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Messages - Minsc
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351
« on: November 27, 2016, 15:51 »
I've been doing this for 2 years now and it's normal to have some burn out every now and then. I haven't been discouraged, just pushed myself too hard and needing a break to get my senses together. I keep a long list of ideas and I'm constantly trying to go through it, but everywhere I go, everything I see gives me ideas. It's uphill battle to clear my plate.
The only time I really burned out was doing something else; making a game. That took me about 8 months and 1000 hours. Burned out multiple times. After going through that craziness, microstock is a walk in the park by comparison.
352
« on: November 26, 2016, 00:14 »
Looks like SS took down all most of the spammers. I was following a few portfolios with high ranking images that had spammy titles. They're no longer showing up on search results and their portfolios are gone from the site.
I think many contributors will see a small sales bump next week.
353
« on: November 24, 2016, 18:18 »
I understand their dilemma and why they hesitated.
What dilemma?
Because SS could lose sales / revenue. In some cases, the images at are the top because it actually does have commercial value, not solely due to its spammy title. They could see possibly millions of less images in the SS portfolio. I know some people want to see the ban hammer get slammed down hard, but SS allowed this to happen. People take advantage of systems all the time and people took advantage of what SS gave them. Allowing them to change the titles or get banned is a good alternative.
354
« on: November 24, 2016, 16:28 »
This is very good news. I understand their dilemma and why they hesitated. I'm glad they're following through and taking out the worst offenders. I still see a few offenders, so let's see if they comply. If they're smart, they bretter.
Law-abiding contributors should see a bump in sales in the upcoming weeks.
355
« on: November 23, 2016, 12:53 »
They're probably testing a regional algorithm test, like they also do. My new images are selling well, but I'm not sure if that's a good thing. They could be changing the algorithm to favor new images, which could hurt sales in the long run for everyone.
I've seen this kind of change on another site and it benefited more people, where newly uploaded images get higher rankings, but gets replaced by the next wave of newly upload images, and so on.
357
« on: November 22, 2016, 15:02 »
I can't tell what has changed.
I notice a dip in sales, but I'm not sure if this is related to the possible search engine change or people not working very hard today due to the holidays.
We may not know for sure until next week.
358
« on: November 01, 2016, 20:49 »
BME when it comes to download numbers, but lower than last month when it comes to revenue.
359
« on: November 01, 2016, 20:44 »
Actually, you have to fill out a DMCA takedown notice at this link, as customer support informed me: https://adobe.allegiancetech.com/cgi-bin/qwebcorporate.dll?idx=2D2U6A
...for anyone who needs to do this in the future. The port in question seems to be made up almost entirely of images downloaded from SS, tweaked slightly and uploaded to FT. I recognize very close copies of thousands of best-sellers from SS. But you can only report infringement of your own images.
Can you share this port with us please?
I think it's better if she doesn't. Shelma1 has been an active poster and she is not that anonymous compared to other members.
360
« on: October 31, 2016, 21:27 »
I thought it may have been the emojis. Those things are tricky, especially the yellow ones. They're all so similar that they're pretty much copies of each others designs and they can easily be mistaken for copyright infringement. I would avoid it, since this is something stock websites don't want to deal with. Here is some interesting reading. Some smileys..which are basically emojis, are trademarked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smiley
361
« on: October 26, 2016, 01:27 »
And this is why I will never defend Getty in any situation. They are predatory and completely unethical. If the company goes bankrupt, I doubt many will shed a tear.
362
« on: October 21, 2016, 13:04 »
It's kinda of working, but it's spotty. I don't expect many sales for the rest of the day if this continues. There is a massive DDOS attack on a DNS provider. A lot of major sites are down because of it.
363
« on: October 18, 2016, 16:30 »
Your photos needs to have more commercial value. There are tens of thousands of contributors submitting photos from their hikes and they just don't sell well in general. When you do your compositions, think about where your buyer would put the text...there's always text. If that is no room for it, your photos will get looked over.
364
« on: October 18, 2016, 16:26 »
It's doing well. Sales are just slightly behind September's BME pace, but overall a very good month so far.
