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Messages - gostwyck
4451
« on: November 03, 2009, 07:33 »
Post from LookStat showing that square images are not all they're talked up to be:
http://blog.lookstat.com/2009/10/25/microstock-rpi-image-formats-and-why-its-not-as-cool-as-you-might-think-to-be-square/
I have to say I'm extremely sceptical about those statistics. I wonder what sample size they were based on? Lookstat are claiming that vertical images earned double what horizontal and square images did in 2008 __ that's a huge difference and it should be evident in all of our portfolios. It should also be obvious from searches too as the supposedly much more popular vertical images should dominate the results __ which patently isn't the case. Such a dramatic difference, if it actually existed, would have been noticed by all of us from our own sales long ago. Try some general wide searches on IS (search-order set to best match) like 'business team', 'sport' or 'food' as see what comes up. The results I get a hugely dominated by horizontal images with quite a few square and relatively few vertical formats. How can it be that vertical images earn double that of the other formats? I've got several image series containing vertical/horizontal options and I can see no pattern whatsover that indicates that either format is naturally more popular or is sold at a higher average price. If anything my square images are far more likely to become my best-sellers than the vertical or horizontal versions. Can anyone out there see any evidence from their own portfolios to back-up Lookstat's claims?
4452
« on: November 03, 2009, 07:02 »
I've just had 4 in a row from Jupiter and a couple from Photos.com
Don't forget there's a lag in reporting sales from JIU/PC. They are reported through the next day all at the same time just after 4am. We have to wait until tomorrow to see if we get any sales today.
4453
« on: November 03, 2009, 06:06 »
Mine are still there too. Of course it is possible that images might still apppear on searches but, if you had a subscription, the download itself might be blocked.
4454
« on: November 02, 2009, 10:07 »
If 76% (I think that is the number that I read somewhere) of contributors never reach a payout, that only helps the rest of us by providing more income to the agencies so that they don't lower our commissions even more!
That's one of those myths forever to be quoted. It's not true. There are about 30K people on multimedia's Isock Contributor list and more than 50% of them already have more than 90 sales, which should be comfortably enough for a payout. Of the others some will clearly make payout at some point even if they haven't already. The real figure is probably more like 30% and even then their cumulative sales are so small as to make little difference to the profitability of an agency. Of the 15K people yet to make payout (say fewer than 90 sales) then the average will be 45 sales x 15K = 675K sales in total. That's the equivalent of about 1 week's sales at IS's current rate out of a history of 6-odd years. By the time the agency has paid the admin costs of reviewing, etc they probably lose money on 'contributors who never make payout'.
4455
« on: November 02, 2009, 08:40 »
What I don't understand about this arrangement is that there is clearly a huge overlap between the collections at FT & DT __ I'd guess at well over 50%.
Does this mean that some images would appear twice in a search, one via DT and one from FT? If so will their prices also be different reflecting the pricing architectures at each agency? How will the search order differentiate between identical images from different sources?
4456
« on: November 01, 2009, 21:59 »
Was your misfortune getting caught, then?
Misfortune? I guess it must be a tough life being a fraud and a thief without the wherewithal to understand how overtly traceable your actions are likely to be.
4457
« on: November 01, 2009, 11:38 »
I've found our friend. It looks like Albert, as well as being one of the world's top stock shooters, is also available for Bar Mitzvahs and children's parties; http://www.albertmartinphotography.com/
4458
« on: November 01, 2009, 07:28 »
4459
« on: November 01, 2009, 06:56 »
BME by quite some margin and an increase of more than 26% over Oct 2008. Here's the breakdown percentage (with Oct 2008).
IS 36.3 (32) - BME
SS 21.8 (27.2)
FT 21.5 (18.4) - BME
DT 9.7 (14)
SX 6.1 (6) - BME
Rodeo 2.6 (n/a) - BME
BS 1.9 (2.6)
My graph suggests some significant movements amongst the fortunes of several agencies.
FT has been growing at an astonishing rate and for most of the month was looking to take 2nd place from SS for the first time. They were pipped into 3rd place by just a few $'s on the final day with an EL on SS. Say what you like about the mgt's communication skills but they do seem to know how to build a business and shift product.
IS still solid as a rock. The BME is despite having had over 100 files deactivated under the new stricter rules which included several best selling images.
