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Messages - Uncle Pete
3451
« on: January 06, 2020, 12:01 »
Yes I know oldie alert, but this fits the software and I wanted to update for 2020 startrails.de is free (donations welcome)
Meteorite showers 2020 April 22, 2020 Lyrids May 5, 2020 Eta Aquariids Late July, 2020 Delta Aquariids August 12, 2020 Perseids October 7, 2020 Draconids October 21, 2020 Orionids November 4-5, 2020 South Taurids November 11-12, 2020 North Taurids November 17, 2020 Leonids December 13-14, 2020 Geminids December 22, 2020 Ursids This one was Quadrantids/January past year, where I was trying to catch a falling star  so I used the series to make a startrail image.  The streaks or lines are airplanes or satellites.
3452
« on: January 06, 2020, 10:30 »
Not sure if it is an error, glstock link in right leads to wikipedia "link rot" definition.
Direct visiting apears that glstock is still active or at least up.
You are sharp!  https://glstock.com/ is the right link code here is: https://www.microstockgroup.com/link/go.php?url=www.glstock.com which I don't know why it wouldn't work? About MSG - Still shows this 1010 Guests, 25 Users (1 Hidden) but everything up to speed. Are the 1010 guests some spam software trying to pound into the forum, or are there actually 1010 people looking at the forum, not logged in. Seems high?
3453
« on: January 06, 2020, 10:23 »
The rejections on shutterstock are ridicolous sometimes, but you will have to live with the decision without getting too angry...
I even tried to discuss decisions twice but it did not help at all.
With shutterstock I have the feeling they often (not always) only accept pics with the focus in the middle of the photo. So when I take a pic of a subject which fills the whole space and the main focus (like a head) is in the upper third of that pic it gets rejected as "the main subject is not in Focus".
Have to live with that.....
Right and what I've seen is they don't mind backgrounds being soft, if the center subject is sharp, as much as soft front focus, which normally in photos is fine. Not saying never, but in general, soft in front, gets rejected far more often than soft behind. Ha Ha, writing and asking for specifics? What planet are you from?  Unless the new advocates are actually able to return more than some boilerplate, stock answers, from the blogs and guides? The chances of getting a specific answer or help is pretty slim. One thing you can do, is post on the SS forum in the critique section and let fellow artists try to see what might have been a problem, which maybe you have overlooked yourself? https://forums.submit.shutterstock.com/gallery/Or host a full size image and post a question here? You can always delete that after you get help and comments.
3454
« on: January 05, 2020, 08:03 »
Same here, again, no loading or extra slow.
First time noticed over 1000 Guests?
TLS Handshake for 20-30 seconds then  for 20-30 seconds. Good observation = 727 Guests, 13 Users (1 Hidden) Most Online Today: 888. Most Online Ever: 5598 (December 27, 2019, 02:07)
3455
« on: January 05, 2020, 07:52 »
Years ago before he went private I usually noticed Yuri always maximized his keywords to 50 in still images. I tried to do the same for years. But, now-a-days I have tried to limit the number of keywords I use to 25 to make them more exact.
Besides keywords, I do make sure I use as much of the title and description characters as possible. I've found up to 64 characters when they like a title and up to 200 characters for description seems to work best for the sites I submit to, although some have more or less space. I usually split up the description into 2 sentences.
When I looked up an isolated tomato on Yuri's new site the number of keywords for one isolated tomato was 18. So, maybe they have found that less is better?
Which sites still read title? Because Adobe reads that as the description I've started to remove that data. Maybe I shouldn't do that?
Right descriptions can be just as important for searches, especially the part that search engines pick up.
Shooting yourself in the foot my man ... the title is the meta title.
Edit: I stand corrected. This contributor simply used the document title to spam some keywords and the online meta title is indeed the photo description.
Edit, Edit: nvm. They're both the same on this particular image. Where's Mat?
