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Messages - MichaelJayFoto
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426
« on: March 04, 2014, 07:16 »
I just looked through the entire thread, there is not one happy exclusive. Take Luis's posts with a grain of salt.
yeah you should cut on the salt, try some spices! but actually I have never said there were happy contributors, pretty much a few are getting comfy waiting to see what will happen showing they still have hope
I'd take it more as seeing many of them don't have much choice. There are quite a few among them who are most likely right when they believe they couldn't make more money being non-exclusive. And they most certainly can't risk dropping 80% of their income right now hoping to make more in a distant future. So they sure have hope because it's the only thing they can.
427
« on: March 04, 2014, 07:14 »
hmmm - I remember someone going loudly exclusive with IS because SS was the demon with the subscription model. And what do you say now...?
Professionals deal with professionals*
Lol, I forgot all about that!
"Hi Guys.
We have found a good distribution partner (Getty Images) for the kind of content we produce. We will be removing all images from microstock doing the next few weeks. Microstock, especially subscription sites, are not suited for the kind of high production cost images we produce.
Best Yuri"
I think Vetta is excluded, which is most of his work isn't it?
3.800 Vetta files among 110.000 in his portfolios...
428
« on: March 01, 2014, 11:52 »
The other huge issue, IMO, is that there is such a divergence of views and interests I totally disagree with you.
429
« on: February 25, 2014, 12:12 »
I'm also not that vexed over the amount since I was expecting it, or thereabouts based on past earnings and had made some provision. Yes, I am also a bit wondering about people reporting they get hundreds of dollars "stolen" from their account now. I mean, in the first place the money was put there in error and it was obvious to many of us (though iStock took its while to figure it out...). And I am really surprised how someone can simply "overlook" that he "earned" hundreds of dollar more than in usual months. I wish I had that kind of problem... iStock technology sucks. It sucked for a long time. We all should be used to it. iStock communication sucks. It sucked for a long time. We all should be used to it.
430
« on: February 25, 2014, 12:05 »
this is not a discussion about re-downloading so no need to deflect.
It is not a discussion about a refund either, so your refund policy hint is a deflection by itself. It is a discussion about a product upgrade with an additional fee which iStock still does not offer but always used to deal with the way described. In the end it is the least useful way to change customer relations policies you can think of.
431
« on: February 19, 2014, 05:36 »
I wonder if DP has to make financial amends to their partners/resellers and also future lost revenue?
1. reimburse shotshop for the purchase price of the images
2. look at the sales history of the images and pay a penalty to shotshop for lost future revenue for those images that were producing revenue for shotshop.
I can't imagine it's as simple as telling them to take down these images you purchased from us legitimately.
Good point!
Hell mend 'em.
My gut tells me this will create a financial hit to DP, but who knows. Like someone else said I directed them to this thread, so someone is probably lurking. And like Cobalt, I was giving DP the benefit of the doubt, but now it's clear that they will try anything to screw contributors as long as they get to laugh all the way to the bank while we eat beans and franks as our gourmet meals.
Why would you assume that? It's an API deal, ShotShop did not BUY any of our images. If they had BOUGHT all of my images, even at a subscription price, I would have made some decent money. But with an API deal, they just get access to all images Deposit offers and whenever one of their customers buys a license, they make a subscription download for only that single file. This is no different from any subscription buyer: You don't get a guarantee that any of the images available today will still be there tomorrow. And the depressing part is that most likely a huge number of contributors will never hear about it or won't care at all, so out of the 20+ million images available on Deposit, ShotShop might "lose" a few hundred thousand of images now with those people reporting here in the thread.
432
« on: February 16, 2014, 08:27 »
When waiting for a "better" exchange rate: How can you be sure it will become better and not worse? I think the USD/EUR rate is about in the middle of the range it has fluctuated around for the last decade, so there would be a 50:50 chance it gets better or worse from this point of view... and in the long term view over the last 30 years, the US Dollar always has lost value against the Euro.
