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Messages - stockastic

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351
Print on Demand Forum / Re: Ashley Art Studio selling on Amazon
« on: December 19, 2016, 12:56 »
The whole idea of licensing something as 'stock' and reselling it as 'art' is just plain wrong.  I don't care if it's legal.  It's wrong.  Deceptive, misleading, unethical, and just plain shabby.
Just one more thing to check out when choosing agencies, then.

Would this even be in the TOS, in any clear explicit way?  Or would you need to be a lawyer just to figure out that it's allowed?

352
Print on Demand Forum / Re: Ashley Art Studio selling on Amazon
« on: December 19, 2016, 11:56 »
The whole idea of licensing something as 'stock' and reselling it as 'art' is just plain wrong.  I don't care if it's legal.  It's wrong.  Deceptive, misleading, unethical, and shabby.

353
Print on Demand Forum / Re: Ashley Art Studio selling on Amazon
« on: December 18, 2016, 17:35 »
This is the stuff that really gags me, and makes me think it's about time for me to pull out of microstock completely.  Unless maybe there's an agency that won't sell my work with this kind of license?

354
I had over 3,000 photos approved in my portfolio and today and sold a few during the year and last night every last one was declined.  I wrote support and got this answer.

"Although your images were good and approved and sold, our new team felt they were not suitable for consumers today"

I don't have any of the 3,000 images anymore--I do have about two months left on my paid subscription which I will cancel very soon.  All this work gone down the drain.

Well photographers---Stay clear!!!

That's astounding.  Imagine spending the time uploading 3000 photos, actually seeing some sales, then being dropped without even an explanation.    I hope the "new team" gets the message that I'm not having anything to do with their company. 

355
I don't think 500px has decided, yet, what they want to be.  And maybe they never will, but will just keep muddling along, cutting commissions and adding restrictions, until they fold up.  Who knows at this point.  Until they announce some new direction that makes sense, I'm not going to spend the time uploading and organizing.   

356
Shutterstock.com / Re: The Shutterstock website is a disaster area
« on: December 06, 2016, 11:43 »
It's been - I forget - 2 years since they went public?   A lot of people have probably left in that time.  After an IPO the pressure to deliver short-term profits just builds and builds.  The people who stick around tend to be the ones with nice fat stock options; middle and lower level people burn out.  They've probably lost all continuity in their IT group and the newer guys don't have the deep knowledge of the site code and infrastructure that would let them avoid, or quickly repair, these sorts of problems.

357
General Stock Discussion / Re: Strange Email about My Image
« on: December 01, 2016, 20:15 »
They wouldn't use a hotmail email and have an error with their English if they were legitimate.  Scammers use hotmail and usually make mistakes with their English. 

[OT] Sadly, plenty of genuine emails from well-known companies contain grammatical/spelling errors / typos. Including, but not limited to, superfluous or missing apostrophes.

That's probably true, but at least they'd be written by a native English speaker.

The number 1 tipoff that an email is a scam is that there's nothing in it that specifically references you, or the image in question. It's a mass mailing.

Angela: just get up and walk away from this. Read what steheap posted, above.   It's just a dumb scam that goes nowhere.  You have absolutely nothing to worry about.

358
I'm not into video or Dissolve.  But isn't this just another case of the classic microstock problem: things inevitably get to the point where the agency is making good money, but the individual contributor can't?   Best case for the agency is to have every contributor in the world giving them just their best stuff.  And each of those contributors then makes diddly.   

In any business, there has to be a way for the suppliers to make money too, or they give up.  If Dissolve can't review all this material, wouldn't it have made sense to be more selective in approving contributors?  Then the ones who made the cut might be able to make enough for it to be worthwhile.   And they'd be less likely to post the same stuff on 10 other sites, further driving down prices.


359
General Stock Discussion / Re: Strange Email about My Image
« on: November 29, 2016, 15:02 »
I'd say forget about it.  It isn't even in correct English, and it's also 100% generic, not specific to you or your image.   Just another idiotic scammer.

360
General Stock Discussion / Re: Microstocker Burnout Syndrom
« on: November 27, 2016, 13:45 »
Through the 80s, 90s and 00s, I watched my software work being increasingly transferred to Indian companies bidding 1/3 the price.  They had the educational system, were getting the connectivity, and the cost of living was a fraction of ours.  I didn't resent those guys, it was just their turn and they deserved the opportunity.   Eventually things started to level out as their wage demands went up and some of their shortcomings became evident; but that took years.  Same thing will happen to stock photography.   

There are other trends harder to overcome: oversupply and coverage saturation.   

But the biggest obstacle is the distortion of the market by a handful of middlemen who control the market, competing only on price and paying token commissions.   Software developers can form new companies, or go independent, and have ways of reaching potential customers.   Photographers currently don't have those options.

