|
MicrostockGroup Sponsors
This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.
Messages - BaldricksTrousers
Pages: 1 ... 12 13 14 15 16 [17] 18 19 20 21 22 ... 206
401
« on: April 04, 2017, 03:32 »
I get cheques, so my payout is different.
The arithmetic is 35$ x 10 years x 1,000 people / 2 to average out the payments
$350,000/2 = $175,000
That's the average amount of cash the site has in hand throughout any 10-year period as some people get their payout and restart from 0, others are halfway there and still others have almost made it.
Most sites don't do automatic payouts so the unclaimed cash will tend to pile up.
Mind you, it's an equilibrium, so apart from the unclaimed cash, the amount on hand will increase according to the number of contributors, regardless of how long it takes them to reach payout.
I'm not sure,now. The monthly payout clears out everything from big earners - but it's not made until the middle of the month, so there is always 50% of their earnings in hand, anyway. Perhaps there's a reason for that timing.
In fact, the quicker the contributor reaches payout, the sooner the equilibrium leaving 50% of the earnings in hand is reached. Constant addition of low earners will increase the amount of dead money but will tend to skew the average to less than 50%.
402
« on: April 04, 2017, 02:21 »
The system is so advantageous to the stock sites that they really don't need to take the risk of messing it up to try to squeeze more cash out of it. The belief in someone doing us down because our wonderful files don't sell as fast as we think they should really strikes me as coming out of the same place as the old complaint that "my image was perfect the reviewers rejected it because they are stupid" - which almost invariably turned out to be wrong.
In order for your theory to work, these guys must get at least SOME sales. If they don't get any sales, the system is not advantageous at all. If they are really so bad, they might use some help in the search results. You contradict yourself, to some extent.
Well, we all know that some odd stuff sells, and so does some stuff that's not very good. I've got examples of my own of both, but if someone wants something and that is all that a search produces then they will probably take it anyway. The sites demand quality that is stellar, a web-site buyer doesn't need something that will look flawless covering the side of the Burj al Khalifa in Dubai. So it's possible to make sales with dodgy stuff but it's hard to make enough to get to a payout in a reasonable time - and if it takes 1,000 people 10 years to get to a $50 payout, then the site is on average sitting on $250,000 of their cash (if my arithmetic is right).
403
« on: April 04, 2017, 02:06 »
Yes but I am completely convinced its improving or declining with the algorithm and whatever its beyond our control anyway.
Everything depends on how many of our files are in the first few pages of any given search, globally or regionally. If that changes substantially, then our earnings are going to change.
404
« on: April 04, 2017, 01:56 »
You think the stricter review stopped a significant number of these people? they just kept submitting till they passed.
I don't believe that. I'll bet that 90% gave up after the first rejection and most of the rest gave up after the second. I referred a very good old-time professional to SS once, a guy with great photographic skills but not so good with the minute details that the reviews caught a lot of people with. He failed, of course, and didn't go back. In fact I don't believe that any of the people who used my referral link on SS and failed the test ever bothered to try a second time.
405
« on: April 04, 2017, 01:52 »
"If they were concerned with administration costs, why did they practically abolish entrance exams?" Because they cost money?
Perhaps more to the point, a lot of low-grade contributors each picking up a handful of sales but never reaching payout is a valuable asset for a stock site. Even I'm helping Crestock with $20 worth of sales over several years - money which I will probably never get (how many people have ever had a payout from that site?) Years ago DT published statistics that made it possible to work out how many contributors had how many sales. Something like 90% of them had fewer than 100 downloads - and when I reported some of my analysis on SS it was quickly deleted by admin, leaving me to assume that the data from DT reflected what was going on throughout the entire industry. If I remember correctly, something like half of all contributors had fewer than 10 uploads and would probably never reach a payout - or would have long forgotten the site when they got there and thus would never claim their cash. So speeding up the rate at which low-performing portfolios sell might end up with the sites having less unclaimed cash available to use. The system is so advantageous to the stock sites that they really don't need to take the risk of messing it up to try to squeeze more cash out of it. The belief in someone doing us down because our wonderful files don't sell as fast as we think they should really strikes me as coming out of the same place as the old complaint that "my image was perfect the reviewers rejected it because they are stupid" - which almost invariably turned out to be wrong.