DT appear to be steadily losing market share to the others. I'm down about 20% from their peak in April, probably not helped by the reduction in commission. They've dropped below 10% for the first time in nearly 5 years and are now so far behind the 'Top 3' that I'd have to consider them a 2nd tier agency.
Strong showing from Rodeo too. Only 5 sales but still enough for them to comfortably beat BigStock and enter the 'Big 6' for the first time.
BigStock still very disappointing. No sign yet of any impact from SS but I guess it is early days.
4460
« on: October 31, 2009, 09:40 »
Hopefully I will retain my sales on macros due to my production isn't so cheap as most of what I saw on micros. I might upload some of my crap-shots and tests on micros, just to see how it goes ;-)
You might want to check out Dreamstime's 'Editor's Choice' containing about 8000 images which they've selected to promote their new posters/prints offer; http://www.dreamstime.com/best-stock-photosThere's some breathtakingly good imagery there and of course that's without the input of the Istock exclusives many of whom produce outstanding microstock work. Do feel free to give us a link to your fantastic work too so that we can judge it for ourselves. Don't be shy.
4461
« on: October 30, 2009, 17:44 »
If you shoot a lot of hot women in little to no clothing, and offer those images RF, you should expect to have to deal with situations like that. To be surprised or distraught over it happening is just silly .
Exactly. She covers aforementioned hot women in baby oil (and not much else) then shoots them in flattering seductive lighting. What did she (or the models) design those images for __ Post cereal packaging maybe? Pre-school education? Financial? Or strips clubs and adult entertainment industry? Tricky one to decide really.
4462
« on: October 30, 2009, 15:21 »
I think I'll send Serban some emails asking him to donate some of his own possessions like his car, tv, etc. The 'default option' will be to assume he has agreed to it irrespective of whether he replies or even recieves my emails.
Of course when I take his car then I'll drive around in it taking pictures which will naturally be of immense benefit to the agency and all contributors.
4463
« on: October 30, 2009, 15:09 »
I created a new thread on the DT forum, asking where that specifically is located. I'll post any response.
It looks like your message has mysteriously 'disappeared'. Did you ever get any sort of response?
4464
« on: October 30, 2009, 15:03 »
I still think that their growing will diminish our income individually before it affects them as a whole. I know for a fact that my images at SS bring me in approximately $0.25 per image per month while SS probably average more then $0.25 per image per month. Over a year that image had brought them over $3.00. The $0.10 to review the image is a finite expense. Bandwidth, storage, etc has been getting cheaper so I am not sure how much of an issue this is, however put in a couple of cents per month per image for storage and bandwidth and it still is low expenses. For them it is better 20 millions images multiply by $2.00 then 10 millions images multiply by $3.00. For us individually it is better the $3.00 per image per year.
My numbers are probably way out, but this is just to articulate the logic. Denis
I think your logic might be a bit flawed there Denis. Whilst an individual contributor's income will almost certainly be diluted by owning an ever-smaller proportion of the library, that doesn't apply to the agency who effectively 'own' the entire thing. The agency's income is determined by the number of paying subscribers not by the number of images __ theoretically the more images they have the more a subscriber might choose to download which could end up costing the agency money. But then they've also got to keep the LT subscriber happy by continually supplying new content. You're right though, the reviewing cost is still a tiny fraction of the overall income that they are generating through subscriptions.
4465
« on: October 30, 2009, 14:08 »
^^^ True. It's not as if the customers will spend proportionally more according to the size of the collection. The same amount of money is likely to be spread amongst more images.
Presumably the agencies are still competing in the 'my collection is bigger than yours' argument.
4466
« on: October 30, 2009, 13:30 »
I think the answer will be: when they create upload limits
Ah __ I think you may have hit the nail on the head there. If they are accepting 15K images every day then they are probably reviewing 20K+ in the process. Even at a reviewing cost of say 10c per image, including bandwidth, storage, etc, then it is costing them about $2K per day or $60K per month. There must come a point when the agency starts to question whether all of that investment is fully justified in what it brings to the library. If you halved the allowable uploads then you would also halve the reviewing costs, probably with very little real loss to the collection __ it might even improve it.
4467
« on: October 30, 2009, 11:59 »
It is that, but it's also a part of microstock's relentless march towards free images. The subtle pressure to make your images free, or to sign on to other gimmicky discount plans, won't let up.
