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Messages - MichaelJayFoto
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476
« on: July 16, 2013, 03:11 »
Since most new images neither get sold nor even seen, it seems to be pretty irrelevant to istock (or contributors) whether anyone uploads or not Well, you shouldn't forget that one of the main parts for non-exclusives is the partner program. I do sell new files quite well through the partner program. So there still is a certain incentive to upload new image to iStock. I do sell new files on iStock itself occasionally as well, though certainly not as many as a few years ago. However, these changes are happening during the usual summer slowdown and there are other changes announced for the near future. I am not sure how all of this is going to look at the end but I think we need to wait at least until September to see how customers and contributors are reacting to the changes during the next sales season.
477
« on: July 15, 2013, 23:55 »
No independent contributor now has any incentive to upload new content to IS unless royalties are increased substantially ... Yes, you would think so. Then again, I have heard this argument for half a decade now with almost any change that has been made. Still many independents are uploading images (though I do know quite a lot who don't). Maybe this is part of the illusion: While there seems to be more or less agreement between people posting at MSG, there is a huge amount of people who A) continue uploading but won't mention it because you just don't mention "business as usual" B) continue uploading but won't mention it because anyone stating they will continue is prone to be bashed here C) continue uploading but does not read or write on MSG So I don't believe that iStock is weakening their position and should be afraid not to get any new uploads from independents. Actually right now with the upload limits raised I am watching quite a few huge portfolios being added to iStock these days. Some of them existing contributors with a huge backlog, some of them more or less completely new portfolios with thousands of images each.
478
« on: July 15, 2013, 23:49 »
I followed it only from time to time besides shooting, post processing, distributing my images across agencies, keeping up with other industry news, starting at new agencies.
It looks very interesting and maybe it's about time to join it. But it's hard to just cut out an unknown amount of time from my schedule, hoping it will return at least the amount of money it takes to host it plus the time I need to invest. And I don't believe in "customers randomly appearing", so I need a clearer picture about a marketing plan going along with starting a site.
479
« on: July 14, 2013, 03:01 »
...and also how many exclusive photos are there on istock? anyone know? Nobody knows exact numbers but if you do searches with popular terms you will find that 50-55% of results are exclusive. And the total numbers of files seems to be around 14.5 million at the moment. just wondering how you exclusives are doing with your new E+ files on Getty? Is it helping much? You will get different answers from contributors. It never worked for me, even with 300-400 images online at Getty I hardly ever had any sales at all. Some others are reporting that GI Sales makes some 20% of their overall royalties on iStock.
480
« on: July 13, 2013, 13:40 »
It rather seems as if PP has stalled on take-off and crashed. And by tradition, nobody will bother fixing it before Monday. It was interesting that Lobo said the payments were processed from Getty, not from iStock, and I doubt if anybody at Getty gives two hoots about them. Just another chore for someone. What? Where did he say that? Well, the sales HAPPEN at different Getty sites, Thinkstock and photos.com - so Getty is doing the sales, creating the reports and send them to iStock. That's why iStock doesn't have full control of the timing. But the data needs to be imported to iStock's system, and that's where the problem starts as it wasn't built to have millions of sales added from outside. Well... Anyways, about the list above: I have sales from the 1st to the 3rd, so at least one of the report has started at the beginning of the month. Download numbers are far lower than April, so I guess it's not the full report yet. It is terribly slow, even compared to the months before. And it's not only photos.com as you offered as one potential explanation, actually I only found Thinkstock sales so far. Yes, Monday it is. Until then we might see a handful of additional sales coming in but no one will take care to solve the question why it's going so slow...
481
« on: July 13, 2013, 04:20 »
Hey, im new to stock fotografie. How many pictures i need to have 50$ every month? You need 127 images and distribute them through 9 agencies. If you are like me. Which you are not. But that would be based on my numbers. I'd recommend selling through Shutterstock, iStock, Fotolia and Dreamstime first. And it takes about six months of uploading to get to a more or less regular level of downloads.
482
« on: July 12, 2013, 07:31 »
I see! I couldnt find where is explained what the poll was.
However isnt the poll abit pointless then? And also how is istock exclusive more than 100% of someones total earning? You can only earn a 100% of your earnings.
Would it not be more informative to show average earned per month per agency?
