bruce did his farewell in a very long post at the istock forums, thanking everyone, etc.
333
« on: October 05, 2012, 10:32 »
The point is to help the agencies build huge collections of free images off of which they'll make money and you won't.
So true. I was browsing photoXpress the other day, for the first time. Isn't this the site that Fotolia sends "free" images? You have to buy a subscription to download them. So they are making money on images donated for "free" by contributors. And as far as I could see there was no link back to the paid Fotolia site, much less the portfolio of the donating contributor. Struck me as obscene.
I don't know much about photoxpress, but I went there out of curiosity, and I saw you have there many of your photos, some of them bestsellers. I.e.: http://www.photoxpress.com/stock-photos/people/person/men/725133
334
« on: September 26, 2012, 05:11 »
Cool! Although I am not anymore Gold I welcome a royalty increase(!) from anyone to anyone in this troubled market 
Price increase and royalty increase are different things. For what I understand, you get the same royalty on a higher price.
335
« on: September 24, 2012, 10:15 »
Copying a photographer is a difficult thing to do. Even if you set the same scene and shot the same style. The two photos are going to be vastly different. I hardly see it as plagerism. Now taking a Yuri photo and uploading it as your own, thats plagerism.
No. That would be plain theft, and it's easier to deal with. Plagiarism is copying.
336
« on: September 18, 2012, 17:14 »
Spending to much time on this doesn't add up $ wise. I'd just send the takedown notice with a link on where to buy it if they want to keep using the image.
My time would be better off submitting more images than chasing $10 here and there.
If IBM or Toyota were using it illegally it might be a different story. 
I know the moral of not stealing is really important to other people and go for it if that what is important to you.
Part of the problem is ignorance (don't know they're stealing) and also arrogance (know but don't care - "so I stole your pic, what'r you gonna do about it?").
If more photographers went after infringers word would spread and theft would likely decrease. Saying "oh well, let them steal" is indirectly encouraging theft.
Agree.
As far as time goes, I consider it a part of doing business, just like making accounts receivable calls, or follow-up sales calls. If each contributor spent an hour or two a week looking for infringers and sending DMCAs, it would go a long way towards spreading the word and educating people.
Agree. Think global, act local.
337
« on: September 18, 2012, 11:10 »
Different sites pay different rates, there's no a fixed global pay per photo that includes all agencies.
338
« on: September 14, 2012, 15:45 »
Ok, just thought I might share this little story: yesterday I got a small yet important Catalogue design job. The client wished at a specific place a Vector Image - nothing really special, a womans head with some symbols of a specific industry I may not disclose. Well, I thought that this would be a easy Job but found that I had to invest a little more time to find a suiting vector. I looked in 6 different places and learned that almost 90% of vectors of the desired style are just copies of one and each other. Note that the theme is not really something rare. In my desperation and urgent desire to shut the office down ( D: ) I decided to have a look at istock. THEY HAD ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. I found 55 pages of more or less relevant Vectors at DP, over 100 pages at DT, and six (6!) at istock. Furthermore the quality was average at best. Wow. I never thought istock would be such a loser but off course it makes me happy to see that they fail with _their_ policy.
One lesson learned yesterday:
1. upload limits are bad. Today you might be happy to safe some disk space. Tomorrow you cannot compete because you are missing content.
2. istock is dead.
Oddly enough, as a buyer, I have the opposite experience: finding at IS what I often can't find at other sites.
339
« on: September 14, 2012, 04:45 »
I don't think the analogy works with any business that has a physical product. Perhaps a better comparison is music. The latest single costs around $1 to download. The production costs must be much higher than anything I have ever produced for the microstock sites. And the artist usually has to pay other musicians and their managers, so they might only make a tiny fraction of that $1. They can make much more money, with high sales volume and they have lots of other ways to make money, like playing live but I think it makes a better comparison than selling coffee.
Musicians sell songs for private use, to a very much broader audiences. We sell commercial and editorial licenses. Maybe you should compare with the cost of a music license to use a song commercially.
340
« on: September 13, 2012, 11:54 »
I feel free files are great for the agency as advertising and seo but serves no purpose for the photographer. Both Fotolia and Dreamstime actively try to get us to offer our images for free but we aren't doing ourselves a favor - we are doing them a favor. We are essentially paying for their advertising. That is something they should be paying for themselves with their generous share of the commission. That's what we're paying them for.
+1 Wise words.
341
« on: September 08, 2012, 17:37 »
...I see no logic in uploading to minor agencies that don't do much, except selling for cents to get some customers and accelerating the race to the bottom.
Race to the bottom? The smaller agencies tend to have much higher royalty rates, and average to above average prices. None of the top 4 are offering 50% royalties. My highest RPD comes from small agencies, not the big 4. So how is that a race to the bottom, when the small agencies are at the top of the scale in many cases?
