Unfortunately, I - and other contributors - have noticed that RPD is also declining at AS. In my case, it's down 16% compared to one or two years ago. It has to be said clearly that AS still has the greatest fairness among the larger agencies. But they also operate for their own benefit - not ours.

No matter how you do it, there is always a catch.

RPD is dropping? Now I have to look. I generally only watch income. Too bad it's so difficult to extract historical data from AS.

2023 RPD $.97 (more income every year, than the year before)
2022 RPD $.97
2021 RPD $.98
2020 RPD $.76

2024 RPD $.77 but it's only April. I'll give it some time. The holiday season at the end of the year is my best time.

Quote from: Diana Herrmann on April 10, 2024, 08:54

Quote from: spike on April 06, 2024, 12:42

Quote from: cascoly on March 31, 2024, 07:55

Quote from: spike on March 29, 2024, 23:02

Quote from: Sean Locke Photography on March 24, 2024, 15:53

No, it is income and not what is considered �royalties�.  You will need to pay self employment tax.

Depends. True if it's active and makes the majority of your income. If it's passive, then it's Schedule E, no self employment tax.

At least that's what my CPA said.

you  need a 2nd opinion! or a new CPA  - do they understand that royalty-free doesnt mean you're receiving royalties?

Maybe I need a new CPA, but I haven't had any issues so far at least. They told me that since I'm not actively pursing this, it is considered passive income, and royalties are reported on Sch E.

I have created all of my stock assets before moving to the US, so I haven't engaged in any stock production on American Soil (tm). Why would I pay self-employment tax?

Anyway I can ask again, or ask another CPA, but it doesn't seem that it would make sense to go on Sch C in my case. Your cases may be different.

Passive income is the IRS definition, not if you are working or not. Money from Microstock is commissions, you are an independent contractor and self employed. https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i1040sc
If you are inactive and the money is from a hobby, you aren't in business and can't take deductions.

Yes, so according to the link you shared:

"Use Schedule C (Form 1040) to report income or (loss) from a business you operated or a profession you practiced as a sole proprietor. An activity qualifies as a business if your primary purpose for engaging in the activity is for income or profit and you are involved in the activity with continuity and regularity. For example, a sporadic activity, a not-for-profit activity, or a hobby does not qualify as a business. To report income from a nonbusiness activity, see the instructions for Schedule 1 (Form 1040), line 8j."

It's not a business - it's a hobby.

I don't take deductions.

So it's not Sch C.

Where is the disagreement coming from?

You're right, you have a choice.

"Yes, you must pay taxes on any income generated from your hobby, even if it�s just a few dollars. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) considers any income earned from a hobby as taxable income. Therefore, you�ll need to report it on your tax return and pay taxes on it. However, there�s a key difference: taxpayers with hobby income (not considered business income) can avoid self-employment taxes. If you incurred any hobby-related expenses, you might be able to deduct them as well. "

If someone wants to avoid self-employment taxes, they can just declare just income. If you want to deduct expenses, which I believe would be to my benefit, so I do, then you file a Schedule C. But income is income, no matter what, if you are a US resident, and you must pay income taxes.

I am in several private groups where people share weekly ranks. So we have a good baseline. But I only know one person in the top 100 and he is no longer a single artists, but has a team.

But here we had several people sharing very high ranks. Of course you have to believe them, but they are all old timers.

Like I said, I don't need totally exact data. Just to know that it is possible.

Nice! Just remember to take your notes on the same day, around the same time, or the numbers become less reliable.

I have no doubts about your numbers or what others share. There's no reason for a private group to have people making things up.

I remain irrelevant and so do my numbers. 👍 23,200 right at this moment. Which is a sad not, not for myself, but the many others, who are doing worse than I do.

by sharing rank changes we get an even better feeling for - is it me - or is it everyone?

and in my case i think it is motivating that it is possible to move up very swiftly if you have in demand content.

there is always the rumor that agencies somehow "lock you" into a rank and that you can never earn more than some imaginary limit.

my very wild swings show this is not true at all.

i must do even better research, find some more niches and targeted content and then i am sure i can reach my financial goals even faster.

Yes, it's entertaining, and the last part BOLD is what's more important.