433
« on: February 13, 2014, 10:10 »
Okay, I'm not someone making rush decisions on business issues. Here is my take on it: There have been agency partnerships in the industry for a very long time. The "industry standard" is that the revenue is being split even between selling agency and supplying agency. Of that supplying agency's share, the photographer would get their usual share. In this case, to me it would mean that if ShotShop sells an image for $20, I expect Deposit to earn $10 from it and pay me $4.40. This would be acceptable, especially as ShotShop has higher prices than Deposit, so I would get a fair share of what the actual client pays. Well, with 44% of 50%, I still get 22% which is higher than some other agencies are paying for direct sales.  A "subscription" is a totally different thing. It means a client uses a large amount of images for their own purposes. There is no "re-licensing" option as part of a subscription. I have not seen any subscription licensing agreements allowing re-licensing, did you? And most definitely not with a profit margin that high... I have sent Deposit an email inquiring about the situation stating more or less my understanding of the industry. I will definitely not accept my files being offered for $40 and me getting paid $0.30. But I am willing to let Deposit think about the situation as more and more photographers are going to be informed and question their support. If they come up quickly with a better solution for the future that makes us all win, I will stay. If they believe that this is their final word, then I will have my final word.
434
« on: January 08, 2014, 08:24 »
I'm hoping I never have to agree to <50c for a sale.
So why did you sign up with iStock?
435
« on: January 08, 2014, 05:25 »
Yeah, after you complete the survey you are taken to a separate page to enter your email
I guess there is no way to add that when I've already sent my filled out survey form...?
436
« on: January 08, 2014, 05:21 »
As a thank you to everyone who responds there will be a random give-away again. There are a couple prizes up for grabs. There will be one winner for each prize. Winners will be drawn randomly (using a random number generator). Prizes cannot be exchanged for cash.
Um... that is cool. * it, I guess I would have had to add my email address somewhere to qualify for one of the prizes, right?
437
« on: January 04, 2014, 06:31 »
What I find odd is that they say there are irregularities with October and November?!
October royalties were exceptionally high and November's were unusually low (for one of the typically highest selling months of the year).
I suppose it's too much to hope that some of November's sales were attributed to October by mistake?
Don't know how your PP reports look like: But for me the number of downloads has been pretty stable from July to November (some +/- 10%), it's only the royalties attributed to the same number of downloads that changed dramatically, almost three times the "usual" amount of money from the same number of downloads. I was wondering ever since these were added to my account as there only could have been two explanations: 1) They screwed up the reporting; 2) They had some heavy marketing campaign adding more Thinkstock Image Packs to the mix instead of subscriptions. Given the history, I always thought the first explanation to be far more likely...
438
« on: December 21, 2013, 12:48 »
What Sean says, is of course right - he is the only stock superstar answering to newbies...  So if you want to stick to the kind of photography you are doing now, a DSLR would be the better choice. Any will do (well, I'd limit myself to the top three brands, Canon, Nikon or Sony) as you will soon find out that the lenses are more important than the camera behind. However, when I am seeing the type of images you are taking: This is not quite what most people in the industry would consider "iPhoneography" or "mobile photography. It's "just" regular photos taken with a tiny camera. Don't get me wrong, the iPhone is a great device and I'm slowly discovering it myself right now. But when planning to shoot stock, I'll always take my DSLR. But if you want to market your images as "mobile photography", you need to check out those fancy filters and apps turning a photo into something more in the Instagram style that everyone is talking about. Changed or faded colors, scratches, frames, all of these are essentially part of this new modern style... Apps recommended to check out would be: VSCO CAM, Afterlight, PicTapGo and Hipstamatic. To see what styles are popular you might want to join Instagram and/or EyeEm and check out their blogs. Good luck with your adventures.
439
« on: December 17, 2013, 02:12 »
There is a number of articles at my blog that tell my story of dropping exclusivity. The most recent one is in a way a conclusion. I believe all the information I shared exceeds in volume the appropriate forum post size. Umm... maybe I did something wrong but I can not find any solid numbers of information in your blog that would allow me to make any conclusions if you are on a positive or negative trend overall. The most recent post only has a single chart without any legend explaining what the chart actually means. And the last "real" information seems to be dated from March 2013. So... maybe you can tell me what exactly your experiences are? Both financially and the overall experience of going non-exclusive? I did the same last year and I'd be interested to see how others were experiencing it in the same phase.
