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Messages - Jo Ann Snover
3327
« on: May 22, 2014, 11:01 »
I looked at your site and intro video and read some of the contributor information. It sounds as though what you're looking for (for photos) is isolated objects, but some of the big contributors you named don't specialize in that. For example, Monkey Business Images: on Shutterstock, her portfolio is over 34,000 with only 180 isolated images. Based on typical usage so far, can you talk about what sorts of things Canva needs (photographs) other than isolated objects? $1 per use is a sort of RM license, so although it sounds cheap it might be workable, but I'm not clear what a use is on Canva. If someone makes a design and then produces a web page, a poster and prints postcard mailers, is that three uses or one? Are there uses on physical products - such as tee shirts or other merchandise - where a design use would effectively be giving away an extended license (on existing micro sites) for $1? I'm guessing that professional designers don't much like Canva - I assume it is effectively replacing them and allowing someone who would have hired a designer in the past to do it themselves. Is that how you'd see your user community? Certainly this post seems to be heading in that direction (and much as I got a chuckle out of the toe tag on a corpse with the Photoshop logo, those of us creating the images that people like the writer incorporate will still use it, albeit in my case CS6 as I wouldn't touch CC with a bargepole!) http://www.postplanner.com/create-stunning-social-media-graphics-without-photoshop/I'm very open to trying new things - especially if it might be expanding into new areas (making "designers" out of end users in the same way desktop publishing made "typographers" out of office workers in spite of the howls of horror from real typographers), but I'm not entirely clear if the sorts of things I do would have any usefulness in the Canva universe.
3328
« on: May 22, 2014, 09:43 »
Oh my - thank you  That was unexpected - I thought there'd be some new agency scam and that your title was a little gallows humor. Fotolia's new Cents Photo Club... I think that MSG works because of all of us as a group - that's why I try to contribute to it and why I get a lot from it. We can keep track of agencies, image thieves, new opportunities and people not getting paid. I think that Tyler has given us a way to operate a global water cooler-union hall-news wire. It takes a village and all that
3329
« on: May 22, 2014, 08:58 »
You can update, but I couldn't find a way to remove
3330
« on: May 21, 2014, 19:09 »
there is no way to remove a Credit Card from FAA by yourself
you need to contact their support (or close the account completely)
And if you doing it in advance you loose some (paid already) benefits
Their functionality needs some upgrade
I'm in the middle of a discussion with FAA support about this. I asked them to remove my stored credit card. They replied that they didn't store the credit card; their payment processor (Netbilling) did. I asked them to get Netbilling to remove it from their servers or tell me how to contact Netbilling to get that done. I asked as a security issue - I no longer let 99% of the places I do business with store a card number - and pointed out that this isn't at all an unusual request. I don't want to close my account, just remove my credit card. Even Apple finally gave in on that one and let users remove the card from the iTunes account...
3331
« on: May 21, 2014, 19:04 »
I was firmly convinced that an Extended license is required when the value of the object is in the image itself.
I agree with you, but we went round and round with Fotolia (probably 2007 or so?) about this when they first gave permission to a site to operate this way - put preview images in their store and then just buy a license (regular) each time the print sold, if it did. FT's argument was that if a buyer licensed the work himself, he'd be within the license to take the file to a print and frame place and make himself a print; they said the print shop was just acting as a purchasing helper for the buyer. We asked the obvious questions - if the buyer purchased the license, shouldn't he have the file and was FT going to monitor these deals as it would seem to be sooo tempting for a store to pay once and print more than once. I believe a contributor who had seen one of these purchases made another purchase himself to see if he received another royalty. I think he did (but if you know you're being watched, you tend to do the right thing until the hall monitor leaves). As with some of the current deals, back then Fotolia didn't tell contributors about this. A number of us started finding our work in print shop web sites; I contacted one of them showing one of mine, saying politely that I hadn't sold an extended license for that image via any agency, so he couldn't have a license to use it that way. He replied that he'd done a deal with Fotolia and they'd given him explicit permission to do this - because he'd asked for clarification. I didn't buy FT's argument then and don't now. Buyer licensing himself versus print shop wishes to get people in their store by using our work as enticement is different. ELs have been written explicitly for use on products where the image is the essence of what you're offering.
3332
« on: May 21, 2014, 11:46 »
It's always hard to tell what the volume of extended licenses will be, but even at SS, which has a decent number, the SOD/OD sales always beat out extended licenses each month (in $$ terms).
I think FT is trying to bait the hook with things that look nice but aren't all that relevant in the overall monthly earnings picture.