406
« on: April 03, 2017, 14:59 »
It'd be nice if they'd give us another rise for hitting, say, $50,000. 
and 20K, 30K, 40K, 60K, 70K.....
The more the merrier... but I'm not very optimistic about it.
407
« on: April 03, 2017, 13:44 »
Looking at many replies in this thread one is beginning to see a pattern. Don't know if you've thought of that. Seems like the longer you have been with SS the less you are going to get. I think it was this guy Rindler or something who some time back pointed out that old contributors was in the fireing line. maybe he did have a point. Dont know?
There are several factors at work but the main one has got to be dilution. When I started I had something like 500 files with SS in a total collection of something like 30,000, now I have something like 6,000 in collection of scores of millions. They haven't managed to increase the revenues at the same rate that they are increasing the size of the collection. Given that I've gone down from having one sixtieth of the collection to having something like one ten-thousandth of it, it's really quite remarkable that I still make as much as I do. PS: While my March sales are a bit down on a year ago, Feb and March of this year have each improved on the month before, so in the short-term my sales are improving, I don't know why.
408
« on: April 03, 2017, 13:17 »
It'd be nice if they'd give us another rise for hitting, say, $50,000.
409
« on: April 03, 2017, 01:56 »
haha, not so much to buy a farrari. But I wish to get one. 
I don't think microstock is really much good for those who lust after fashionable accessories (with a handful of honourable exceptions such as the Yuris, Seans and Lises). It's quite good for those who just want enough cash to feed themselves and have the occasional beer. My long decline continued in March. Dreamstime was better than last year, SS following the gentle downtrend, 123 was pathetic for the third month in a row, Alamy has been particularly weak since the start of the year after holding up pretty well for several years - maybe their marvellous innovations have hit me. Istock's also slumped again. Overall earnings are down about 65% from their peak five or six years back but I've done very little to add to my portfolio for the last two years.
410
« on: April 01, 2017, 14:33 »
As well as iStock, one of the images had Bigstock logos all over it, but that's been cleaned up, too.
411
« on: March 29, 2017, 09:43 »
It all depends on what you're content with and what you already have. I could live in Greece on $500 a month quite easily, I have a house and my books, computer and photo gear. I stopped smoking long ago when I was really broke, I cook for myself and local wine is about 2 euros a litre. But while I would be happy observing the insects in an olive grove all day, most people would be bored to death by that sort of life.
412
« on: March 29, 2017, 06:16 »
OK, got some now. Thanks.
413
« on: March 29, 2017, 06:02 »
My sales stopped dead about 12 hours ago, which is very odd. Is there some delay in reporting or have I just hit a bad patch?
414
« on: March 28, 2017, 14:19 »
It's interesting what comes up when you Google Carlyle Group Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
WOW! That's more than interesting, it's astounding. Or maybe not.....
415
« on: March 28, 2017, 14:14 »
I've had a couple of instances of that recently. Could it be large businesses with several people accessing the images separately?
416
« on: March 28, 2017, 08:51 »
Somebody suggested to me that the 4,1 Million might be a typo with one Zero too much, because on his peopleimages.com site he has around 390.000 images online, which would fit much better to 410.000 images produced until 2016.
Yeah, that would make sense.
417
« on: March 28, 2017, 08:01 »
He appears to be in the property business, too, with the bottom half of the building rented to a high-end retailer, which is probably a clever move.
I wonder how he is coping with the oversupply problem. He himself was complaining a few years back about not being able to generate the sales needed to justify his production costs. Either he's doing less ambitious stuff or he's found a way of upping his returns (and iStock didn't look like it, from the modest sales figures he was cranking up on one of his identities there).
PS - if he produced 4.1 million pics last year with about 30 photographic staff, I make that a daily production rate of something like 500 images per person. I know it only takes about 1/100th of a second per pic, so it's only 5 seconds' work a day ... but it still sounds a bit tough to me!,
418
« on: March 26, 2017, 04:03 »
Why should these countries agree to any future EU-trade deal with the UK then their people are not allowed to work in the UK anymore? You see the difficulty?