440
« on: November 27, 2013, 06:48 »
I didn't mean to start a heated debate but I see a lot of good point going around. I think when submitting next time, I'll edit tighter and sent them exclusively images that are artsy and not staged and it seams fair enough. Sometimes the standards are much higher to get accepted as a contributor that to get images into an established portfolio and Stocksy wouldn't be an exception amongst agencies in doing that. Yes, I guess that might be the case. I really like most of your images and they show you know your trade. I would mainly skip those images where people are looking into the camera. It looks far more "authentic" if the people in the image are focused on what they do rather than smile at the observer. Not saying those images might not end up on the site for sale once you are accepted but for the application stick to those showing the people do what they do. You should definitely try to apply again. And yes, as Stacey also mentioned, even when accepted it is sometimes hard to identify the right images for Stocksy. It is strictly curated and sometimes you get images sent back. Also the number of images accepted from a series is typically smaller than what you might be used to from microstock. With the small overall size of the agency, buyers are likely to find an image easier, so it's not necessary to have twenty variations of the same topic hoping that at least one of them will stick on page 1 of the search results.
441
« on: October 20, 2013, 00:56 »
It argues that the licensing market could be as large as 20 billion dollars if a company just accepted most photographers that tried to sell. I am too lazy to read the article but this is something I'd typically expect to hear from a photographer. And it is pure crap if you just leave it at that sentence. Making the available offer bigger never increases the amount of money in a market. If you could grow the image licensing market, I doubt you would need anymore images than available at agencies right now. It's about finding new customers and that doesn't happen by adding more images. You would need to discuss about things like image pricing, availability, ease of use, understanding of the legal situation if you want to grow the market size.
442
« on: October 19, 2013, 09:48 »
I don't upload to IS because of TS - I upload because IS itself is making good money compared to all the low earners. TS comes on top of it, well actually making more money than IS itself these days. But the two are my #2 and #3 earners if you view at them seperately. Combined they come close to Shutterstock.
The backside of "uploading to IS to get onto TS" is the fact that the connector is still not working reliable. I got 300 files moved over in August and for some time almost all new images went to TS within days. However, from my latest batch of about 80 images, only 6 are visible on TS and that has been a few weeks with no progress since. So you can't rely on making money from TS because you just don't know when (or if) your files are going there.
443
« on: October 18, 2013, 11:53 »
Regarding what Getty will do with IS, well, IS could have introduced a subs model into the IS platform (if they had the talent) but instead they chose to build a separate, distinct model. Lot's of probable reasons for doing so, but to me the most obvious is the spinoff of IS as a higher price point collection. No, the subs model at IS was introduced in a way that it would never be competitive with other subscription models because the contributors would not have accepted a subs model. And it was at a time when IS was still listening to the contributor base quite often. Thinkstock/the partner program was later introduced because it would run without consideration of contributors, so they also made it optional for iStock exclusives. And they could add images from their own collections to that offer without pushing them to IS. I think we were all happy (happier) the way they made this happen outside of the IS platform.
444
« on: October 18, 2013, 04:32 »
With the PP having finished reporting, I sold around the same number of images as last month, but with a 35% bump in income.
The PP is now far out-performing Fotolia for me, and if separate from Istock would be my fourth place earner.
I'm almost tempted to try some uploads at Istock with an eye to getting them in the PP. Is the connecter to the PP fixed yet?
For me, the PP is the second best earner - after Shutterstock, before iStock itself and far ahead of any other place. No, the connector isn't fixed. I had a bunch of images (old and new ones mixed) moving over in August but then it stopped again. From my latest batch of 64 uploads accepted at iStock exactly 6 made it to Thinkstock. Those moved within 24 hours but not a single one followed in the last few weeks.