The imaginary limits and locks are just people who are unhappy or losing sales and make up reasons to justify or rationalize. No proof needed to post on a forum how the agency is favoring someone else. It's always, someone else gets better placement, some favorite person has unfair higher rank and makes more, because of something the agency does. It's not because those people have better images, newer images, more images, the trending images, or like you do, the successful people search for needs of customers.

"by sharing rank changes we get an even better feeling for - is it me - or is it everyone?"
The number of people who participate is so small, the sample is not enough for any valid conclusions. If it's "me or everyone" then your rank will be the same if you sell 100 images and everyone sells 100 images, as if you sell 50 images and everyone sells 50 images. Your rank, can stay the same number, if you and everyone else, sell more or sell less, because it's just a rank, by position.

One week, you're on top, because you have a great week, the next, you feel like you're down, because either you went flat, or someone else had a good high sales week. The rank can be like the tide.

I admit my rank is a joke and irrelevant. If I go up or down 5,500 places that's nowhere near if you go up or down 100 places. I'm at 28,000 right now. Everyone in the world, with the same number of sales, is at 28,000. If you have 100 sales so far this week, everyone with 100 sales, is identical to you, and everyone with 99 sales, which could be any number of people, will be the next rank down. If you are 4,000 and 100 people have 100 sales, the person with 99 and everyone else with 99 will be 3,900 rank.

I think you can see how a small number of sales, even one, can make a big change in the individual rank we can see. But really, it's a cluster. Every single image you sell, makes a move in your rank. Potentially a large move for two or three sales. So what does that really mean? It's almost like, how did the wind blow and hour ago?

I still say, watching a clock doesn't change the time. Watching your rank, while in general is interesting, it won't change your rank?  There's much more value in what you say:  find some more niches and targeted content and I'll add, watch trends, the news and the time of year.

But it's exciting and depressing at the same time what users can create.
I'm happy I'm not working in the design industry, would be extremely upset seeing what nowday's people can create without any digital image processing skills.
If development continues at this rate hardly anyone will use Photoshop in 10 years.

I know someone who is a former, successful, graphic artist and she says, the business was ruined when they came out with Adobe Illustrator and people don't have to be artists anymore, they can do everything on a computer.  I wanted to say, join in and learn Adobe Illustrator? She's still got the skills, talent, experience and brain.

If I see her this Summer I'll ask what she thinks of AI? Now people don't need to be much of any kind of artist, they just type in a prompt and have an illustration. Or don't like that? Alter the prompt, styles, lab settings, and make four more new "original" images.

I'm curious: for US citizens, microstock agencies withhold the taxes amount like for foreigners? For me for example they withhold 30% of the incoming for sales in USA.

No, but if I work for someone else they have mandatory withholding. You can understand, if people didn't have to pay in, how difficult collecting would be, after the money was spent. Instead we get a refund, which is actually our money to start with? Wow and that's supposed to make me happy?

Self employed, we must report income quarterly and make quarterly payments. Self employed must pay their own Social Security and Medicare taxes. Someone who is employed and also self employed can avoid this, as long as their contributions, cover the taxes due at the end of the year. Otherwise, quarterly payments must be made.

Your country is withholding taxes, for the US government as part of the tax treaty. In theory you should not pay US taxes and you should be able to recover this money, either as credits or some other way, when you pay your taxes in your country.

Ask a CPA, before you believe something that someone writes on a forum. (that includes me!) Or write and ask the IRS? The difference between schedule E and schedule C is passive and non-passive income. Deciding which the income is, will decide the correct form.

Whether someone is making new images or not, doesn't determine if it's passive income or not, it's about how the money is earned. There's a conflict in that commissions are different than royalties. Royalties are passive income. In my opinion, and because we get 1099s, and because my accountant reports my income from stock on a schedule C, which shows profit and loss, that's the correct form.

Clients acquire the photos on a commission basis and can use them for personal use only, like for blogs or websites, but the copyright remains in the hands of the photo�s author. Stock agencies pay a commission to photographers from each sale. They are NOT paying us a royalty. = Schedule C, not E.

Quote from: cascoly on April 07, 2024, 11:16

Quote from: spike on April 06, 2024, 12:42

Depends. True if it's active and makes the majority of your income. If it's passive, then it's Schedule E, no self employment tax.

that's new info you didnt bother to tell us earlier

Literally does not matter. I said "If it's passive, then it's Schedule E, no self employment tax."

