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Messages - PaulieWalnuts
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426
« on: January 08, 2016, 17:36 »
Not sure if you're just looking for a new host or a completely new platform but I'd suggest checking out Photodeck or Photoshelter. Obviously, any company can leave you stranded but I think you're less likely to run into problems like this when using a service provider. I tried using a Wordpress theme from Graph Paper Press on GoDaddy hosting but the problem I've found is that affordable hosting has crappy performance. They're budget slow. Buyers don't like slow. Google doesn't like slow. So if nobody can access your site and Google doesn't index it, what's the point? Fast hosting costs a lot. Photodeck and Photoshelter I believe both have plans starting out at $10 per month. Photodeck I really like and any problems I've had they've been receptive to fixing. Photoshelter I also like but the experience has been a bit more bumpy. Hope you find something good. Setting up a new site is a ton of work. ETA: You may want to remove your Vector999 link which is advertising BlueHost
427
« on: January 07, 2016, 18:28 »
Only one person liked my analysis so I'm changing my response to go flip burgers.
428
« on: January 06, 2016, 20:24 »
Thanks for the valuable insights and tips!
I am a hobby photographer (with some DSLR shooting & Lightroom experience) and new to stock photography.
I think I am starting to understand the most important metrics (investment in gear, time needed per image and average payout per image).
I am however missing one of the key metrics: How many times is a stock photo (on average) purchased over its lifetime?
Is it safe to assume that for an enthusiast photographer the average number of downloads per image is 5?
Some may reach 50 or even 100+ downloads, but some or bulk of the photos will not sell at all or just 2-3 times. Is 5 downloads on average per image as "lifetime" download too low or high?
I can see the benefit of becoming a better photographer when submitting stock photos to agencies. But it would be nice to understand the possible income from stock photography and if the initial hard work and patience would ultimately also pay off financially (as a part time / side job).
There are so many variables it's almost impossible to answer an average. I've seen people just getting into stock who have exceptional work that could all sell 100 times per image. I've also seen people who will probably never sell anything so their answer is zero. It depends on the commercial saleability of your work. And it also depends on the quality of your keywords, how many sites you're on, search engine positioning, how lucky you are, and a bunch of other variables. I've posted this a few times before and I think it applies here. I think the rejection rates have lightened up quite a bit though. So, on average
About 5% of the images you shot will be sellable You spend 30 minutes per image in an image editing program like Photoshop doing post-processing, keywording, etc You start with about a 20% acceptance rate, 80% rejected You earn .10 cents US per accepted photo per month per agency on average
So let's say...
You spend about 16 hours over a week or two shooting 2000 images You select 100 100 images x 30 minutes processing each = 50 hours Because of poor focus and other issues you find only 80 are usable You submit 80 images 16 images get accepted (20% acceptance rate)
So for your 16 approved images
Youve worked 66 hours that month and 16.5 hours per week Youve earned $1.60 for the month and .40 cents for the week (.10 cents per accepted photo per month) Based on a 40 hour work week, youve earned .10 cents US per hour for your efforts You'd probably need to get out an Excel spreadsheet and over a period of time calculate how many images you can grow per month and figure somewhere between 10 to 50 cents of revenue per image per month. Since you're doing this part time and just starting out, if I had to guess I'd say it would probably take a year to earn a total of $1,000. Again, there are so many variables that number could also be $0 or it could be $5,000. Who knows. The only way you'll know the answer is to give it a try and see if the results are, or aren't, what you expected.
429
« on: December 31, 2015, 13:09 »
I've tried several similar services and gave up. They all had the same problems. The time it took me to do QA and show them all the stuff they missed and had to redo wasn't worth the time or money. I'm talking obvious stuff. Giant company logo on a building, big dust spots, and on and on. And they sometimes even missed them on the redo. Then there's the gray-area stuff like my idea of the right keywords and white balance may be different from yours. The bottom line is it takes too much time of back-and-forth to get an acceptable result. If I could find a service I could trust to get it right I may be willing to try it again.
From what I remember these companies were charging around $1-$5 per image. How much I'd be willing to pay would depend on how much of my workflow you could take over and how much I could depend on you to get the right end result based on my needs.
