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Messages - stockastic
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376
« on: November 09, 2016, 12:24 »
Ok, I retraced my steps and found I'd already created an account there. The answer is, they don't read IPTC - not even title or description. Not only that, you have to chose a 'category' (photography) and 'materials used' (film or digital!), a "style" (from some meaningless buzzwords like "manipulated"). Then pound in title, description and keywords (only 10). Then set your markup (defaults start at $1, no bulk editor). Then go back and hit "Publish", just for one more hoop to jump.
Walking away now.
377
« on: November 09, 2016, 12:08 »
I checked them out in the past and decided it wasn't worth the effort - but I forget why. Should have made notes.
I think you can get a sale anywhere; the real question is, will whatever you get be worth the effort? So many of these sites don't even read IPTC, uploading and keywording hundreds of photos takes forever. They're all pushing t-shirts and hoodies, that does nothing for me. And setting up the products I might actually sell - maybe decorator cushions, or iPad sleeves - can be a lot of diddly work. Some sites look good but are flooded with low-quality stuff, you'll never get seen.
I used to sell an occasional t-shirt on Zazzle, but the markup was so low, it wasn't even worth continuing. I've had stuff on Redbubble for years, but never entered many keywords; I think I've sold 3 greeting cards. I made one single sale on Crated, a few months ago.
Looking at Society6 again, the first things I notice is that it looks weirdly, spookily like Crated; exactly the same sort of art on the main page, as if the same person made the selections. The next thing I notice is that if I l click "framed art" I see a lot of pieces for $30, which is ridiculously low if it includes the frame, these are IKEA prices. What can the artist's markup possibly be?
378
« on: November 08, 2016, 11:26 »
[...] Etsy has a known name and a better looking site. A partnership between Etsy and a POD should be the new opportunity we're looking for. But without framing, and square format, I probably wouldn't sell enough to make the effort worthwhile.
Have a look here: https://www.theprintful.com/custom/wall-art
Plenty of formats available for poster, canvas and framed posters. Frames are quite basic tho.
It uses Shipstation which let you integrate with Etsy, Amazon, Ebay, and other stores
That's getting closer, but still no mat. They don't quite sell fine art, just 'framed posters'. People don't really need a lot of choices for mat color, width, frame material etc - just a basic black metal frame is acceptable to almost anyone. But without a mat it isn't "art" and if it isn't "art" it's only worth a few dollars. I'm sure eventually someone will do what I need.
379
« on: November 07, 2016, 17:18 »
There was a saying in the software business when I was in it: "Projects progress rapidly to 90% complete. They remain there forever." 
380
« on: November 07, 2016, 14:32 »
POD has gone stale, no new players are coming in, the old ones are losing focus. FAA and RedBubble are morphing into Zazzle, they want to sell t-shirts and hoodies to the kids, not fine art photography. And they're flooded with low-quality, repetitious and even stolen material.
Etsy has a known name and a better looking site. A partnership between Etsy and a POD should be the new opportunity we're looking for. But without framing, and square format, I probably wouldn't sell enough to make the effort worthwhile.
381
« on: November 07, 2016, 12:34 »
Maybe Etsy... if there was a nice automated tie-in with a print supplier, that didn't require hand-editing of HTML every time you upload a photo...
These people do something like what you are looking for.
https://artofwhere.com/drop-shipping/etsy
Thanks, I hadn't heard about them and I'm looking at it now. Unfortunately they don't do framing, and they only offer standard print sizes. FAA handles non-standard sizes, including the mat and framing, which is a big plus for them. At least half my FAA sales are framed prints and some are quite large. I also have many non-standard sizes, in fact many of my sales have been square format, which ArtOfWhere doesn't do. At least it's a start; I should put a few photos on Etsy and see what happens. I just emailed AOW and asked about their future plans for wall art.
382
« on: November 07, 2016, 09:46 »
What Lizard said. I've been on the FAA forum for years and the people there who claim big sales either have unique niches or they spend huge amounts of time doing online and email marketing.
I have about 400 on FAA and do absolutely no marketing. I sell one every now and then - sometimes a few in a month, sometimes none - and I assume that's all by keyword search. It's like microstock, you have to have a niche because the common subjects are saturated times 10. And most FAA searches get funneled into their "collections" of best sellers, and there's no way to get into those. The search results can be pretty bad - there's spamming, and search rank is heavily weighted by past sales - it's pretty hard for anything new to get seen. Try a few searches and you might see what I mean.
We could have a long discussion about FAA's good and bad points but the bottom line is that it's not going to change; it's pretty much a one man operation and the owner clearly lacks the interest or ability to improve it. The other sites I've tried - Photo4Me, Redbubble and Crated - haven't produced any sales and I've given up on them for now. I had high hopes for Crated but they seem to have royally fizzled out - something clearly went wrong there.