445
« on: October 18, 2013, 04:25 »
The numbers you are using come from this report right? http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-09-04/caryle-group-s-getty-images-ratings-on-review-for-cut-by-moody-s
It says 33% is midstock, 33% is premium, and 25% is editorial. What is the remaining 9% ($80 million)? Speculation A: As I read it, it does not say "33%", it says "one third". Nobody is saying that meaning "exactly 33%". It could mean anything in the range of maybe 30% or 35% or even 38%... we can just assume it is more than "about a quarter" and certainly less than "about half". Speculation B: Getty does have other smaller areas for revenue streams. They might consider "Footage" another stream that adds a few more percent. They might consider "copyright enforcement" a different stream. As far as I know they offer customized shoots in some occasions. And we don't exactly know if they are making money from additional services. I think we will never know every detail of their business.
446
« on: October 16, 2013, 23:47 »
Could be Getty 360 sales, those were showing up as PP sales not as GI. No, doesn't look like that. Those I checked are listed as Thinkstock and the numbers are within those listed on the royalties schedule page. Just larger ones for Image Packs like $1.20 or up to $4. Not too many but enough to raise the average royalty by about 50% as stated.
447
« on: October 16, 2013, 23:15 »
.. except if you use it you'll run into problems with Dreamstime for this part of it
. I agree that this release is irrevocable, worldwide and
perpetual, and will be governed by the laws (excluding the law of
conflicts) of the country/state from the following list that is nearest
to the address of the Model (or Parent*) given opposite: New York,
Alberta, England, Australia and New Zealand
Seriously? Because that is the same with my releases as they come out of EasyRelease. And I didn't have an agency rejecting any of them. I have a few other issues with DT that keeps me from uploading people images regularly but I didn't run into that one (yet).
448
« on: October 16, 2013, 13:41 »
Not sure if it's a general trend, so I'd be happy if others report their observations: I see a growing number of higher royalties through the PP - not up in the sky but well above the 28 cents. This would indicate a growing number of customers not going for subscriptions but for image packs. It started for me at about the same time when Getty introduced the new pricing on iStock. In April/May my RPD on the partner program was 30/33 cents but in September it was 39 and so far in October was up to 44 cents.
If that is a general observation, it could indicate that Getty is pushing Thinkstock as the new microstock (not only subscription) offer while iStock would target even more on the midstock level with some cheap non-exclusive images for the occasions you need them.
Anybody else who can confirm/object my thoughts?
449
« on: October 16, 2013, 13:35 »
Thanks for the quick responses, any chance you could pop your version just so i have something to go off and check all is ok with mine
I know its cheeky but im sure you was in my shoes once 
I just use my old version of the IS release, and sometimes the Stocksy one.
Or google for "Getty model release form". That one is (surprisingly) not branded which some agencies have problems with.
450
« on: October 16, 2013, 03:46 »
BTW... I think that's the dumbest thing ever. So, you manage to get sharp shots and they are getting rejected for being "over sharpened". What that tells me is that the reviewers aren't actually seeing artifacts... but 'assume" that if you have sharp photos that it's over sharpened. I doubt that it is that simple. It would indicate that you are the only one being able to shoot really sharp images. If other people are not getting their images rejected for oversharpening but you do, there must be something else going on. Can't really come up with many good explanations, maybe if you'd push contrast or color effects too far?!? I'd think the most efficient way to get an outside opinion would be if you put one or two of your rejected images somewhere on a server (full sized with watermark), so we can have a close look and try to find what the reviewers might have seen. Otherwise it's pure speculation... For what it's worth: I mostly process images in Lightroom with the default sharpening of 25, rarely more and sometimes turned down to 0. The overall sharpening in LR works quite okay, except when you have lots of sky. I don't like the sharpening in sky areas or water surfaces. In those cases I usually turn down the LR sharpening. If an image requires sharpening I do it in Photoshop in a High Pass Filter layer and mask out skies etc... But most of the times for microstock the LR sharpening on 25 will work fine and gets my images accepted.
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