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Messages - PixelBytes

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326
Really?  I'm the only person this happened to?

327
Great! (I wish Shutterstock would sue freepik instead of continuing to pay them as an affiliate after they stole thousands of vectors.)

However. Knowing Getty's history, my guess is that they'll sue for damages, collect the judgement for themselves, and take back the royalties from the photographers whose images were downloaded and resold. I very much doubt the photographers will ever see any money from this. Although it is good to send a message about stealing images.

Yeah, great to go after the criminals, but they should reimburse the authors whose images were stolen and resold.  It's still our intellectual property.  I am sure their lawsuit claims to be acting on behalf of the copyright holders.  THAT'S US. 

328
PhotoDune / PhotoDune $10 transaction fee to get our money?
« on: June 15, 2016, 22:42 »
I just realized Photodune charged me $10 transaction fee to transfer my money to me!  I get paid through Skrill.  This never happened before.  Did anyone else get charged this fee or hear any announcement about it? 

Double U T F??!!!!

329
Dreamstime.com / Re: DT has died for me
« on: June 12, 2016, 23:49 »
It is high time DT lowered their ridiculous payout threshold from $100 to something more attainable like $30-50.

330
My finger slipped.  I'm on my tablet and meant to vote 20-40 but accidentally voted over 60%.  Can someone correct?

331
Now that we have had 93 votes on this poll, we have 20 independents saying their income hasn't gone down at all since 2012 and yet only 3 exclusives who say there income hasn't gone down over the same period of time.

For me, this is one of the most important aspects of the poll results so far. Yes, as many people have pointed out, there might be some discrepancies, inconsistencies, and inaccuracies on how the various contributors who voted have calculated their percentage of drops. But I think the issue of whether or not you have had a drop since 2012 in income or not is a pretty cut and dry matter.

Another thing I noticed over the last 18 months is how the best match on iStock hasn't really changed much at all. And what the best match mainly has been driving for the last 1.5 years is the newer content uploaded by exclusives and independents, plus some of the older stuff put up by exclusives which hasn't sold much in the past.

Seemingly, exclusives are no longer investing as much as they did in the past to create their new content, knowing that iStock has turned mainly into a low-cost subscription priced site. This means that the older exclusive content is probably much better quality than the newer exclusive content, if in fact many of the exclusives have even continued to upload at all. The current best match algorithm is also not showing the older and best selling exclusive content at the top of the search results, which results in minimal sales to exclusives of their high quality best sellers from the past that they spent more money to create.

So what does this all really mean for contributors?

In my opinion it means that iStock is discouraging buyers from easily finding the more expensive, high quality exclusive content and instead putting a mix of new, lower quality and lower cost indy content, with some older, poorer selling exclusive content which isn't going to interest buyers much anyway. And when the buyers see mainly a mix of lower quality pictures from the indies and exclusives together, they probably buy more of the indy stuff because quality of the two groups will be about equal and yet the indy stuff sells for only 1/3 the price.

I am not saying iStock is necessarily doing this consciously to make more money because of the fact they have a lower payout on the indy stuff. But maybe they are truly trying to promote the older content that hasn't sold much yet and to give the new stuff a bigger chance too.

But if buyers are mainly buying the cheaper priced indy pictures, rather than the higher cost exclusive pictures, it means the indys might not be seeing a drop income and the exclusives could be seeing huge drops of over 50% in income as the poll also has also shown us with 24 exclusives saying their income has fallen by 50% or more and only 14 independents saying their income has dropped as much too.

I don't know how you're coming to these conclusions.  As I read the poll, the indies that lost 50% or more are the largest group.

332

When you include your iStock totals, are you adding in subs and PP?  I have been. If I was to only go by blue line DLs then I've gone from 4-5k/month  to only around $ 300/month on IS.  Which would put IS on the lowest tier for me.

If just the blue, I fluctuate today between $150 & $200.  2-3 years ago I was making about $400 a month on blue before TS was introduced. Then income slowly went down, then started to climb up a little in the last year with subs and Getty.  Today the "green and gray bars" usually add up to roughly $200 more each month.  I've had a few months of late where I've gotten some big bumps in sales.     

Thanks for the explanation.   I wonder if my extreme drops are from not branching into video.  Seems like the still photogs like yourself that also added video have not fallen so bad.

333
By the way, I should have added the basis for calculating your drop. In my case I took my BME, which was actually March 2012 and compared it to what my checkout payment amount will be later this month for May.
Oh, if I compared my BME to any month this year, my drop would be much more than I voted. I compared 2015's total to 2012's total.

Very sorry for not clarifying that earlier. I should have laid down the parameters at the onset. Anyway, thank you for voting. Your vote will still help.

I did it ShadySue's way too - and actually, I think that makes more sense.  I find any individual month on iStock can vary by as much as 100%, so just choosing a particular month doesn't really tell us very much.

Also, by way of comparison, it would be interesting to know how independents have fared overall, not just on iStock - judging from other posts, the whole market for individual contributors has declined over the years, presumably because of the huge increase in numbers of images, so just looking at one agency doesn't give us the full picture.

This is accurate for me. Last month I made around $600 on IS but the prior month was $340.

When you include your iStock totals, are you adding in subs and PP?  I have been. If I was to only go by blue line DLs then I've gone from 4-5k/month  to only around $ 300/month on IS.  Which would put IS on the lowest tier for me.

334
So far looks like the extreme drops have hit both indies and exclusives pretty hard.

335
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Income lose 2013 to 2016
« on: June 03, 2016, 14:14 »
 I feel you brother. I have seen the same drops as a independent.   Have other indies seen similar?