I don't think the "average earned" would be any better because we all have different portfolios in size, quality, topics, so there would be no direct relation to us personally anyways. As far as I remember, the way it is set up is that monthly results are compared to a "random" number in the system (probably set to a value which makes the top agency get close to 100 in good months). So while the top number has no real value, you can say the average votes earns three times more on Shutterstock (73.6) than on Fotolia (24.5). To measure earnings of iStock exclusives against independents, you would have to add up all the independent values (somewhere in the low 200's) and compare it to the value shown. So the average voting iStock exclusive makes about 50% more than the average of voting independents.
483
« on: July 12, 2013, 05:54 »
Well, it isn't really early, it is the 12th. I think there have been a few times they have run the numbers at about this time of the month. Actually I believe three of the four PP payments have started around the 15th this year, so it seems a typical time of the month to have the reports. And given that it usually takes four to six days to process one month, I don't think June numbers will come in particularly early.
484
« on: July 11, 2013, 14:23 »
Let me just add, there is indeed a positive aspect I currently observe with the new prices: I rarely had downloads beyond the Large size in the past. Usually about 2-3% of my sales were XL or larger.
In July my XL+ sales are at 12% of my downloads. So even though it's a short period of time, my current assumption is that buyers are buying "rather too large than too small" at those low prices nowadays. So I could (like my assumption with lots of subs sales never going to use) also conclude that many of these downloads are "overpaid" in comparison to their actual use.
ETA: I just pulled the other end of the stats - usually I had 25-30% of my downloads in XS size, in July the number of XS downloads was just 10%. So indeed it seems more clients are going for higher resolutions than they did in the past. I like that trend.
485
« on: July 11, 2013, 14:13 »
The average for the lowest level contributor on Istock would be a bit over 80 cents for a Large image and around $1.50 for XXXL. The averages seem very similar now that Istock has lowered the price of independents files, coincidence? Wrong. The highest you can get at the lowest royalty rate is 4 credits * $1.63 * 15% = $0.96. The list prices for Corporate Account are giving up to 40% discount for large packages. There are regular discounts of up to 20% etc. So your "bit over 80 cents" are very much on the optimistic end. As I said, iStock does have a subscription program paying (in my case) $0.28 per download, for large or small ones. It's just elegantly hidden behind the name "Partner program" but it's not different. About two thirds of my downloads within "the total iStock deal" are coming from this PP, so the average across all iStock downloads is lowered far beyond your calculation. And yes, there is an inherent difference between subscription sales and single image/image pack sales: If you have to pay separately for each single image, you are very likely to only download images that you are going to use; subscription buyers are far more indiscriminate to download more images than they are actually need because they paid for anyways. Be it for comping, mood boards, or potential future uses.
486
« on: July 11, 2013, 13:10 »
0.40$ for a L is getting pretty ridiculous.
You sell XXXL at SS for .025-0.38$ no?
ETA: I guess Shutterstock raised their rates, I got a negative for this. Please do tell me what an XXXL subscription sale goes for these days?
That comparison is mis-leading. Because I get $0.33 for subscription sales on SS but $0.28 for subscription sales on iStock. It's just they are called "PP earnings" on iStock and get paid out a month (or more) later. For single image sales/image packs I get $1.07 or $2.48, sometimes $8 on Shutterstock, and that is what truly compares to the $0.88 or $0.44 for large downloads on iStock.
487
« on: July 11, 2013, 06:03 »
They said the GI fix would be today.
Which timezone? 
Hey you can't reply to the same comment twice 10 hours apart can you? Guess it's not EST.
Well, in which time zone it is still "today" in the context of the quoted post? Add to that the statements given since last week. All of those basically sound like what a renter is telling his landlord when the rent is overdue. "Tomorrow", "later", "we'll try". Then maybe you understand why something that someone said in a forum is not really the most trustworthy information you can get. It's not like you could get trustworthy information somewhere else, though. No, I also believe Lobo is not lying. He publishes what he hears internally. The problem is somewhere else. It's the people who tell him what they are going to do today, tomorrow or next week who are not able to do their job properly or in time. And obviously any sentence starting with "If things work out as planned..." can in most cases be read as "We will experience further delays".
488
« on: July 09, 2013, 23:42 »
Congratulations. But given the recent changes I am afraid getting accepted at iStock suddenly does not mean anything at all anymore. I guess as a challenge of your capabilities you will have to choose Shutterstock these days. 
489
« on: July 08, 2013, 08:14 »
Sales volume is up by about 30-35% over the first few months of the year. And that is in the middle of the summer with Canada Day and Independence Day.
Money is down by about 20%...