430
« on: December 26, 2015, 20:34 »
It's their business and they can do what they want. Maybe they're tired of people complaining. If I had to guess why there's a limit it's probably because their hosting either costs too much to increase or is too much of a hassle to change.
But I'd agree the 25MB limit is behind the times. They can't expect to sell gigantic prints with a 25MB limit. And I'm done creating multiple files for for different companies. I used to do that way back when I first started. Now I create one set of files. Any company that has a limit that excludes certain files I'm not changing them to meet the requirement. I just don't have the time to create and manage multiple versions of thousands of images.
431
« on: December 12, 2015, 19:27 »
Just started with Alamy. Had a $100 sale with four images. I'm guessing that's a fluke but I'm up to about a 100 images now and adding more so we'll see where this goes.
432
« on: December 12, 2015, 19:19 »
Many people have complained, on FAA's forum, about shipping costs and the official answer has always been - they are what they are, we have no control. And they show comparisons with other retailers to prove their point. I haven't tried to analyze this but apparently when you get into sizeable framed prints, the cost just skyrockets because the shipping boxes are so large.
I used to think that the answer would be to have local fulfilment via framing shops that sell prints. But then FAA made some deals with print/poster retailers that required us to accept a 50% commission cut and I opted out. So, FAA isn't going to be the answer and I really hope something better comes along.
Sorry if I hijacked a thread here.
I went to UPS a while ago to try and ship a boxed 40x60 canvas wrap. I forget what they quoted me but it was well over $100 for the shipping plus from what I remember they said they wouldn't ship it in the box it was in. I didn't bother asking for their box price but I'd guess the total would have been well over $200. For bigger stuff like that 84x23 might require freight shipping which $300 doesn't surprise me. One of the print vendors I use requires crates for certain larger prints like wood or metal and the create alone is $100. Some print vendors roll the shipping cost into the price so the shipping doesn't look so crazy. Some larger print vendors probably have a major volume discount worked out with FedEx and UPS. Maybe FAA isn't in a position to do either. Back to Alamy
433
« on: December 11, 2015, 18:53 »
434
« on: December 09, 2015, 09:34 »
The problem is not that the bar is high or the bar is low. The biggest problem is that the bar (for image reviews) is changing constantly depending on which reviewer you get. You can get an entire batch 100% rejected, resubmit and get them 100% accepted. Something is wrong with that.
If anyone can explain to me how reducing the initial review requirements is going to improve the review process, go ahead. What I see is that more submitters who really have no idea how to use their camera will be accepted (along with some good contributors no doubt). This is going to result in even larger piles of crap for the reviewing staff to deal with. What are the odds that that is going to help them do a more consistent job? What are the odds that SS will be able to do real quality control on reviewers if they need to hire a bunch more just to wade through the garbage that gets submitted?
I don't think this is the end of the microstock world (700 thousand new images per week will do that eventually). I just don't see how it actually improves anything except the numbers that upper management can sell to shareholders.
It won't. What I do believe is that their proprietary auto inspection software has been vetted (in their eyes anyway) and they feel that now they can take on more images with a lower scalable number of inspectors. That means the number of images inspected per inspector, overall, goes down (in pure time).
http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/ipos/filing.ashx?filingid=8226787
"Each of our images has been vetted by a member of our review team for standards of quality and relevance. We also leverage proprietary review technology to pre-filter images and enhance the productivity of our reviewers. Less than 20% of contributor applicants who applied in 2011 were approved as contributors to shutterstock.com, and less than 60% of images uploaded by approved contributors in 2011 satisfied our rigorous acceptance requirements. "
What's funny is that they are touting how much they reject. If they maintain these rejection numbers as a differentiator then they would need to have a higher flood of images to grow their collection and still claim high image rejection. The contributor application metric is out the door though. That will definitely change.