365
« on: October 17, 2016, 19:03 »
My problem is if they don't get reviewed in a day or two they just sit there stuck and when I told support they told me to delete and resubmit.....is it just me?
I uploaded a batch of photos and all were reviewed except one. I deleted that one photo and resubmited it, and it still sits there for about 2 weeks now. I guess I'll just have to resubmit it again.
Same thing happening to 3 of my images. Looks like I have to contact support.
366
« on: October 13, 2016, 01:13 »
A good portion of the submissions has an expiration date of some sort. Technology, a category I focus in is always at risk of expiring. Today a FitBit, next year something else. Tech devices are especially at risk because they expire every few couple years. Fashion as well.
I try to keep my portfolio mixed. Keep my style modern whenever I can and try to keep it timeless. Design styles are especially vulnerable to change. 4 years ago, shiny and skeuomorphism was all the rage in design. Today it's simple and flat.
I have work that is meant to expire. But it's good to catch the trends when you can because 6 months of heavy sales are well worth the effort. I would say about 10% of my portfolio has an expiration date, and I knew that when I uploaded it. Certain types of imagery doesn't expire though. A well-framed Christmas dinner is useful every year.
367
« on: October 11, 2016, 13:16 »
Well, you contradict yourself, by admitting that people have raised this theory before me. If they did that, they had certain grounds for that, be it a math (graph) or just pure intuition based on anything else. So I'm not the only one on here. However, again, I'm not counting how many people are in each camp, just to be clear.
What if my titles and keywords, being indeed important, are already exceptional and of high quality? I spend similar time to keyword my assets as to develop them from RAW knowing this, and still the underlying issue of my OP remains there? Your solution to success doesn't appear to be valid. (By the way, the quality of my keywording wasn't that good during the first 6 months, and still my material enjoyed a greater success, nothing like afterwards, with better quality of assets including better and richer metadata. Just in a span of 1.5 years time. Try figure that out.).
People repeating the same thing over and over again doesn't make it true. The flat Earth theory worked wonders for centuries until someone proved it was spherical. I guess the only way to disprove the 6 month grace period theory is with a chart. This is my SS earnings chart for the last 20 months. The only dip was December, which is the slowest month of the year.
368
« on: October 10, 2016, 16:29 »
I don't know how anyone can claim something as a fact when it isn't. It's a fact that your sales hasn't grown, but it's not a fact for others.
This isn't the first or second time someone claim there is a conspiracy going on. None of the conspiracy theories had any ounce of truth based on my experience with SS. I've seen consistent growth in the last 2 years, with a sales drop around December and picks back up in January. There is no grace period and there is no favoritism of new content.
You can't just upload and expect sales anymore. It's like every website expect to be ranked in the first page of Google Search for a particular keyword when there are 1 billion websites on the internet. Your titles and keywords are more important than ever when there are so many images on SS. I said this almost 2 years ago and it's even truer today. You must have exceptional metadata to have it discoverable.
369
« on: October 08, 2016, 17:17 »
From my experience, I don't see any grace period. I've anticipated it after 6 months, but nothing changed. I've been at SS for close to 2 years now and sales hasn't decreased. Not every image is going to sell and images that do sell need to gain momentum quickly or they will start falling down the search results.
Every portfolio is different obviously. I know you're not ready to share your portfolio, but it was easily found on Google, so you might as well share it. You have a lot of travel photography, which is one of the most difficult segments to compete in.
370
« on: October 08, 2016, 17:05 »
Its when you do the search, click on the image, click on "view image," then hit the + symbol that you see the full size image. The website is not displaying it like this so why is google images? This makes super easy fast access to this size of imagery (just a few clicks) without visiting the website (where they can't even get that size anyway). This is, I believe, what people are talking about.
Jayne, but who is watching Google to make sure they don't cross lines from search engine to something more? Increasing usability could mean, as in this case, disregarding the protection of copyright.
I don't like Getty either and think they are hypocrites. I think Google has no right to show images larger than they appear on the websites.