It's not hopeless - I know I could sell a lot more photos if I could get them in front of buyers. But I have no clue what, if anything, actually works in online marketing today. FB and Twitter don't work anymore, they're saturated. New POD sites haven't gotten any traction.
Maybe Etsy... if there was a nice automated tie-in with a print supplier, that didn't require hand-editing of HTML every time you upload a photo...
383
« on: November 04, 2016, 10:28 »
1. I've tried a few and, for me, they were all a waste of time, except for FAA. And FAA is very far from ideal.
2. If I ever find another site that doesn't seem like a waste, I'll put my stuff on it, as long as I can control pricing so I'm not underselling myself elsewhere.
3. A few of my POD photos also sell as stock - mainly shots of objects which I tried to do in some creative way.
Disclaimer: I do no marketing of my own, so my only chance to sell is via keyword search. And I haven't been trying to sell on 'products' like t-shirts, bags and iPhone cases; maybe that's where the sales are, today. Some of these sites don't read IPTC, which is a deal-breaker for me.
384
« on: November 03, 2016, 14:47 »
WORDS FAIL ME.
GENIUS!
385
« on: October 30, 2016, 13:48 »
Is it possible Getty iStock was having the same problem popping up so they disallowed changing keywords after uploading? SStock better do the same.
You would give up your rights and stop all of us from updating keywords, because of a minority that abuses the function. No way! I like to add new words to old files sometimes, especially when I see words being searched that I don't have in my files. I want to make more by being smart, not be locked in jail because somebody else breaks a rule.
I say block spammer accounts from search and tell them to fix titles and keywords, they will be unblocked. Everything will be fixed fast or they will be gone by their own inaction.
Don't punish me for what some fool does wrong.
I agree. But like I keep saying, their options are pretty severely limited by the size of their archive and the amount of new stuff pouring in. Who is going to find those offenders? Will SS pay people to sit and try endless keyword searches, tagging spammers as they go? Or to search 100 million images one at time? If a spammer gets told to clean up his act, are they going to re-inspect every one of his 10,000 images? And what if he comes back in a week and restores all the spam? SS could conceivably add checks to their search code and maybe filter out spam results. But that's probably not nearly as simple as we think. And it would slow down the search, maybe by a lot - remember, the search starts out with 100 million to look at. Code to check the keywords for repetitions of every included word takes time to run. Yes SS could do any of these things, or solve the problem in another way I'd never think of. My point is just that it would inevitably cost significant money and, apparently, they don't care enough to do it.
386
« on: October 29, 2016, 14:23 »
And why should we have to do their work for them? They set the rules, they sent out a mass email saying it was wrong, they can go through their database and find all the infractions...
Here's the problem: they can't do that. Not with 100 million images - it would be too expensive. Where would they start? What rules would they set up for inspectors? How would they keep track of which images had been checked? How would they stop spammers from restoring the bogus keywords the next day?
They've basically lost control of the quality of their product.
Sure they can, if they want to. As far as spammers restoring bogus keywords or titles...lock the fields on accounts that are found to be in violation of the rules. Please dont tell me these things cant be done...just about any code can be written to do whatever one wants. If you and i can find spammers, certainly they can, whether by paying a person to search or by writing code. You mentioned it would be expensive...i will certainly buy that as reason why they cant be bothered.
It's possible - but prohibitively expensive. You or I do a specific keyword search and maybe find a spammer on page 1. Easy. Now imagine your task is to clean up a database of 100 million images. Try to imagine the steps you'd have to go through, changes and additions to the database that might be required. Sure it's possible, but SS would NEVER spend what it would take to actually do this. Everything they've done in the last year has had the goal of REDUCING costs. That's how they got into this mess - by letting spammers in the door in the first place. What about that guy with 30,000 photos of the same bag of pot? How did that get by those experienced, honest reviewers? I have my theories. Think about it and give me yours.
387
« on: October 29, 2016, 09:50 »
And why should we have to do their work for them? They set the rules, they sent out a mass email saying it was wrong, they can go through their database and find all the infractions...
Here's the problem: they can't do that. Not with 100 million images - it would be too expensive. Where would they start? What rules would they set up for inspectors? How would they keep track of which images had been checked? How would they stop spammers from restoring the bogus keywords the next day? They've basically lost control of the quality of their product.
388
« on: October 28, 2016, 17:15 »
No hit tracking (view counts) on the site, no discussion forum; the content on the main page never changes . The last post on their blog was a year ago. The only sign of activity has been their occasional posts on FB but the last one was September 4.
I made one small sale there, several months ago. I'm getting a little uncomfortable about leaving my work there, if no one is home. Who knows where it might end up if the site suddenly folded.
389
« on: October 27, 2016, 14:50 »
If Trump's hotels were publicly owned, I'd short that stock, big time.
