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Messages - Jo Ann Snover
4326
« on: February 23, 2013, 10:57 »
I saw a sale this morning with a description I'd not seen before - for a total royalty of 83 cents, so I can't imagine this is for any type of EL for T-shirt printing
Has anyone had a sale that was identified as "Bigstock Partner - Single Unit Merchandise" or does anyone know what that is? If not I'll write to support and find out, but it sounds as if they've done some deal that lets a partner buy a print on demand EL one at a time, which I guess I wouldn't be too happy about
4327
« on: February 22, 2013, 19:25 »
I guess there's two levels of being ignored - one as a contributor and the second with the "launching soon" e-mail  No e-mail for me.
4328
« on: February 22, 2013, 18:44 »
There is no problem having editorial use only with an RF license, but Alamy doesn't permit that at the moment. For them, editorial means it has to be RM; for Shutterstock, you can have editorial RF, but it needs to be "newsworthy". DT does editorial RF but I never did try that, so I can't say how their rules work in practice (I'm told they say newsworthy but it doesn't actually have to be).
If you shoot with model and property releases, you can choose either RM or RF licensing at Alamy. RM just means that you get only certain rights for use in a defined place, over a certain period of time in a certain geographic market. You can't use the image again without buying another license for the new use.
4329
« on: February 22, 2013, 17:22 »
Hope the transition goes smoothly for you. I have some RM shots on Alamy (from my exclusive days at IS) but it's the RF stuff that is selling - intermittent compared to micros but the with higher priced sales, just one can be the same as one of the lower-tier's monthly total
4330
« on: February 22, 2013, 17:04 »
I would not sell my RAW files - for the most part the images I create only start with a RAW and it'd be like selling a shot of a model without makeup or clothes. Just not interesting.
And Albumo (remember them) offered the first xxx who reached 1,000 images a better rate than everyone else. Not going to fly without buyers.
How about you talk about how you're planning to find buyers for this site and why they'd buy from you versus any of the other sites out there (and don't say 'cause of your RAW files; that's just not going to be a differentiator)?
4331
« on: February 22, 2013, 12:01 »
There's no talk of an opt out, no offering of information about how many images are now included in the deal, no words about future deals.
It's no longer my personal issue, but even with proper retention of copyright information, you want to be in a situation where you have to accept $6 or $12 for your images to be included in a free distribution?
4332
« on: February 22, 2013, 11:58 »
Most of the sites have tightened up their rules on model and property releases over the last few years. So finding something from a couple of years back that doesn't follow today's rules will happen at every microstock site.
Bottom line on model releases is that if you want to sell RF stock, you should have releases for anything that has shots of individuals (i.e. I'm not talking street scenes), even if it's body parts. People can be very recognizable without faces and you don't want to be on the receiving end of legal action.
When you have borderline cases - your bridal bouquet example has more of the bride showing in one case than the other - decisions could go either way. It's a judgment call. If you had a release from the bride it wouldn't be an issue.
Ranting about rules isn't going to get you anywhere if you want to sell via the microstock agencies. All of them have rules that are not to our liking some of the time and all of them apply those rules with varying consistency. It's typical for people who are new to this to get worked up, but you're going to have to decide to live with it or stop selling via the micro agencies. It's really that simple.
4333
« on: February 22, 2013, 10:56 »
Also check out photodeck.com .
I hadn't heard of them and took a look. Do you know anyone who's used them and had a good experience? $30 a month isn't terrible given you don't pay them a cut of sales, but are you still on your own to market the site and your work?
4334
« on: February 22, 2013, 10:40 »
From my perspective, all hope for long term good things for contributors from SS ended when they sent out the e-mail about Bigstock subscriptions and the ridiculous levels of annual sales needed to get the top level of royalties.
I think it's only a matter of when, not if, that royalty schedule is applied to sales at SS. That sort of scheme cuts SS's costs (which increases their profit) and favors the factory producers - Yuri, Monkey Business Images, etc.
There is no way, even if SS doubled their business and I stepped up production significantly (I do this part time), I would keep my 38 cents per sub download and more importantly the higher payouts on OD and Single image sales.
So I'm glad they had a good fourth quarter, but it no longer seems to have anything to do with my prosperity there.
4336
« on: February 21, 2013, 17:08 »
Regarding amazon.com showing my FAA portfolio, I contacted support this morning and within an hour I got an answer back that the port had been included (it's a manual process and you have to request it) and that it could take 4-5 hours to show up.
I just checked and it does - I search for my name and Fine Art America. Who knows if any sales will result (it's canvas prints only) but can't hurt
4337
« on: February 21, 2013, 14:17 »
... but this month at IS is dire.
For me too - but then I have an excuse
4338
« on: February 21, 2013, 13:07 »
Waste of time.
Two sales - since last June - for a total of 55 cents.
Contrast that with GL Stock - where I'm still uploading my portfolio (started about a month ago) - where I have had 4 sales in a month for $16.64 royalty.