Getty provides all the images that Google are displaying. If you have worked with HTML, you'd know that you can display a high resolution image in a small space, but it's still a high resolution image. Or you can make an image display at 200%, but that doesn't make it a high res image. Getty provides everything. Google isn't going behind a paywall and displaying those images.
Getty can choose to provide which images Google can index and they haven't done anything to prevent Google from indexing their images in different resolutions. They want Google to index it. Getty has been really vague on the details on purpose, because they know they can't win the PR battle if everyone knew the details.
Getty is as close to an 'evil' company as you can get. They're predatory and they intentionally harm people in the name of profit. If they really care about the livelihood of contributors, they would stop ****ing them over.
We all know how bad Getty and their practices are. Now slowly people are realizing the same about Google. The European Union has already charged Google for the third time for antitrust charges. Germany is going very strong for this kind of abusive practices that Google Facebook Microsoft are doing over and over favouring piracy tax evasion privacy intromision etc.
All this shity corporation are slowly being cornered and hope they will be cut in pieces. Their dominancy of the market are bad for everybody for many of the reasons they are being chased now by authorities. I have no problem if they want to index my images as long as they do it with a small image and point to the source be it my agency or my page. In the moment they use their same image technology to show the image at their highest resolution without directing to the source they are encouraging piracy. I hope that the court sees that and action is taken.
I personally think it's awful that these companies are barely paying any taxes. There's too many loopholes that these companies take advantage of it and get away with too much. Though I admit that the 30% tax is too high in the US and should be reduced by half given how much risk many of these companies are taking. Market dominance isn't the same as a monopoly though. Every company strives for market dominance and it isn't necessarily a bad thing in many respects. When it comes to some companies, the people choose to use it for its reliability vs not having a choice. EU is investigating for Android, but even without Google incentivizing the eoms, they would still choose to include a Google search bar, unless Yandax or Baidu incentivize them. Apple doesn't want to open source iOS and nobody wants to use Windows or Blackberry phones, which basically gave Android a clear road to dominate the world market. Getty fighting the same unwinnable battle for 4 years is kind of pathetic and sad. I am against copyright infringement. I'm also against a company buying the rights to old obscure images from 20 years ago and then sending threatening letters to unsuspecting people who used it from an old stock photo CD. Everything on the internet is at some kind of risk for infringement. But there are also benefits to having your content on there. People who don't want to pay for something won't and they will find ways to steal it, but there will also be people and companies who will spend money to buy something.
371
« on: October 01, 2016, 22:56 »
Yes, I know how HTML works. Those high resolution images were not indexed as such until 2013. You had to go to the website and then click on the image on the website. If you had read the letters it explains much better than I tried to. Getty does not provide all the images google is displaying (I'm assuming you are talking about stock images). People who have licensed them put them on their websites. These used to only be the thumbnails you see now. However, now when you click on the image in the search, you can make it to the high resolution version without ever visiting the website and seeing copyright information (really, no one is going to pay attention to the tiny disclaimer at the bottom that the image may be copyrighted). This video they put out explains what I was trying to say: http://wherewestand.gettyimages.com/advocacy/?esource=2016_09_21_google_SEG&elqTrackId=862BB4F2CDD0B186A9CCDD8A5839F6F0&elq=20e255f2d6fe4f9880cb2095ef0cba77&elqaid=7512&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=3499
This also hurts the customers of stock images. They lose search traffic to their websites (why visit it when you can already see the image at the size you want?)
Anyway, I'm done trying to explain. Anyone who describes a company "as close to an 'evil' company as you can get" has already made of their mind everything the company does is 'bad.' Most of the stock sites have made at least some decisions that have hurt contributors in favor of their own profits (they are businesses so of course they will do so). Getty has probably made more that others. I agree, Getty has done some predatory actions, such as Shelma1 posted. I don't consider them as close to 'evil' as you can get though. When I think of an 'evil' company I think of Enron. Getty isn't even as bad as Walmart yet as far as hurting suppliers.