Agree. Based on that automated review statement it seems they're lowering the entry standards and letting the pre-filter software take on a higher volume of individual image screening. This makes sense because I'm sure there are plenty of people who produce decent work but get wholesale rejected on the application review due to some images being questionable. These people will now be let in and the pre-screening software will handle the review at the image level. The result will be that these new contributors will reject themselves. Meaning, if the pre-screening software constantly rejects a high percentage of someone's submissions they'll either improve their work or will stop submitting. I think this change simply means that SS has become confident enough in the pre-screen software that the entry review is no longer relevant. So the image quality requirements may not have changed but this definitely will cause a spike in new image volume.
435
« on: December 07, 2015, 07:23 »
Or they could be increasing the value of their premium service. The more junk there is to wade through the more sense it will make for buyers to pay the extra for help searching. We could even see the search engine get worse so they can keep the best algorithm for their own premium team.
That's a possibility. Buyers used to pay a couple thousand dollars to license one image for a single project. Now they can pay a couple thousand dollars a year and get up to almost 10,000 images. I'm sure some of them would gladly pay extra to save time by not dredging through a bazillion images of varying usefulness.
436
« on: December 05, 2015, 19:14 »
"It sends out a clear message that they are not interested in pro photographers at all. iStock seem to be coming to the same conclusion that pro's will migrate to Macro and the rest can be sold off cheap."
+1
Maybe that's the way it should be? In my opinion, microstock should never have been anything other than low to medium quality images. Using thousands of dollars worth of camera equipment to make pennies per sale has always been unsustainable for photographers. It's reality time.
I'd agree. Not only equipment. What about the shot with a room full of model surgeons in the rented operating room. It's only a matter of time before contributors give up on this kind of stuff because the returns aren't there. And this even applies to macro in some cases. I see these subscription macro deals come in that pay me micro level money. So when I see the "needs list" mostly requesting content that would cost a fortune to produce I don't bother with it. Unless prices stabilize to where there's a reasonable return it's not financially justifiable.
437
« on: December 03, 2015, 23:29 »
Well, this doesn't absolutely mean the review standards have changed. They're just allowing more people to submit.
Either way, this will mean a spike in collection growth which may be a good thing for some contributors. If SS gets flooded with mediocre images more buyers may be headed back to macro sites and spend more money to save time and frustration.
438
« on: December 02, 2015, 06:32 »
Not totally clear on what this is or what it would be used for. Transfer to where? Would be nice to hear a usage scenario.
I can only guess this is like an FTP-ish portal concept where designers and clients can share large files that are too big for email.
439
« on: December 01, 2015, 21:09 »
I have made $35,000 on Alamy.
Okay maybe I'll give it another try with some better quality stuff in smaller batches
440
« on: December 01, 2015, 19:42 »
Given the comments in the article, what is the point of the "apply to contribute" link then? Maybe the article isn't accurate. Or more likely it's to give buyers the perception there's separation between cheap subscription amateurs and special premium photographers. And maybe also scarcity. Nothing makes people want something more than what they can't have. Ya know, like the elite VIP club where you're special.
441
« on: December 01, 2015, 00:22 »
that made me chuckle, a good move but at the same time for a while now theyve put in a aweful lot of effort to reduce micro earnings
Glad I could be your entertainment. I'm guessing with Offset the payout isn't .25 cents on a $500 sale. My point was that with SS moving upmarket it may be good for overall prices in the market to also start moving back up.
442
« on: December 01, 2015, 00:12 »
yelo34 you win the "O.T.A. Goldrush Award" for reviving an oldie but a goodie from that magical year 2008. That's when reviewers were made of cotton candy, money fell from the sky, and each contributor received a real unicorn and rainbow for their contributions. Congratulations.
443
« on: December 01, 2015, 00:06 »
I just got my second failed QC after my second timeout. I checked the image and I could see why they might flag it. Not one of my best quality images but passable everywhere else. I can understand their need to have super high quality but I think I'm gonna give myself a timeout to go invest time on other things.
444
« on: November 30, 2015, 10:05 »
I just learned about Offset recently. Seems like a good move for the company known for cheap subscriptions to move upmarket into macro-level pricing.
445
« on: November 28, 2015, 17:05 »
To the OP, yes for me subs replaced regular downloads. And that could only lead to earnings going down which, for me, they did. Back in 2012 I topped out at around 30 regular sales a day. Monthly RPI on regular sales alone was excellent.