4339
« on: February 21, 2013, 13:02 »
I think they're done now (no updates in the last ~3 hours). It wasn't a BME but it was decent (and nearly 3 times the original "total" that appeared to be the end of it)
4340
« on: February 21, 2013, 11:13 »
It's an adjustment process - in my case somewhat easier in that I'd been independent for 4 years prior to a 3 year stint as an exclusive (which ended June 2011). I also had a number of former Vetta shots rejected by SS for lighting - they really don't like dramatic shadows much. I also had a recent sunrise on a town waterfront shot rejected by SS for incorrect white balance - I resubmitted with a note that the light was that color because it was sunrise and they accepted it. That sort of thing seems truly asinine, but I guess when you're churning through large volumes of stuff, perhaps it's inevitable. On the other hand, I don't have to deal with overfiltering rejections - the bane of my existence with iStock inspections. At Dreamstime, the issue will be seemingly crazy rejections for similars (and be careful there as your acceptance rate affects how many you can upload per week and is reputed to affect search placement too). Give each agency some trial images of various kinds to feel out what they like and don't. And try to let the dents to your ego brush off - all the agencies are frequently off-base with inspections, but it's their sandbox, so they get to be right
4341
« on: February 20, 2013, 13:40 »
It's $30. My last payout request was for $39.xx so I know it's not $50 123rf said it was a rolling 12 month number for royalty groups but I don't think my count changed at all on February 1 (which i think it should have). I understood the BigStock system to be like 123RF - rolling 12 month calculations Bigstock now pays me 27 cents for a sub - I think that's pretty dismal, but given the volume of sales at Bigstock, even if I resumed uploading I doubt it'd go up a level The big worry to me is moving this miserable scheme to SS and/or subs sales migrating to Bigstock from SS, all of which would cost me money. Even if Bigstock only stole subs sales from Canstock I'd lose - distribution subs are 30 cents and larger sizes subs are 35 cents. I can't see any upside at all.
4342
« on: February 20, 2013, 12:19 »
I use aliases (mac; shortcuts on windows) in a series of folders, one for each agency I'm submitting to.
Inside each agency folder is pile of aliases and three folders with pending, accepted, rejected - I name these 1-SS-pending 2-SS-accepted 3-SS-rejected (for Shutterstock as an example) so they show up at the top of the folder and with the agency initials so I could move these all into one folder if I ever needed to.
For some of the smaller agencies where I don't care if they accepted or rejected an image (because things are so arbitrary or because I'd never resubmit regardless of their rejection reason), it would be 1-PD-next batch and 2-PD-uploaded.
I never replace a JPEG that's been uploaded if I revise something. If I fix a problem one site noticed, the new file is oldfilename-v2.jpg; if I have to make a smaller file for one agency (SS has a max 5K pixels by 5K for JPEGs from vectors and some sites won't take over 25MB file size) then it's oldfilename-smaller.jpg
The goal is not to duplicate files. The mac can be a bit whacky in handling large numbers of aliases (I assume buggy software) so sometimes the Finder restarts itself, but otherwise it works reasonably well.
4343
« on: February 20, 2013, 12:09 »
No regular license would cover it, and I don't know of any EL that allows distribution.
Thanks, so I should maybe contact them then?
You can contact the site owner if you like, but I'd go straight to a DMCA takedown notice - to their hosting company if not to them directly. See here for a how-to. This sort of thing isn't an honest mistake
4344
« on: February 20, 2013, 12:02 »
It's school half term in the UK this week and so some people are away.
<pedantic mode> Not 'in the UK', in England and Wales only. Scotland had last Mon-Weds off (Weds pupils only)[at least in my authority, I'm not sure it's the same everywhere] and NI had this Mon-Tues off.</pedant>
I actually only checked the greater London area (where most of my family lives) , so I was worse than you thought! And apparently the Scots don't buy the OP's images much as things were going great until last Wednesday
4345
« on: February 20, 2013, 10:52 »
The short answer is no, I can't explain sales The longer answer: In addition to the difficulties of seeing trends with smaller portfolios, you need to look at workweek, major holidays, seasonal items in your portfolio, and time zones around the world. There are also shifts in search result order at various sites (which shouldn't be coordinated but are one source of things changing). So last Wednesday was Ash Wednesday and in some countries you might have seen a drop off because of that? Late Friday and Saturday (US West Coast) are the slowest times of the week because Asia's already having their weekend. Sunday is slower than weekdays but picks up in the evening as Asia's at work on Monday. Monday was a holiday for some people in the US and the US is a big market. It's school half term in the UK this week and so some people are away. Seasonal things - tropical beaches selling during winter, Christmas stuff in the late autumn, Easter stuff early in the year - also make a difference. I would often notice lots more large sizes selling early in the week and Friday seemed to be XS day 10-20 sales a day across several sites is still very small numbers (not trying to be rude, but it makes a difference). You can't see trends on a daily or even weekly basis.
4346
« on: February 20, 2013, 01:23 »
4347
« on: February 19, 2013, 19:38 »
Just added a post in my site. To refresh memory.
Poor english, so if you want send me a message with grammatical corrections, thanks!
How about a link - I don't see anything in your signature line or your post that will let me see your site?
4348
« on: February 19, 2013, 19:33 »
I love the little red house in the Swedish images, especially the autumn scenes. Great colors
4349
« on: February 19, 2013, 19:29 »
For me, they are continuing to add today - now adding to Jan 16th. It's possible things aren't in the same order for everyone (wasn't there something odd last month like that?)
4350
« on: February 19, 2013, 16:56 »
Hello. Are you contributing to some/all of the microstock sites? You can use your profile settings to link to your portfolios at various sites if you are. And if you aren't, what brought you to MSG?
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