390
« on: October 27, 2016, 13:11 »
Every once in a while I post the question here: has anyone had a sale on Crated.com lately?
From my experience, it's a place where crickets chirp.
391
« on: October 22, 2016, 17:16 »
Another example of a stock photo company that's doing well overall, but which has just too many contributors for it to be worthwhile for many of them.
392
« on: October 17, 2016, 14:15 »
I'm on FAA and there have been numerous threads on this in their forum. The problem is that their preview images aren't correctly tagged with a color space, i.e. sRGB or Adobe. When browsers see an image without a color space tag, they skip color management altogether - meaning that if your system has a display profile, it's ignored. So those of us with calibrated and/or high-gamut displays see colors that are 'off' and oversaturated.
Like many problems on FAA, it never gets fixed or even acknowledged. This one has been there for at least several months now. When people complain on the FAA forum, they get suggestions to check their display calibration or try a different browser, which only adds to the confusion.
The problem affects the web site preview images, NOT their prints. So if you try to modify your images to make them look 'right' you're guaranteeing that the prints will be 'wrong'.
393
« on: October 17, 2016, 09:26 »
The will to believe is strong.
394
« on: October 13, 2016, 21:43 »
I have a terrible suspect about this (New images not selling on SS): since they started accepting everything without a proper review they are ashamed to show the new images to buyers; they just need more and more images to have the largest collection in the universe, provide those images stay hidden from buyers.
That's not even crazy. And it gets even stranger: there's no way this sort of junk got through any legitimate review process. It's being let in through a back door, somehow.
395
« on: October 11, 2016, 10:59 »
Forget it... Shutterstock is on a highway to the inevitable abyss. The turning point was the entrance in the stock market. It became a corporation that only sees numbers, no matter what. Doesn't matter the quality of work uploaded, doesn't matter the respect to the contributor that worked well to follow SS rules: "Don't upload duplicates or similar images. Upload only the one you think it's the best" - This was in the Contributor Guide Lines once... Not anymore. Today It could be - "upload all your stuff! The more the better!"... 1 Million a week. Insane! And this is only possible with the end of the "7 out of 10" exam. That goes to show how much SS cares for quality these days.
That's why new images don't sell. They get buried under the overwhelming load. Only images that had the chance to get somewhat popular in past years will continue to sell in an ever slower pace. Ultimately, contributors will stop uploading because it's not worth it and buyers will refrain from buying because all they can find is loads of repeated cr*p and the good images are always the same old popular ones. Revenue per image will be lower and lower, and finally, the only happy contributor will be the one glad to see his image of an apple in a banner in some site, living out of the "fantastic exposure" he is having to his work.
This month turns 10 years that I'm in Shutterstock and other microstock agencies. I was quite successful for my standards and needs. I've been a fulltime contributor for the last 8 years and I reached a peak in 2013. Since then it's been all downhill.
So, if you need some graphic design or photo editing to be done, please leave a message.
Says it all. I'd say the people still on board with SS are the "true believers". They're relentless optimists, positive thinkers. "Just take better photos." God bless you people, the world needs you, seriously. But I'm not one of you - I'm a realist, i.e. what you think of as a pessimist.
396
« on: October 10, 2016, 13:55 »
I quit shooting microstock well over a year ago, but left my small (300) portfolio with DT, SS and Alamy. Since then my earnings at SS have slowly declined, until a couple of months ago when the decline became more rapid. Meanwhile, DT pays me a little more each month as my best sellers have moved up their tier system. Last month they finally passed SS with the same portfolio. Alamy has stayed about the same, a sale once in a blue moon.
397
« on: October 05, 2016, 19:37 »
398
« on: October 05, 2016, 14:33 »
I quit shooting stock a long time ago. I shouldn't even be in this forum any more. But I can't look away. It's fascinating, watching a giant ship like SS hitting the reefs, starting to take on water. Where is the captain?
399
« on: October 05, 2016, 13:54 »
How long can this continue before it really starts bringing SS down? Buyers will lose patience, no matter how low the price. You can't waste people's time with junk. And at the rate new stuff is supposedly flowing in the door - if it's being polluted with spam cr@p like this, the cost to SS to eventually clean it up would be enormous. That's the biggest problem for microstock going forward - if you lose control over what's being added, you'll never be able to fix the problem with fancy search algorithms, but neither can you pay people to go back through tens of millions of images and weed out spam keywords and titles.
400
« on: September 29, 2016, 09:35 »
The real story will come out in time. Keep in mind that automated screening isn't speculation, it's fact - a few years ago, in their SEC filings, they said they were using it, and obviously saw this as something investors would like to hear. The problem is they've tried to go too far, too fast. Remember early (80s and 90s) attempts at handwriting and speech recognition?
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