What I meant was, and I can understand how the question and answer could be confusing Most agencies read the IPTC Data Caption field: Description, and use that for the image Description. Title seems to be ignored. BUT... if there's a title, and I upload to AS, that gets read, instead of the longer description field, which is ignored. AS uses the Title field for Title.  This just shows what Lightroom or Irfanview call the same fields. Note Document Title is not description! So I've changed to deleting the "Title" field from images, so the "Description" field will be entered at Adobe. Description is read on SS, IS, DT, Alamy and everywhere else that I know, only Adobe reads Title and ignores Description. I suppose I could paste the same data into both fields and there I am? But the point is, they are two different fields of data.  I hope that made things easier, but I'm never sure as the agencies have their ways of making "standards" more difficult sometimes. And if I didn't answer you, yes, Descriptions are very important as that data can be read by search engines, which could lead to having an image be found and purchased, from offsite, when someone isn't looking on a specific agency. Back to the question: Do any agencies read BOTH Title and Description and use that data? It's been some time and since I only upload to SS, AS and Alamy, I may have missed someplace like IS that could be importing both? ps to make things more complicated, if the Headline field is filled, SS reads that, instead of Title or Description  And last of all, here's the agreed standard: (which may be old now)  Have fun: https://iptc.org/standards/photo-metadata/
3456
« on: January 05, 2020, 07:22 »
Any time I see people discussing this scummy operation I feel compelled to remind everyone that they started out by stealing illustrations and offering them for free, including dozens of my illustrations, which they gave away for years. Theyre common thieves who for some reason are still allowed to be SS affiliates despite the fact that I reported them to SS for their thefts.
Good reminder. We must fight against them and inform people who could be tempted to subscribe to compensate the loss elsewhere. They DO NOT respect the authors but the money they make quickly by killing the market.
Yes, and there are too many sites like this, that desperate people will upload to.
3457
« on: January 03, 2020, 10:39 »
If it's just a tomato on a white background, then you'll have hard time finding more than 30 relevant keywords.
30!!!
Somebody mentioned 30 as the sweet spot, that's why I took that number
Let's try!
tomato, isolated, vegetable, berry, stem, ripe, juicy, red, green, white, food, ingredient, raw, healthy, health, edible, diet, nutritious, nutrition, fresh, organic, natural, produce, background, photo, no shadow, single
27 tags, although I admit I'm really pushing it.
No normal person searches for a red tomato isolated, using half those words, but of course I'd probably have most of them myself. We're like a bunch of superstitious pigeons getting random rewards and we don't know why. I mean, does anyone search for ripe, juicy, food, ingredient, edible, nutritious, nutrition, produce, or do they look for Tomato Isolated On White? With red or green or sliced or some modifier.
Be honest?
If you were looking for a sliced red tomato isolated on white, what would you type into the search? Hmmm? Most of the words we add are grasping for straws and maybe someone will see us, because, we added some obscure word, that no one searches for?
And you left off No one, copy space, neutral space, isolated on white, Solanum lycopersicum, nightshade,
I give all my photos 50 keywords. You never know what search word is going to bring a buyer to your photo.
Dreamstime is the only site that I know of that tells you what a person was searching for when they purchased your photo. That has been extremely helpful in knowing which words are most commonly searched for with specific photos that I take.
You don't want 50 words on Adobe. If you watched the video or read the advice here, you only want 49 at most. I still don't know why people are so obsessed with having more words. If you read the words used on DT, that should teach you something about what words are actually used and how much time you are wasting adding irrelevant or useless words. SS tells words used too (sometimes?)  and Alamy has some interesting information on searches. Alamy Measures: https://www.alamy.com/Alamysearchhistory/contributorsearch.aspxSo you can add two more sites that you know now? 50 words is probably too many, most of the time. How many of the 50 words are actually something important or describing the image, for a potential download? Useless words can hurt the search and rank of your images, while good words that are actually used for images found and sold, will improve your image rank.