Just went there. You can get a XS for 0,40 (no subs) and an XL for 4.00. Tha'ts 0,20 and 2,00 royalties. Above average prices?? I get 2,50 from an XS and 12 from an XL at IS (not to talk of E+ Vetta and Agency). My RPD is about 5 $. At the end of the day, what matters is what we get for our work. That has three factors: % royalties, sales volume and price. If two of these factors fail, in my opinion, the agency it's not worth.
342
« on: September 08, 2012, 11:53 »
All the agencies are the same: business, and quite greedy. Depositphotos, it seems, has had some success (at least like an start-up)... so, having success, no needing so much more photographers... why not screw them a bit? (That's something that at the very beggining you can't do). The least a business can do is deliver (like IS and SS do) to their suppliers, that's the reason I see no logic in uploading to minor agencies that don't do much, except selling for cents to get some customers and accelerating the race to the bottom.
343
« on: September 04, 2012, 16:41 »
E+, Vetta and Agency generate great income for me (I don't know how Photo+ behaves). So, I think higher priced collections are good.
344
« on: August 16, 2012, 15:52 »
If it was a mistake, it was a mistake. People do them sometimes. But the general policy of defending artist's IP is one of the best things that Getty does. I support them 100% in that aspect.
Are they still doing this aggressively for Istock exclusives?
As far as I know, for istock they send cease and desist letters. I've had several photos deleted from infringing sites after having written to c.e. at istock.
345
« on: August 16, 2012, 15:36 »
Getty sued someone you know who had licensed the file legally and used it correctly? Or did they just send a letter?
Just sent the letter. I think he got it sorted out. But the letter was worded in a way that they were accusing him of infringement. Something to the effect of "pay x amount or we'll sue" sort of thing.
If it was a mistake, it was a mistake. People do them sometimes. But the general policy of defending artist's IP is one of the best things that Getty does. I support them 100% in that aspect.
346
« on: August 11, 2012, 06:28 »
While it's true that nothing lasts forever, it's true as well that I have been reading in forums the voices of self appointed prophets announcing the inmmiment end of microstock since 2004 (I wasn't aware of microstock before 2004). Every little change has been seen as the herald of The End is Near. Had I listened to these inspirational voices now I would be significantly less rich.
I can understand that some people like our poster-of-a-thousand-names, who probably is making his profecies in different forums since the year 2000-- would love seiing microstock crashing, but wishes and reality are often different things. Sometimes is good to be able to look ahead instead of consuming time looking back while swallowing sulphur. Remember that to have your wishes made real instantly, you need a magic wand.
(But well, as I said, nothing lasts forever. If you live long enough, maybe someday you'll see your prophecy fulfilled)
347
« on: August 09, 2012, 16:40 »
Several themes:
One:
I don't think 20 $for the last seven hundred or so pages SK book is expensive. Paying 8 or 10 dollars for a kg of decent salad tomates it is, in my opinion. On the other hand, after buying a Kindle I've discovered that I prefer reading books on paper. Some friends of mine agree with me, but they point out that with and e-book reader you can get the books for nothing on the file sharing pirate sites. They consider that a great advantage.
On the other hand: all crowdsourcing sites have their examples of "people making fast fortunes with them". That's a given. One of two examples of these kind are the greatest free publicity you can ever have. Of course, you alway can promote someone to guarantee his/her success. But go to the indie authors forums: 99% of them are getting almost nothing, nothing or losing money after paying for art in the covers, design, editing, proofreading, formatting, self promoting etc. And by the way: you can be an indie author and have an agent as well, not to talk of eventually needing a lawyer.
Two:
Anyway, if Amazon can pay 70% (lets say that sometimes they pay 35% too) for non-exclusive books, why couldn't microstock sites pay these kind of rates? Amazon also have staff, bandwith, storage and adds etc to pay. Probably more than MS sites. And they earn a lot of money.
Three:
I can't understand why disagreeing with Yuri is seen by some like a kind of personal attack. Forums are a tool to contrast opinions, aren't they? Contrasting opinions and learning in the process is a good thing, I'm sure. Not all can be woyaying and pating shoulders. Politely disagreeing with other posters opinions is not judged so harshly. About Sean, I'll just say that he has done a lote for many of us: he keeps the most informative page about stock that I know, he has personally written for free lots of apps for photographers and customers and he is, certainly, in his rigth to speak his mind.
Four:
Very surprising this information about SS paying less than 20%, although I don't understand what the source is.
Added in edit responding to Pixart: John Locke doen't get 70 c per book. If you sell at .99 you just get 35%, not 70
348
« on: July 26, 2012, 09:32 »
Really weak this July for me, at IS, specially last week.
349
« on: July 24, 2012, 09:44 »
On the other hand I've got 39 $ for a big E+, and I have a 250 $ personal record for an EL.
350
« on: July 24, 2012, 09:41 »
That's not copycat. But there's a lot of copycats in microstock, down to the sligthest detail.
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