490
« on: July 07, 2013, 05:42 »
Does anyone know the value of those free credits for contributors? What do we earn, if the client gets the credits "free"? I am pretty sure that they are still valued at $1 like they used to be as long as I remember.
491
« on: July 07, 2013, 05:40 »
But I see this as a way to enourage small time buyers to go to photos.com.
http://de.photos.com/products?isource=viewplansHome
They have different plattforms, so they can push photos.com for the budget conscious intrnet customer. The problem here for me would be that I don't consider the ite by itself very competitive to the bigger agencies out there.
And of course contributors only get 20% or less royalty. Exactly my thoughts, photos.com for small buyers. And now adding a lot of images (quality aside) makes them quite a bit more competitive in the mid term, all those non-exclusive files will hit photos.com With regards to the 20%, we make less than that if iStock sells them directly.
492
« on: July 07, 2013, 02:44 »
I have a few images on Getty submitted through the Flickr program. Some sold and made more money than they probably would have made on microstock in their whole life cycle.
I was lucky to be part of Stocksy United from the start but that is just a start up and we will have to see if it works out in the long term. Mid-tiered pricing and photographer participation in the profits are good enough reasons for me to try and wait.
Also I just started submitting to a local (German) macrostock agency. While all agencies tend to call for "local images", the reality in microstock seems to be that they don't get enough sales to A) pay off and B) get a spot in the top of searches. So for me it makes sense to have a place for images with local flavor that actually offers those images specifically to clients interested in this type of images.
493
« on: July 07, 2013, 02:25 »
I ahven't followed their advertising but it wouldn't surprise if they balance that by offering huge discounts or time limited entry packages. getty has a history of working with high list prices that they then lower drastically, especially when their sales team calls the client.
Without the high list prices it is probably very difficult for sales staff to sell direct.
I was talking about the single image sales and the size of the smallest credit package. This affects only small and one-time buyers. Those are not the ones that any sales people are talking to because they spend 20 or 50 dollars, nor will they receive any discounts beyond the usual 10 or 20 per cent published every second week. To me it looks like they are making those main images much cheaper for the big clients with large credit packages but still quite expensive for the small clients buying only one or a few images. I don't mind this, I just noted it. And it fits very well in my personal idea that Getty does not really understand (or is not interested in) the small buyers.
494
« on: July 07, 2013, 02:15 »
As long as you use an image for an ad on Facebook, there shouldn't be any special considerations as it is the same use as with a website banner ad.
But uploading an image to a profile or page grants Facebook rights of re-distribution and re-licensing etc. Basically you lose control over the distribution of the image which might conflict with the standard licenses at many agencies.
So you might want to check with any agency specifically what their rules are.
495
« on: July 07, 2013, 01:56 »
Indeed, I also received my payment very early on the 3rd this month.
But if you already sent out a support ticket, you should get an answer. I don't think you can expect to hear back on a weekend in general, and this week was Independence Day, so many people probably took off Friday as well to have a long weekend. Give it a few days.
496
« on: July 07, 2013, 01:47 »
I don't see any of the discussion being related to the actual announcement in this case.
The payment requests were not disabled due to technical issues but due to a wrong data import done with the Getty sales. That doesn't have any connection to the technical infrastructure nor the system.
Also, if they manage to work it out like they said in the announcement, no one is going to lose money nor time. Actually you get to wait until Friday to make the payout request you would have had to do on Monday if you are asking for PayPal, so you can include a few more days of sales in the same request.
Shill or fanboy?
Maybe just a realist. There is a number of things I don't like about iStock. But I try to keep it to the facts and not bash just for the purpose of bashing as many people around seem to do.
497
« on: July 07, 2013, 01:43 »
"A bit optimistic" is putting it mildly, since it is around close of business on Saturday and they haven't even started.
Who'd have thought another Istock deadline would pass unmet?? 
Yes, I'll be totally shocked if that happens.
498
« on: July 06, 2013, 13:59 »
I have now learned that I have to point out this to reviewers...
Microstock is still a learning curve for me, and I am just starting to add released images.
Yeah, despite the "they should have known" (which basically is true) I found that reviewers are humans, don't know everything and make mistakes. So I prefer to provide too much info rather than too few. 
499
« on: July 06, 2013, 10:52 »
Did you add a comment to the submission? I tend to be overcareful making it as easy as possible to reviewers to accept my images.
500
« on: July 06, 2013, 03:19 »
I never said I made an error. Ok, noted. Someone did. You don't. Thanks for having that cleared up.
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