3458
« on: January 03, 2020, 10:20 »
I just came on a site that is new to me. Freepik. Are they part of or a sub of Shutterstock ? When you go to their site Shutterstock comes up in their rate packages.
Affiliate site, they promote for referrals, mostly illustrations, I don't see any Editorial, and when I search for different images that I know are photos, with specific words, nothing is found. Not a part of SS, and affiliate site on their own. https://www.shutterstock.com/explore/affiliatesAlso API marketing site, "partners". https://developers.shutterstock.com/partners
3459
« on: January 03, 2020, 10:12 »
So any new sites that could be worth a try?
No
3460
« on: January 02, 2020, 16:56 »
Site was slow or even not loadin while Christmas season, thought it was due to many visitors or something.
Still seeing an error while loading page but minor flaw, never really bothered me,
thought that I had to have a bitcoin "wallet" or something to eliminate the "error"
I've been seeing that message for at least four months. When I had slower internet, the loading was so slow, I could see all kinds of things, that are gone now. I mean like watching a page load somewhere and seeing all the Google, Amazon, and other sites that are being fed data from places. By the way, ever since Sue asked and thinks got back to normal, I haven't had a slow day again, but there were a few where the whole site just sat and spun. All good now.
3461
« on: January 02, 2020, 16:25 »
MicrostockGroup is great but many of us have basically given up on microstock and are looking for other ways to sell photos.
Especially people who dropped Shutterstock, the top earning site, that would mean, moving on to something else for sure. As mentioned: http://takingstock.proboards.com/ has the potential for the questions you asked, if more people would join and participate, ask questions and contribute. And in case you wanted someplace where some of the foolishness is discouraged: forum handles must be either your Full Name or Trading Name
3462
« on: January 02, 2020, 15:56 »
The poll to the right is not as detailed as it once was. I see numbers on the highest 6 sites. I get that the lower ones preform worse now than they did a few years ago, but they could still have a numbers? And the ones without a number, does the order of them really corresponds to the earnings?
Yes the order corresponds to the earnings, must have 50 votes to show in the pool results. Good time for me to do a year end review, even though it's year beginning? Good that you reminded me. Hover over and agency name and it shows how many votes and the rating. Self hosted gets 4 votes 12.5 rating and is more than all the sites below that. I think there's a message about the state and earnings of the rest of those sites, as most people, asked about self hosting, say it's really not very good. Then what's the opinion of sites below that?  Problem with Alamy, if someone wants to call that a problem, is this, I make $100 one month and nothing the next, maybe $60 the next, nothing, then $100 the next. So if the poll shows $50 a month, that could be true, because others also get the up and down variations. Depending on what kinds of images you have, Alamy can be good or nothing. Bigstock, just for an example, 37 votes, 1.1 that's $5 a month. Formerly one of the better sites. GLstock 0 for 9 people, it's for sale. Canstock 36 votes, 1.7 or averaging $8.50 a month. If $10 a month is going to change your life, look at everything below PhotoCase with only 3 people voting, so small sample. What I mean is, the numbers are probably more valid if more people are members and voting, than if only 2 or 3 people take the poll. Might be a beginning of the month error involved? But I thought that the votes didn't reset that fast? Site Earnings Rating Shutterstock 73.7 AdobeStock 50.5 iStock 23.9 IS exclusive 64.3 Pond5 14 Alamy 10.7 123RF 6.4 Dreamstime 4.6 ClipartOf 500 GettyImages 69.3 EyeEm 20.4 Self-Hosted 12.5 Canva 11.9 Envato 9.9 500px 7.2 DepositPhotos 6.1 PhotoCase 4.7 Dissolve 2.7 Zoonar 2.2 Indivstock 2 SignElements 2 VectorStock 1.8 Canstockphoto 1.7 ColourBox 1.5 FeaturePics 1.3 Bigstockphoto 1.1 Stocksy 1 Pixta .7 MostPhotos .6 PantherMedia .6 PicFair .3 all the rest are 0
3463
« on: January 01, 2020, 20:08 »
So any new sites that could be worth a try? I have been living under a rock so dont know much whats happend
Take a look at the poll results on the right. It tells the tale quite well.