And that seems to be true. Where I created the assets should not play a role, I could have created them in the US, and if I stopped, then it would be Sch E.

Nope, doesn't matter, it's not passive income, it's commissions. It's taxed, whether you want to call it self employment tax or income tax. It's income tax. Doesn't matter where you made them or if you are still active, it's taxable income from commissions.

Please go ask a CPA.

Quote from: Uncle Pete on April 01, 2024, 11:29

Is Caption ranked the same as Tags? Are Supertags more important than Caption?

No.  Caption is the most important.  Weight order is:

1)  Caption
2)  Super Tags
3)  Ordinary Tags

This is why repeating of anything already present in Caption doesn't have practical effect.  I verified this by experimenting with my own images;  searching as customer would for words in Caption only,  and later on with same words duplicated in Tags.  (I waited few days to make sure everything is re-indexed).  No difference.

If they change things so that weight from different sections adds up if keywords are repeated, then it becomes different game.  But then algorithm becomes too convoluted & not worth the effort IMHO

Good to know and keep in mind if I want to push specific images, from a set, to the front.

I would also consider using Pictorem as well as (or instead of) FAA. They have free shipping to the USA and Canada, have a much easier and faster upload process and I have found them to be very helpful. I did a review of them back in 2022:

https://backyardsilver.com/pictorem-a-place-to-sell-your-art/

And I recently compared their underlying costs of various sizes of prints against FAA costs that showed that they were often cheaper for similar sized prints. Gives you a bit more opportunity to increase your margins perhaps!

https://backyardsilver.com/manufacturing-costs-between-pictorem-and-fine-art-america/

Steve

Thanks for the lead on Pictorem Steve.

I don't see anyone mentioning the pay package at FAA also includes Pixels, which includes a website link, and there are shopping cart widgets.  Some items that are POD on Pixels are not available on FAA. Maybe that's not important, but that's added products.

And the free website link is nice:  http://peteklinger.com/faacart.html

My weekly rank this morning: 32,600th 

Caption Alamy 150 characters (Taken from IPTC Description field)
Description SS or IS 200 characters, DT ? many more seem to be allowed?
Title Adobe 70 characters? (but Adobe will read from Description if Title field is blank)

What was the question? 

The official field is Description, except: "The Description field, often referred to as a �caption� is used to describe the who, what (and possibly where and when) and why of what is happening in the photograph."

According to IPTC: The "Title" field, is intended to be a unique identifier for the benefit of the creator of an image or for an organization that archives the image.
Someone might mention that to Adobe, but I  think it's too late. They have the train on their own railroad.

We're committing to four pledges to the Affinity community, including that we will always offer perpetual licenses for Affinity.

Read more here: https://www.canva.com/newsroom/news/affinity-canva-pledge/

Just that the price won't be $49 anymore, it will be $490?    Actually I still use Elements and Premier which are $149 download. I have Affinity and I also have the free CC Photo package. Here's hoping that Canva with more financial backing, will improve Affinity and make it even better.

If I understand this right, Canva was started to help people who don't have editing training and wanted a simple way to create. Affinity is pretty straight forward and fits the same goal. Competition is good for all of us.

I have the same problem when viewing on Ipad. It has been reported as a bug few weeks back on Discord. Since then there is not much improvement. I have to turn the Ipad vertically to see the option "sort by date". Hopefully it will be fixed.

Ah I see, the question might have included what device, what OS, what browser.  Not as simple as my reply with "it's still there".

I'm on a desktop with a nice moderate size monitor. I remember some things that don't show when I use a full size laptop or or are missing on the smaller notebook on some sites. I hadn't thought that people use tablets as their main devices for photo work and stock sites.

Do people shoot, edit and upload from iPads now?

Hopefully the link I included in the first reply, helped out? But Tom has the direct link. (so I went back and changed it on my post)

On the dashboard there used to be an option where you can choose to show images in the order of date uploaded. Did they remove that option because I can't find it now. All I see is an option to choose by tier, whatever that is.

https://contributor.stock.adobe.com/en/portfolio  Sort by Downloads or Date, far right  on the line. Still there for me.

Direct Link:  https://contributor.stock.adobe.com/en/portfolio?limit=100&page=1&sort_by=create_desc