The countries that sell to the UK (primarily Germany and Holland) are the ones that fund the EU. Those that send migrant labour to Britain are recipients of funds from the EU. The latter may have a vote/veto but they also need to avoid annoying their paymasters. Germany has a habit of getting what it wants regardless of what other EU countries think.
419
« on: March 25, 2017, 11:37 »
Two requirements that it will not be granted an exemption are:
- Introduction of right-hand traffic
- Introduction of the same time zone as France and most of Europe uses, i.e., CET, which is GMT + 1
Bad news for Ireland, Malta and Cyprus, then. Seriously, nobody is going to insist on reversing the traffic flow in the UK, it would cause chaos.
420
« on: March 25, 2017, 04:21 »
Companies like Getty will still say that they can't afford to pay more, but it's B.S.
Not necessarily. Remember that they have piled up gigantic debts in the vulture capitalist merry-go-round of buying the company, borrowing in the market to repay the people who bought it all charged against (our) future earnings, then selling it on to somebody else who repeats the process. They've piled up so much debt to line the pockets of the "investors" that the rating agencies were starting to downgrade them the last I heard of it.
421
« on: March 24, 2017, 16:24 »
A six MP image will give a decent 10x8 inch print, assuming the image is properly shot (and I've seen one of mine that size enlarged well beyond A4 for use on a roadside advertising board without any problems). It's a bit cheeky to demand more than that from microstock at the prices people pay.
That said, I've got a lot of 12MP and 20MP images in the mix.
And - to answer your other question - I've been doing this for 13 years and have about 7,000 different images online in one place or another.
422
« on: March 24, 2017, 15:53 »
Not sure the exact questions you have but most have been answered on the forums, it's not always easy to find that answer though.
Seems to me her question is "why are there large numbers of sales below the minimum commission rate iStock announced", saying that you don't know the question she's referring to and then dismissing it with a vague suggestion that it's probable been answered sounds like a corporate fobbing off to me.
423
« on: March 24, 2017, 07:20 »
That sucks. I can't remember the details of your case but I was also not a fan to say the least. They have burnt so many bridges, hopefully they they will learn from their mistakes. Is Chad a big deal there? does he actually make the decisions or is he just the guy who answers the emails and comments on the forum? If the latter, unless they actually booted you, I would give them another shot.
It was a payment issue - it's probably not fair to go into it again with new owners in place. As for Chad, I found him gratuitously offensive and I have no desire to work in association with him. Fortunately I can afford to indulge my indignation. I've done very little with stock for the last couple of years but now I've got time on my hands and it's something to occupy me. The days when I was making very decent money out of it are long gone and not coming back, so avoiding boredom is more of an incentive than the cash.
424
« on: March 24, 2017, 05:20 »
Its easier to tell other people to drop I-Stock than actually do it yourself. Personally I'm watching how this develops before pulling the plug and I suspect a lot of others are too.
Me too. Istock was my starting point 13 years ago and it will feel like the end of an era to dump them, and scrap all the effort that went into a decade of uploading. But its really starting to feel like when, rather than if, I will decide to do that.
Added to which, I've already dumped Fotolia because I couldn't trust them, and payment method problems mean I'm not on Envanto or Pond 5, so I will be missing 4 of the top 5 earners without istock.
If you have the option it could be time to take FL back on. They are a different company now what with the new management and all.
I doubt if they would have me back anyway, after I said what they'd done. Plus I gather that The Chad is still hanging there, which is something of a no-no for me.
425
« on: March 24, 2017, 04:01 »
Its easier to tell other people to drop I-Stock than actually do it yourself. Personally I'm watching how this develops before pulling the plug and I suspect a lot of others are too.
Me too. Istock was my starting point 13 years ago and it will feel like the end of an era to dump them, and scrap all the effort that went into a decade of uploading. But its really starting to feel like when, rather than if, I will decide to do that. Added to which, I've already dumped Fotolia because I couldn't trust them, and payment method problems mean I'm not on Envanto or Pond 5, so I will be missing 4 of the top 5 earners without istock.
Pages: 1 ... 12 13 14 15 16 [17] 18 19 20 21 22 ... 206
|
Sponsors
Microstock Poll Results
Sponsors
|
Show Posts