Fast forward to 2014 with the new subs offering and regular sales had dropped to around 5 a day with around another 5 sub downloads a day. 2014 average monthly earnings were around half of 2012.
The downward trend continued into 2015. Regular sales were 1/3 of 2013. Subscription sales never even came close to making up the gap of lost regular sales. Neither did GI sales. I dropped the crown mid-year.
446
« on: November 22, 2015, 12:22 »
This will either be an opportunity for him to prove the person we saw at IS really wasn't him or it will just validate it really was him.
Or after seeing the negative responses and realizing they just bought a damaged product, 500px may decide to keep him out of the public eye and work as more of an operations role in the background so we never get to see what he has to say.
447
« on: November 20, 2015, 08:42 »
I've never met the guy and have no idea what was going on behind the scenes. Regardless of if he was the person who made the decisions or was just the messenger, my perception is he's questionable. Contributors have been conditioned that bad things tend to happen when he's involved. I think that's understandable. Part of the problem was communication. We were told to expect something and frequently experienced something different.
I only have a couple dozen images on 500px and have received a couple licensing requests. So that plus the higher prices and royalty percentage seemed like they were headed in the right direction. This move seems to be a fork in the road.
448
« on: November 08, 2015, 20:41 »
Photoshelter could be more user friendly but I have buyers willing to contact me directly, pay me via PayPal and I email them a file or a download link. I've made more this year selling stock direct than from all the sites I'm on combined. I've also earned much more from Alamy this year than in the past and a bit from other small traditionally-priced agencies. My microstock income has increased too, but I think that direct licensing and traditionally priced agencies are the way to go.
Small boutique agencies are probably best. I'm with Alamy but their RPI isn't great.
I'd work on getting into places like Stocksy, Trevallion, and places like that. I'd also suggest licensing traditionally-priced images on your own. I'm happy with Photoshelter, despite any shortcomings in their customer interface, they bring in high-end editorial clients, I've licensed images to Smithsonian Magazine, Coastal Living, and many other advertisers and magazines who were searching Photoshelter and found my work, my images there are also found through google searches.
I'd also suggest getting Photographer's Market - a good way to find direct clients to license your work to - and of course for assignments which pay better than stock, if that interests you.
How much is Photo Shelter to join? I was looking at their site but couldn't find anything specific. I am really looking for a new home for my underwater stuff.
It starts at $10 per month for the basic plan. http://www.photoshelter.com/tour/all-features/I'd also suggest checking out Photodeck. I use both. They both offer trials. Neither do marketing. Photoshelter does have a buyer search but they don't promote it. I think it's leftover from back in the day when they tried to start a stock agency.
449
« on: November 08, 2015, 13:32 »
But they just rejected a submission of a few hundred images and gave me a timeout for a month from submitting which I think is pretty lame. From what
More than pretty lame. Alamy must have hired the photo curator from Pond5.
Although it's daft, it is their officially-stated policy. However, their managing images system is such a PITA that having any more than a dozen files waiting to be managed would be like a black cloud hanging over me, so now I drip up really small numbers at a time anyway.
I've got something like 11,000 images on Alamy so understand their process. I just don't understand the "why" of the process. I've had the pleasure of looking at some of Paulie's work and I don't see someone who is at all careless. If he is getting rejections, then the process is broken and flawed.
To clarify I separated my images into micro and macro collections. Macro I sell as RM on my website and they are top quality. Micro I still have some left on IS and submitted a portion to SS and Alamy as a test to see if any are macro worthy. SS accepted almost everything. The quality may not be perfection but they were good enough for Istock when they were at their pickiest and SS doesn't seem to have a problem with them. If Alamy's standards are that high can anybody comment on if the returns are worth the effort?
450
« on: November 07, 2015, 23:56 »
I also have a Photoshelter website which in my opinion isn't very user friendly and I just got a $250 RM license sale. It's the strategy behind the direct selling model that matters most.
Was that sale a direct result of your own promotion or a sale that came through their "Lattice" site (http://www.photoshelter.com/lattice/search/)?
Hard to say because I don't know if Photoshelter shows the source of a sale. I'd say it was probably from my own promotional efforts.
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