361
General Stock Discussion / Re: Microstocker Burnout Syndrom
« on: November 27, 2016, 12:50 »
I am a noob and i am trying to get into stock and I dont understand what its happening. I see people complain about revenue and that they stopped producing years ago and my question is why are they still here wasting time on this forums ? I dont mean to be rude but something does not sound right to me :)....

I still have photos on sale at a couple of agencies, so I watch developments.  You never stop hoping for a miracle, some new agency that does things really different but actually makes some sales.  It's not likely anytime soon.  Many former posters here are gone.   There's also discussion here about POD sites and I'm active in that.

Really, the OP's question was about burnout, right? So, I'm a burnout and gave my response.

362
General Stock Discussion / Re: Microstocker Burnout Syndrom
« on: November 27, 2016, 12:04 »
I quit shooting micro over a year ago, because of declining returns, but also because the future - subs, 'packages', giveaways - was obvious.  No offense guys, but in my math, 33 cents never adds up to anything.    Let's not even talk about 2.

Obviously there are people who would do this for nothing, at least for some period in their lives; and I think they'll get the chance. 



363
Working with raw files and a wider gamut, you'll see color problems (banding, saturation) that you wouldn't otherwise see; you're making your photos as good as they can be today,  even if they aren't seen that way online and won't be for years.  And it matters more for prints.

364
Total waste of time IMHO.   

365
New Sites - General / Re: What do 500px actually sell?
« on: November 23, 2016, 11:47 »
[dup]

366
New Sites - General / Re: What do 500px actually sell?
« on: November 23, 2016, 11:47 »
The first step in the new plan was to cut the photographer's share by half.  And I guess step #2 hasn't been determined yet.

I closed my account as soon as this guy showed up, and forgot all about 500px.   If they ever decide what they're trying to be, I might look again.

367
He may be a crook, but I give him points for the totally cool handle "BlueBambooN".   Wait, he probably stole that too.

368
General Stock Discussion / Re: GL Email to change Password
« on: November 14, 2016, 15:52 »
"We are not interested in this image. Thank you for submitting"
Wow.  Talk about tone deaf.   

369
Print on Demand Forum / Re: Do Likes on FAA help sales?
« on: November 13, 2016, 11:42 »
The short answer is, we don't know and we never will.  When this question comes up on the FAA forum, an admin will paste in a stock reply about how there are 25 factors that affect search placement, and I think 'likes' is one of them; but no weighting is given.  I suspect that 'likes' are probably insignificant and the only factor that really matters is your previous sales history.  But who knows.

370
Alamy.com / Re: 2986 View but No Sales
« on: November 12, 2016, 16:49 »

Quote
Many say that for every 1000 files you get one sale?
Per day? Per month? Per year?
Many?
Someone posted on the October sales thread that they'd got a sale with a port of <50. It's just if you happen to have what a buyer needs. Generally different buyers from micro. My best selling genre on iS doesn't sell at all (for me) on Alamy (different images, obviously), which is a great pity.

The consensus on the Alamy forums is that, on average, people there get one sale per month per 1000 images. Some do better, some do worse. Just like comparing yourself to the averages in the poll here. I average more than one sale per month per 1000 images. Sorry I wasn't clear before.

Surprisingly, sales from my small portfolio are in rough agreement with that figure.   And I had to stop and reflect on this for a minute because producing 1,000 quality stock photos is a huge amount of work - unless they're dead simple, no-brainer shots.  And the return you can expect on that work is pitiful, even from an honest agency like Alamy. 

371
General Stock Discussion / Re: GL Email to change Password
« on: November 11, 2016, 15:17 »
Uploading?  You guys are actually getting sales there?

I haven't had one in months.

372
Print on Demand Forum / Re: POD strategy: how and where to sell?
« on: November 10, 2016, 22:32 »
It's not just you.  I think everyone who's every tried Zazzle has conclude the same thing: it's just a huge waste of time. And Society6 is just as bad.  I get the impression that if you're in any sense a 'pro', with hundreds of good photos, these sites don't want you.   


373
They've poisoned the well as far as I'm concerned.  They've sown salt in the fields.  Bottom line, they've devalued this sort of imagery in the market, to the point that it's no longer worth doing. And that can't be easily undone.

374
Print on Demand Forum / Re: POD strategy: how and where to sell?
« on: November 10, 2016, 15:03 »
I emailed ArtOfWhere about my need for non-standard formats (including square), matting and framing.  I got a brief reply, basically what I expected: they have no immediate plans to get into that, but might in the future.

I suggest others email them too, if you're interested in these things, and maybe we create the impression of demand.

375
General Stock Discussion / ISO simple license agreement for print
« on: November 10, 2016, 10:56 »
An art consultant wants to do a print of one of my photos for a client - just one copy.   Does anyone know of a simple licensing agreement I could download and use?

I'm not worried about this consultant, they're a small local company and I'm dealing with a single person.  They say they don't have a standard agreement and normally the artist provides it. 

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