It's like turkeys voting for Xmas. There are lots of perfectly useable images in the free section as evidenced by the hundreds of downloads that many of them have had. Just because an image hasn't sold for a few years doesn't prove that the image is useless, it may simply be that there was a marginally better option that the buyers preferred. An image without sales can rapidly descend down the search order to the point where it is unlikely to be seen again. With the thousands of new images being approved each week, with many of them in large virtually-identical series, then it is likely that many more images in future will suffer the fate of being ignored by the buyers. If a significant proportion of those end up on the free sections then it could very seriously damage sales. I much prefer IS's solution to this issue of the Dollar Bin. At least the contributor (and the agency) gets some money out of the deal.
4468
« on: October 30, 2009, 11:35 »
Probably at the point where many small players stop shooting for microstock and stop uploading. The large image factories will become the norm. This will first happen in the high cost of living countries like the US and Western EU. In the low cost of living countries like Eastern Europe this process will take much longer. The nanostock world of 2015 might look like large Russian and Serbian image factories selling mostly to the West (and India, as far as they harbor a lot of outsourced graphic work).
Did you see any iPod, printer, laptop, sneakers, T-shirt not made in China recently? Welcome to globalization. Images don't have to be transported with ships or planes, they travel cost-free with the speed of light. The only issue in outsourcing is fine-tuning Western needs to alien cultures. So let's all write blogs with Photoshop and lighting tricks, with content hinst and our trade secrets - and educate our future competition fast. 
I think the 'image factories' may actually be amongst the first casualties in this over-supply. They have high production costs and tend to concentrate, by economic necessity, on the popular subjects. They also have residual overheads and, in some cases, employees to pay too. If the income per image reduces drastically then they will feel the pain first and hardest. A one-man operation in the less-developed world has much lower costs and the income is worth proportionally more so they should be able to keep going for far longer. The hobbyist is fairly safe too as any money that comes in is simply a bonus that can be spent on new equipment.
4469
« on: October 30, 2009, 10:32 »
Review times are not very consistent; sometimes hours, somtimes a day. Now, I have some waiting for several days.
Like others, I've noticed that a long wait usually ends in batch rejections.
The latter case sounds as if the reviewer may consider the images to be borderline and they then get passed to a more experienced reviewer. Nowadays there is so much over-supply of new images, at least in popular subjects, that the agencies can comfortably afford to reject anything borderline.
4470
« on: October 30, 2009, 06:58 »
It is extremely unlikely that 199 people would join and use their free credits to only buy images from one person.
That's an understatement! If he had 1000 images in his portfolio then the odds of a single image from his port being downloaded randomly are about 1/6000. For that to happen 808 times consecutively would require odds of about 1/5M. If he only had 100 images on-line then the odds extend to about 1/50M.
4471
« on: October 30, 2009, 06:45 »
4472
« on: October 30, 2009, 06:31 »
It seems fairly obvious to me they caught you trying to game the system and have taken the appropriate action. Didn't you just visit lots of internet cafes (or other's computers), created new accounts and then downloaded your own stuff? Are you really trying to claim that it's all an extraordinary coincidence?
4473
« on: October 30, 2009, 05:25 »
Uploaded a batch late last night and all on-line by the time I woke. Review times are usually 12 hours or less nowadays.
4474
« on: October 29, 2009, 19:55 »
New record for SS I think __ over 100K new images accepted in just the last 7 days. They've now got 8.7M images on-line and are adding to the collection at the rate of nearly 15K every day.
Just under 5 years ago they were proudly proclaiming '4000 new photos added in the last week' and it's been growing fairly steadily ever since. At what point do you think it might start to level off?
4475
« on: October 29, 2009, 13:41 »
If they are, I'm sure not seeing any bump in BigStock sales today. And even if every SS on-demand sale turned into a BigStock sale, we're still looking at a 2.70 commission being reduced to something like .50 or 1.00. Arrggghh!
Exactly __ this is really bad news. Of course BigStock also pay as little as 20% commission on their much cheaper prices too. I really don't understand why SS are doing this. I generally earn about 3x more from SS OD's as I do from BigStock in total (and therefore it follows that SS themselves earn nicely from it). Seems like they're throwing the baby out and keeping the bathwater.
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