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Messages - sharpshot
Pages: 1 ... 9 10 11 12 13 [14] 15 16 17 18 19 ... 263
326
« on: February 22, 2017, 10:23 »
I was addicted for the first 2 years. Now, I'm happy with Alamy. The rest of the sites either pay me too small a percentage or have done something to make it harder for me to increase my earnings. I have no idea how people can be happy with istock taking 85% or other sites selling video clips for almost nothing? Working harder and harder to make other people rich while my earnings erode has no appeal to me. I'm still looking for alternatives and I'm sure my next addiction will be nothing to do with microstock.
Not having a dig or anything, just generally interested in your answer.... if you got more money from iStock than you did Alamy, would you be less bothered about them taking 85%?
It would help but I still think they were paying us too little at 20% and going below that was a huge mistake. If they had increased my earnings, I might of put up with it for longer but that didn't happen.
327
« on: February 22, 2017, 04:18 »
They do OK with my microstock portfolio. Takes a long time for sales to start but worth it over the years. Editing the keywords seems essential, Perhaps a lot of people don't bother and wonder why they don't sell much?
328
« on: February 22, 2017, 04:14 »
Same here. Ever since I asked them to close my account, I have been unable to upload. Best decision I've made in a long time.
329
« on: February 22, 2017, 04:02 »
I was addicted for the first 2 years. Now, I'm happy with Alamy. The rest of the sites either pay me too small a percentage or have done something to make it harder for me to increase my earnings. I have no idea how people can be happy with istock taking 85% or other sites selling video clips for almost nothing? Working harder and harder to make other people rich while my earnings erode has no appeal to me. I'm still looking for alternatives and I'm sure my next addiction will be nothing to do with microstock.
330
« on: February 22, 2017, 03:53 »
I would never upload video there. Everyone needs to delete their video content there if that's going to happen. If buyers expect to pay almost nothing for 1080 clips, we will never make any money. I'm not doing this for nothing.
331
« on: February 17, 2017, 02:55 »
Quality is highly subjective. Some of what I think are my best images sell very little but those that I almost didn't upload sell well. I see a few people with small portfolios packed with images that sell well but I think that would be hard for me to do. I just upload everything that I think might sell and let the buyers decide. The best images rise to the top in my portfolio and some of them are a real surprise.
Deciding what to sell on micro and macro sites is tricky as well. A high quality image on a macro site might never sell or only sell a few times and make less than it would on the microstock sites.
332
« on: February 15, 2017, 08:17 »
That could be a huge amount of money for all of us. Hope they go to 5% or give us a good explanation why it's 10%.
333
« on: February 15, 2017, 05:57 »
I see it as a positive, as I dumped them and want buyers to use the other sites 
334
« on: February 14, 2017, 03:08 »
Am I the only one that could care less about the map? It is just a pointless gimmick. I guess if you only make one or two sales a day it could be fun to see where those people are from. As a useful tool to help me run my business it is utterly pointless.
I agree, they could put it on a separate page for those that want it.
335
« on: February 14, 2017, 03:05 »
I used to like seeing everything I had sold in one day on one page. No idea why they would make it worse than it was? Hope they see sense and scrap the new look. They usually improve things but this time they have made it much worse.
336
« on: February 13, 2017, 03:03 »
I think I did 1,500 in 4 months when I started and that felt like a lot of work. Most of them were just walking around with my camera. I wouldn't upload a lot of those photos now but in late 2006, almost everything sold. Taking the photos is easy, it's the editing and key wording that I find tedious. I still don't want to pay someone else to do the tedious work, doing everything myself keeps costs down.
If I was starting now, I wouldn't think about quantity, I think it's all about having a niche and filling the gaps in the sites collections.
337
« on: February 12, 2017, 10:32 »
Cameras, lenses and old computers can be very cheap on Ebay or a second hand shop. My old Canon 300D photos still sell well and that camera goes for very little now. No problem with 6mp if you stitch a few photos together. The Gimp is free, that's all I used for image editing at one time. If the camera is too expensive, just use Inkscape for free and make vectors. I could probably do microstock with a $100 phone if that was all the money I had.