Yes, it's that simple, the top four.
3464
« on: January 01, 2020, 13:52 »
Years ago before he went private I usually noticed Yuri always maximized his keywords to 50 in still images. I tried to do the same for years. But, now-a-days I have tried to limit the number of keywords I use to 25 to make them more exact.
Besides keywords, I do make sure I use as much of the title and description characters as possible. I've found up to 64 characters when they like a title and up to 200 characters for description seems to work best for the sites I submit to, although some have more or less space. I usually split up the description into 2 sentences.
When I looked up an isolated tomato on Yuri's new site the number of keywords for one isolated tomato was 18. So, maybe they have found that less is better?
Which sites still read title? Because Adobe reads that as the description I've started to remove that data. Maybe I shouldn't do that? Right descriptions can be just as important for searches, especially the part that search engines pick up.
3465
« on: December 31, 2019, 17:16 »
I understand that, but an employer or client is something different. Unless there's nothing for me to gain, I'm not a fan of burning bridges definitively. Sometimes an agency can turn 180 degrees (Fotolia for instance).
Oh sure like DT, DP, BS, GL, 123RF, CS, Panther, and a dozen more that aren't worth the electrons people waste, uploading to them? Sure, I'm waiting for "the next big thing", you know the one that disrupts the industry. Right, but I'm not holding my breath and not at all confident that when that next ting comes along, it won't be Canva, Evanto, Pond5, or one of the others, that make a big splash, look promising and fall in line behind the rest of the low returns for loads of high effort. So you are basing your sticking with many crappy sites, with Adobe buying FT. Sure we can't predict, but what site is left, that anyone actually would want to buy? Getty is done raiding the market, Adobe has theirs, apparently Google and FB don't want a site or they would have had something years ago. Your job is predict the next big thing. Good luck
3466
« on: December 31, 2019, 07:04 »
I haven't made a graph, but I quess it would look similar.
Relative to SS sales, my AS sales have always been lower than in the poll here at MSG. Normally AS gives me about half of SS. But the last two months, is has been less than 1/4.
The graphic comes from Adobe, it's a screen shot. https://contributor.stock.adobe.com/en/insights/sales-earnings
3467
« on: December 31, 2019, 07:02 »
You never know! Right so we put in numerous silly, semi-related, or unnecessary words, in an attempt to trick the Gods of the search and get a download. 50 words is always too many, considering that 49 is the useful limit on Adobe. How many is right? It's not a number, the answer is: Every word that directly describes the image or the concepts displayed within the image. No More
3468
« on: December 31, 2019, 06:53 »
 Close enough and in an hour it will be New Years in Australia, 7 minutes to New Years in Kamchatka.
3469
« on: December 31, 2019, 06:45 »
If it's just a tomato on a white background, then you'll have hard time finding more than 30 relevant keywords.
30!!!
Somebody mentioned 30 as the sweet spot, that's why I took that number
Let's try!
tomato, isolated, vegetable, berry, stem, ripe, juicy, red, green, white, food, ingredient, raw, healthy, health, edible, diet, nutritious, nutrition, fresh, organic, natural, produce, background, photo, no shadow, single
27 tags, although I admit I'm really pushing it.
No normal person searches for a red tomato isolated, using half those words, but of course I'd probably have most of them myself. We're like a bunch of superstitious pigeons getting random rewards and we don't know why. I mean, does anyone search for ripe, juicy, food, ingredient, edible, nutritious, nutrition, produce, or do they look for Tomato Isolated On White? With red or green or sliced or some modifier. Be honest? If you were looking for a sliced red tomato isolated on white, what would you type into the search? Hmmm? Most of the words we add are grasping for straws and maybe someone will see us, because, we added some obscure word, that no one searches for? And you left off No one, copy space, neutral space, isolated on white, Solanum lycopersicum, nightshade,
3470
« on: December 31, 2019, 06:31 »
Similar, the month ended Dec. 23rd. Not totally unexpected, the holidays are placed Mid-week, which makes for much less business days. Jan 5th, should we get a boom as places catch up on what they've been neglecting?