3333
« on: May 21, 2014, 09:49 »
I had 123rf remove my content when I went exclusive with iStock (so this isn't recent) and they handled it without any fuss.
I currently am there but have opted out of partner sales - I'm not interested in any of the agencies spreading my work around - so I think delays for partner sites wouldn't apply in that case.
Right now (and I'm hoping they won't change this) there is a minimum price per credit for the purposes of paying contributors, so for me, 18 cents a credit is the lowest it can go. I monitor sales every so often and most of them are higher than the minimum.
They aren't perfect, but if that were the criterion for staying with an agency I'd have pulled out of them all - I can think of legitimate complaints about how contributors are treated at every micro (can't comment on Stocksy as I'm not there). With an opt out for the partner program I can live with them for now.
3334
« on: May 20, 2014, 19:14 »
By default, all Fotolia content is opted in for sale at the Dollar Photo Club (DPC), but sales there do not count towards your Fotolia level. The contributor receives a subscription royalty (according to level) on each sale.
The part about "DPC sales not counting towards the Fotolia ranking level is not true.
One DPC sales counts like a regular sub sale at Fotolia (1/4).
If what I wrote is incorrect of course I'll change it.
I can't find anything on the Fotolia site that says how API subscription sales are handled with respect to level credit - it clearly says that subscription sales on site count 4 subs = 1 credit sale for ranking. I see lots of posts where people say they can't tell from their stats which are partner sales and which from Fotolia's own site. Does anyone track their sales and ranking credits closely enough to know if partner sales count?
I still haven't found anything specific on Fotolia or DPC on the credits issue, so I've changed my template letter and blog post to reflect only what I know. The template now says: "By default, all Fotolia content is opted in for sale at the Dollar Photo Club (DPC), and contributor receives a subscription royalty (according to level) on each sale even though the terms of these "image packs", chiefly that they roll over, make them more like incredibly cheap credit sales." My blog post now says: "Its unclear (nothing specified on the web site) whether credit for level purposes which at Fotolia is based on units for credit sales and 1 credit for every 4 subscriptions is the same as for subscriptions on Fotolias own site. Shutterstock bases increases in royalties on the dollar total you earn regardless of which type of sale it comes from. Levels are important because if Fotolia credit sales migrate to the image packs that are effectively what the DPC represents, contributors will be receiving 1/4 credit for an XXL sale instead of 10 and over time see slower increases in their royalty rate." For the record, the primary objections to the Dollar Photo Club are unrelated to this, so I don't think the error would have substantially mislead anyone who otherwise was inclined to love DPC. In other words, for those who sent letters based on the template, I don't think it's necessary to send them all out again saying that they will probably get 1/4 credit for their DPC sales.
3335
« on: May 20, 2014, 18:43 »
I only know which picture because I asked support and they gave me the info
3336
« on: May 20, 2014, 17:50 »
I've seen huge delays (18 hours or so) between my balance going up and the sales showing up. But I was able to request a payout when my balance went over $100 even though the sales didn't show until the next day, which made me less worried about the details I've never seen things show up out of order
3337
« on: May 20, 2014, 17:09 »
Someone had said that the tweets saying how wonderful Dollar Photo Club is were fake (purchased) and when I looked this morning and saw a familar name yet again, I thought I'd check. I could make (ugly) wallpaper out of these - they go back further (click for larger)  How bad does your product have to be that you pay a writer of romance novels (I guess not all that successful or they wouldn't be doing paid tweets) to cut and paste the same message day after day? Advertising is understandable, but fake testimonials? Sleazy IMO
3338
« on: May 20, 2014, 16:02 »
Beaches and foxes Likewise my first New York Gallery "appearance" - sounds nice. Thanks for pointing out the instagram picture of setup. I'm following them now so perhaps there'll be more shots later on. I don't recognize any of the shots they've tweeted about, but I'm going to keep my eyes peeled!
3339
« on: May 20, 2014, 15:41 »
I'll separate out the download pack pricing from the subscriptions so things stay easier to read.
A while back, 123rf confirmed that for calculating royalties, the minimum price per credit would be 40 cents - so for me, that's 18 cents per credit minimum. An XXL JPEG is 6 credits, so at a minimum I'd get $1.08.
I don't know if the download packs would be subject to that floor? When the buyer pays $1.39 for the image, 45% is 62.5 cents which would be a huge drop for me - and I'm not thrilled with $1.08 per XXL! I had one this month at that rate, but the rest were at $1.35 and $2.592
The picture looks even worse at the higher pack pricing - buyer pays $1.158 and 123rf pays me all but 7.8 cents
At their base rate of 30%, they'd pay out 72 cents on XXL, leaving them about half the total. At 50%, they'd pay out $1.20 and keep just 19 cents - just 13.6% of the buyer price.