338
« on: February 11, 2017, 04:43 »
So many people have left istock, it might seem that those left are making more money but hopefully it's just bigger slices of a shrinking cake. If buyers continue to leave, those still using istock wont be making much in the future.
339
« on: February 09, 2017, 15:45 »
I got a discounted RX100M4. Used the M1 until it broke. Not sure the MK5 is a huge upgrade and it costs a lot more than the MK4, if you search for a cheap one. If you don't want to mess around with raw, use jpeg. I used jpeg for about a year with no problems, lots of people use jpeg for stock. I also use micro 43 cameras because the lenses are small and lightweight and some of them are great value for money. The Olympus 25mm f1.8 is the equivalent of a 50mm on a full frame camera that weighs very little and has excellent quality.
340
« on: February 08, 2017, 09:51 »
Congrats on your sale. If the sale was reversed then your balance should now be - $499.50 and you'll need on of those sales again to get back to 0.
Looks like I'm done with them. What kind of agency pays you out and then returns a clip. Do they really expect I will upload anymore with them? That's some shady sh*t right there.
If you are selling the same clip for a fraction of the price on other sites, that's a risk you take. Lots of sites give customers refunds and take the money back from us. It hurts but that's business. If you leave the site, they will probably try and get their money back.
341
« on: February 08, 2017, 05:15 »
Shutterstock seemed to work out that the more images they accept, the more money they make. So the strange standards they had went out the window. I think this is a good thing. LCV images go down the search, so buyers don't see them most of the time but if they want a blurred landscape background, they can find it. Google likes new content, the links in this thread will also help with google. Just look how badly DT did when they became too picky. Their subjective "quality" policy must of cost them a small fortune over the years.
342
« on: February 08, 2017, 04:47 »
Alamy is dead in 2017.
For you maybe but that doesn't mean it's dead for everyone. Seems just like 2016 to me, not huge sales volume but I get more money than I do with lots of the micros.
343
« on: February 06, 2017, 14:31 »
I still don't see how another thread complaining about the complaining is helping. There used to be another forum I used that was more positive but that's gone now. So what options are there?
344
« on: February 06, 2017, 05:47 »
The forum had less complaints before the sites started cutting the amount they pay us. I think it would be a strange world if everyone was happy about that. Go use the Stepford Wives microstock forum if this one is a bit too real.
345
« on: February 01, 2017, 09:24 »
It will be a shame if Canva can't be competitive with sites from other countries that have 0% withholding tax. I hope they can find a way around this.
346
« on: January 21, 2017, 04:55 »
I only uploaded a small part of my portfolio to DP and don't feel motivated to upload any more. Probably best to ditch them if you aren't getting a payout regularly. Alamy for stills and Pond5 for video are the sites I'm concentrating on this year.
347
« on: January 20, 2017, 13:36 »
My best selling image at the moment seems to have keywords all in the wrong order. I'm not changing it.
348
« on: January 20, 2017, 04:31 »
I tried my own site and it cost too much to run, took up too much of my time, wasn't good for buyers (they don't like using lots of sites) and seemed to be very popular with scammers and hackers. Then there was the European VAT problem when selling direct and that was the last straw. I'm sure it works for some people but probably only a tiny percentage of those that do microstock.
349
« on: January 19, 2017, 13:09 »
The GH5 should be better for video but the Sony a7R II might be all you need. I don't see anything wrong with the GH5 for stills either, unless you use over 800 iso a lot.
350
« on: January 18, 2017, 05:09 »
I don't think Shutterstock is in any trouble. They have probably made it easier for new people to sell new images. They carry on making more and more money but every individual contributor that has a lot of older images finds it harder to sustain earnings. It will work for them because they have massive oversupply. They make more money by selling more images from newer contributors that are on the lower commission levels. It's a shame things seem to be going the same way as other sites but it was inevitable really.
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