3471
« on: December 31, 2019, 06:15 »
134 dl. 28 cents RPD
Looks like you are working too hard for not enough respect or reward. RPD Dec SS $1.12 Dec AS $1.50 Dec cleared AL $62.50 - but only one DL Dead to me sites: IS Oct .21 DT 0 P5 0
3472
« on: December 31, 2019, 05:39 »
Good blog, but this part bafffled me:
Im really trying hard to justify why I keep uploading to iStock when they provide, by far, one of the lowest Returns Per Download for the majors, at around 0.45 cents and non-exclusive commissions are at a pathetic 15%.
However, Ill keep uploading to them because $100 a month is better than $0 but I cant say that I feel good about it.
Uploading to one of the worst offenders in microstock for a mere $100 "because it's better than $0?"? That's flawed logic. You're saying you have a hard time justifying it.
I would understand it if you keep your portfolio online, but uploading new content to a greedy agency is exactly the reason why they're able to stay afloat.
Is not uploading but leaving things on IS for my $50-$100 a year also flawed? Some days I think so, and wonder about just closing. Others I feel that for the effort, I'll take some "free money". Can't decide, so I keep reviewing the situation and thinking, maybe I should just close out and stop helping them. But then I say, what's the harm... OK you get the idea, undecided, flip flop, can't make up my mind.
someone downloads a sailboat image EL in the last days
Add different customs and traditions worldwide to the equation: A sailboat can actually fit for Christmas in some occasions or if manipulatung the downloaded image.
https://www.google.com/search?q=traditional+greek+christmas+boat
Always interesting, world customs and traditions. It was The Santa Maria, Columbus' ship basically B&W art drawing.
3473
« on: December 30, 2019, 21:46 »
Sometimes i'm surprised how much different people's experience can be regarding tendencies between different agencies, and different times.
For example i've seen that October was the worst month for you. For me it was clearly the best month of the year, actually an all time BME (uploading Stock since 2006)
Very true, we aren't all the same and all agencies are not all the same for everyone. There's a bit of needs and chance involved, what buyer needs what, but then there's always the time of year relationship to what kind of images. I'm not getting rich, but I have some Holiday images and they do get downloads, while somebody with none will be more likely to get less. Really weak December on SS and what happens, someone downloads a sailboat image EL in the last days. Last July I sold a snow storm and a Christmas illustration. Not that they get big sales, but just pointing out, sometimes, downloads make no logical sense and aren't tied to the season or the agency, but just who needs something and when.
3474
« on: December 30, 2019, 13:05 »
They are selling our products too cheap.
In that case don't use them to sell your products and if you have a portfolio with them delete it.
There you go again, too easy and correct. No fun... What if I want to belong to some crap agency that has lousy sales, low prices, low commissions and seems slippery besides. Then what? 
3475
« on: December 30, 2019, 12:57 »
IMHO its bad idea. Did you notice that BTC and ETH dropped significantly in their value over last 3-4 months ... and it may go down even more...
Maybe a look at the crypto currency market would be a way for anyone to see how it's not so great? https://coinmarketcap.com/If you bought Etherium last January, it was around .03 BTC, now it's at .017 BTC, that's not even close to those who bought during the boom, when everything was easily triple. I think the crypto coins need to be sorted out and stable, before they will be useful in any trading other than speculation. With that, I wouldn't want to be paid at one rate and the next day, my earnings dropped 10%, just because of the market. Of course if they go up, we'd all celebrate the extra money. There are transaction fees for coin transactions. At least with Paypal, anyone knows in advance that there are fees and what they are. Easy for me, I pay no Paypal fees for getting my money, spending it or depositing it into my bank account. I'm guessing the sting for others is the conversion rates?
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