Perhaps they hope buyers will buy smaller sizes? (I wouldn't). Or buy only images from new contributors (not likely).
How can this work over time?
3340
« on: May 20, 2014, 15:16 »
So I looked at 123rf's current pricing page and noticed this deal to sign up for a 2 year subscription for the price of one year (25 a day) - which they tout to the buyer as costing 13 cents an image.  I know that buyers are unlikely to download their entire amount, but isn't 13 cents an image a new low? SS's lowest is 28 cents an image if you buy a year.. As 123rf pays me 32.4 cents per subs (now) does that mean we're about to see some sort of cut in compensation to have this work out? I'm glad to see sites try to head off DPC at the pass, but I don't see how they can make deals like the above work? Not to mention the $1.39 for an XXL image in the pack above - for which I'd see all of 62.5 cents, much less than is typical now
3341
« on: May 20, 2014, 11:38 »
They have a thing for beaches, apparently Congrats!
3342
« on: May 20, 2014, 11:07 »
I'm not sure if I'll renew for a 3rd year (next January) but it's not true for me anyway, that I haven't received anything in return for my $30 a year. My sales are more than enough to make the deal make sense financially, although things have gone quiet since the end of March. I didn't get the e-mail but then as I'm already signed up I'd hope they'd skip me Each time, the first sale has paid for the annual fee and the rest is better than low earners like CanStock most months. The site looks outdated and I'm not sure where they're going with licensing, but FAA is more than just some scheme to make money from the fees. If Crated does well, I'll drop FAA ('cause Crated has no fees) but I'll need to see how that plays out between now and next January to decide.
3343
« on: May 20, 2014, 10:58 »
Not sure what it will mean (as I'm too far away to go and check it out in person!) but they sent e-mail today saying one of my photos was selected for their opening pop-up gallery in NYC tonight and tomorrow! https://twitter.com/joannsnover/status/468780521603231744I had to ask which picture as the e-mail didn't say, but support kindly found out so I could help them promote the opening. The site looks very inviting - let's hope some sales follow
3344
« on: May 20, 2014, 09:48 »
And what will contributors receive for each of these heavily discounted sales? A subscription royalty (30 to 35 cents) , a percentage (40 to 55 cents if the image price is $1 each)?
3345
« on: May 20, 2014, 09:42 »
Oh, and another 3K+ images opted out
3346
« on: May 20, 2014, 09:41 »
By default, all Fotolia content is opted in for sale at the Dollar Photo Club (DPC), but sales there do not count towards your Fotolia level. The contributor receives a subscription royalty (according to level) on each sale.
The part about "DPC sales not counting towards the Fotolia ranking level is not true.
One DPC sales counts like a regular sub sale at Fotolia (1/4).
If what I wrote is incorrect of course I'll change it. I can't find anything on the Fotolia site that says how API subscription sales are handled with respect to level credit - it clearly says that subscription sales on site count 4 subs = 1 credit sale for ranking. I see lots of posts where people say they can't tell from their stats which are partner sales and which from Fotolia's own site. Does anyone track their sales and ranking credits closely enough to know if partner sales count?
3347
« on: May 19, 2014, 22:40 »
I think it's to prevent apps that gather stats logging in
3348
« on: May 19, 2014, 21:54 »
I stopped unloading to BS last year because I wasn't on bridge and there sub commissions were not even on parity with SS !!!
Same here.
When they would not provide an opt out from the subscriptions on BigStock, I left in March last year. Either because I'm not a big enough fish or because I was an iStock exclusive when the bridge was introduced, I wasn't part of it. If there had been an opt out I'd have stayed, even though BigStock income was pretty low relative to the other agencies
3349
« on: May 19, 2014, 19:55 »
on the mother ship (Getty) a search for world cup nets 588 images. All creative, lots RF, some RM. Does that mean all of those will be deactivated too? Editorial has over 50K images already and the event hasn't happened yet! I looked because it dawned on me that Getty had some FIFA contract and.... http://www.gettyimages.com/editorial/frontdoor/fifa-world-cup
3350
« on: May 19, 2014, 09:37 »
I wouldn't post images here under any circumstances. It'd be like being set up in a dunk tank and the proceeds wouldn't be going to charity. The iStock critique forum was moderated and useful - constructive criticism. I haven't found anything like that anywhere else.
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