Getty can block Google or any search engine from indexing their high resolution watermarked images. So why aren't they doing it? Because they risk the user not caring about their images at all if they can't see it clearly. They can opt out of having them indexed, but they are not opting out. I'm tired of watching Getty's PR garbage. Already saw it 3 times. The reason why they're suing is because of the redesign in 2013, not because of any other reason. Everything else is PR garbage designed to sway the public and desperate contributors in a weak state of mind. Image search engines are not going away...ever. That is something everyone needs to accept. The design of that image search is controlled by all the search engine companies and not by anyone else who doesn't like the design of it. If Getty don't like how that product works, they can opt out...and they can if they want to.
372
« on: October 01, 2016, 20:46 »
Its when you do the search, click on the image, click on "view image," then hit the + symbol that you see the full size image. The website is not displaying it like this so why is google images? This makes super easy fast access to this size of imagery (just a few clicks) without visiting the website (where they can't even get that size anyway). This is, I believe, what people are talking about.
Jayne, but who is watching Google to make sure they don't cross lines from search engine to something more? Increasing usability could mean, as in this case, disregarding the protection of copyright.
I don't like Getty either and think they are hypocrites. I think Google has no right to show images larger than they appear on the websites.
Getty provides all the images that Google are displaying. If you have worked with HTML, you'd know that you can display a high resolution image in a small space, but it's still a high resolution image. Or you can make an image display at 200%, but that doesn't make it a high res image. Getty provides everything. Google isn't going behind a paywall and displaying those images. Getty can choose to provide which images Google can index and they haven't done anything to prevent Google from indexing their images in different resolutions. They want Google to index it. Getty has been really vague on the details on purpose, because they know they can't win the PR battle if everyone knew the details. Getty is as close to an 'evil' company as you can get. They're predatory and they intentionally harm people in the name of profit. If they really care about the livelihood of contributors, they would stop ****ing them over.
373
« on: October 01, 2016, 13:48 »
What they want from Google is to fundamentally change the design of the image search to not show anything more than a tiny thumbnail and force the user to go to the original website to see a high res watermarked image. This will cause a usability nightmare and the chance of it happening is extremely low.
When I do a search for websites all I see in the search results is a short link and brief description of the website. I don't see a huge preview of the page when I click on the link. It takes me straight to the website when I click on the link. This hasn't caused me any usability nightmare. Why should it be different for images? Further, they are currently allowing users to click on an image and see the full resolution image even if the image is only displayed as a small size on the website (Any website, like if someone licenses your image and then puts it onto their website. However, it doesn't take you to the website. They show you the image in their search engine). There was a discussion on these changes when they happened in 2013 here: http://www.microstockgroup.com/general-stock-discussion/google-images-we-are-so-screwed/
Other search engines have implemented these changes as well, but that doesn't make it right. I'm not saying Getty doesn't have selfish reasons, just that I agree that search engines have started to become more than search engines (for example by displaying images at high resolution instead of how they appear on the website).
Because mobile traffic makes up close to 60% of all web searches and most of us are data plans. This number will continue to increase. And since mobile phones have retina displays or 1080p displays, you can't simply show a tiny thumbnail anymore and force the user to go to another website. It must be a decent size resolution picture that doesn't look like crap. And I don't want any search engine to take me to any website that eats up data. If I'm interested in the source, I'll click on the provided link to the source. Shutterstock, FT has seen increased exposure and downloads over the last few years. And I see their images rank very high on all the image searches. Many agencies are benefiting from this. Getty is the only one complaining because the world doesn't want to stand still for the status quo. The search engines are not going to roll back usability or technology for one company.
374
« on: October 01, 2016, 11:47 »
I find this trend across all my microstock sites.
I think it's because Google is scraping the images and allowing people to right-click to take them -- there are other threads about this -- I don't think its just coincidence that those 2 things happened at the same time.
Google, Yahoo and Bing has been doing this since 2012. And outside of Getty, other agency images comes with watermarks. Don't worry about the search engines. Focus on creating content that buyers will buy.
375
« on: September 30, 2016, 16:40 »
Relatively speaking, I had a great month on DT. Getting really close to that $100 payout...only a couple dollars away.
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