  I don't know if this is typical or not.  I do know I used to depend alot on Istock income, so maybe thats why ive lost so much with their decline.  I am down about 50% from 4-5 years ago on SS too.

336
I uploaded whole port to Picfair a few months ago.  So far not a single sale. 

337
...percentage of royalty doesn't matter.  Only thing that matter is how much we get in $.  If they sell for $1000 and give us 10%, it's $100 royalty per clip which is much higher than SS and others.
<sigh>

Yeah, I hear ya.  Sigh.  Reading this thread is exactly like the same discussions about photos from a couple years ago.   And here we are now with the stills market tits up, just like the 'alarmists' and 'complainers' predicted.


338
GL is the easiest, but considering I made $3 there last month off 6k photos, why bother?

I had been considering uploading to P5, but after the reports of sales dropping off a cliff,  I'll save myself the trouble.  Canva also seems to have nosedived.  Weren't they middle tier last month?

339
I posted my list earlier, but for May FT took Istock out of my #2 spot.  They are closing in on SS.

340
Interesting perspective.  He definitely got screwed on the in house company modeling where they outright lied to him.  But for the stock shoots, he clearly seems to have understood what stock is, and how it's used.  He is an intelligent guy, knows how to read and understand a release, and was happy for the money at the time.  Now he's wringing his hands over it years later?

None of those uses were even bad.  Seriously, reading the newspaper, or playing a doctor?  He posed doing those things!  As for the bisexual thing, if his friends don't know his sexual preference, they aren't very close friends.  If he was that upset he could have contacted HuffPo and told them they violated sensitive use clause and take it down.  On the RARE times its happened, I have never once had any company refuse to take down a sensitive use when asked.

This stuff is much ado about nothing.  My models love finding themselves in use!  Even the ones that had an occasional use they weren't too happy about still keep modeling for me.

341
I just hope buyers are busy today, Tuesday,  to close out the month on a high note.  Wouldn't mind one of those rare SS big sales I keep hearing about.   8)

342
General Stock Discussion / Re: 2015 Stock Photo Survey!!
« on: May 31, 2016, 00:31 »
Done.  Small suggestion.  Veer Marketplace could be removed, as it is closed.  But no biggie.

Thanks for taking the time to do this.  :)

343
Glad to hear back Tyler.  You're allowed a life.   :)

The survey is always good reading tho, and the best view of the trends.  But it seems like a bunch of work for you.  Only bother if its worth your time.  Maybe make viewable only to members, or to those that filled out the questionaire?  Might make the extra work worthwhile for you.

344
Adobe Stock / Re: 13 downloads in 2 mn
« on: May 22, 2016, 17:39 »
When will people learn, sales reporting is not real time, it's when the system processes them. They could be 3 days old and just got counted. Took 2 mn to report 13 dl doesn't mean they were all bought in 2 mn. Whats a mn?

Peole has a name.

For FT, in each sale notification there's is a field named "Date d'achat"(in french), unless the translation is not correct, it means for me "Purchase date".
These picture were purchased between 2016-05-19 21:37:19 and 2016-05-19 21:39:57

Plus, it's the first time it happened. I have regular sales on FT.
Please allow me to be surprised, i thought FT was different from iS.

Your right. FT computers are tuned in to your account and as soon as you have a sale, they stop everything else and process your sale with the real time, down to the second. What was I thinking that servers and computers that circle the world, wouldn't all be synced to the second and instantly report your personal sales. I'm sorry for doubting that agencies watch our souls and accounts with priority over all other accounting and business matters. We are the center of the stock photo universe.

Am I the only one who is feeling like the douchebag quotient around here is unusually high lately?

345
123RF / Re: Anyone get payment of May?
« on: May 22, 2016, 17:30 »
Yes I got mine a couple of days ago.

Me too.

346
Pond5 (video/audio/photo)
Shutterstock (video/photo)
Videoblocks (video)
Fotolia/Adobe (photo/video)
Alamy (photo)

The most disturbing thing I've learned from this thread is how many people still submit to iStock, even with all the crap they pull and the insulting smallest % in the industry they pay out. Yes, I realize this means they're a "top 5" income generator for so many, but at what cost in the long term? They're crooked, lying thieves, and perpetuate the weakening of our role in the partnerships we have with the stock companies. Anyone still submitting to them is contributing to the demise of all of our futures, doing what we do.


Oh please.  ::)  Says the guy whose top site is Pond5, the site that's in the process of erroding the video market like. IS erroded the still photo market.  Check out this thread:

www.microstockgroup.com/pond5/the-membership-program-is-a-disaster-for-contributors/msg454565/?topicseen#new

Also, FYI, Istock is one of my top sellers despite not uploading there for almost 2 years.

347
Pond5 / Re: Time to give up on Pond 5.....
« on: May 22, 2016, 17:16 »
The membership program has been bad for contributors.  I we are making less money, Pond5 must be making less money too.  It's a stupid program.

I love your insightful analysis

So dazzle us with your insights. 

348
Please forgive some well intentioned critique.  Going a bit wider to avoid cutting off the feet and the back end would make this a more sellable picture.   Also, using the clone tool to get rid of the distracting feet of another animal on the left would give you some copy space.

Looks like a Brahma bull to me too.

349
Adobe Stock / Re: 13 downloads in 2 mn
« on: May 19, 2016, 19:16 »
Congrats!  You hit a lucky streak :)

350


1. Shutterstock
2. Fotolia
3. Istock
4. Dreamstime
5. 123RF

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