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Messages - PaulieWalnuts
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476
« on: September 21, 2015, 08:04 »
What we want to make is somewhat irrelevant to what the market dictates. My goal is not to make a one off here and there - I legitimately want to be able to live through independent sales.
Currently, with SS you can buy a 5 image RF pack for $49. You can get 750 images for $249. These are RF licenses.
Canva provides 1 image for $1. These are RM one time uses.
Picfair provides images that vary from 1 pound to 30 pounds. These are RM one time uses.
Assuming I get a set amount of sales at SS, and a majority of these are subscriptions, in the end I am making about 25-33 cents a sale. If I charge $2 and get the same amount, I'm netting about 6-8x the amount I am currently making.
And, these are not RF - if they are one time uses, I retain a lot more comfort in knowing I'm not giving everything away for such nominal amounts.
Let's recap:
Currently, a customer can buy RF, full resolution images from SS for $0.33/image on subscription, and $9.80 on demand.
They can buy one time use images from Canva/Picfair/Unknown from betwen $1 to $5.
In order to remain competitive, it simply does not make sense to sell independently at $20 an image, or $200 an image. By doing this, we are asserting that we always intend to remain on the fringes.
I don't have the illusion of competing in volume with SS tomorrow, but I hope to cut into that market in the future. So in planning for it now, I should price competitively. Yes?
A few thoughts. Sales Volume. Even if you're in an area with very low cost of living you would need big volume to live off of $2 sales. Let's say in the US an average salary is $50,000. That's $961 a week. You would need 480 sales weekly. Even at half that of $25,000 which I think is considered poverty level here, that's 240 sales a week. Maybe you're a master of marketing or social media but that seems to be a stretch. Then there's the fact that you're running a business and your revenue isn't necessarily your salary. Your business revenue goal will probably need to be a lot higher than your salary goal. Price Point. If you create similar images to what's available at most sites already you will have no choice but to match or undercut their price to try and compete. But why would they come to your site if they can get what they need at a similar price just about anywhere else? If you create unique images that have demand and arent readily available at most other sites you are more likely to be able to get $20 or $200 an image. And unless you come up with some totally new category of image that people go wild for you wont have much sales volume. Maybe $200 isn't the right price point for you but I'd question if $2 is enough. One Time Use. I'd question what percentage of buyers know or care what the license terms are for most existing sites. The terms and licensing options are normally hidden in the background for the sake of buyer convenience. And if the idea is to enforce your license terms are you going to contact clients or thieves to get the $2 they owe you? Not trying to blow the wind out of your sails but I'm not seeing how this would work. Do you have really low salary requirements or know how to get a ton of sales volume?
477
« on: September 19, 2015, 13:29 »
Well it's a year later and I have my answer. As of right now it's about $200 but I just got started a couple months ago after dropping my IS exclusivity. It will probably take another year before I get a stable average. My site was up and running for about a year before I went indie so it was already indexed by Google and getting traffic. I simply turned on the RM license after my exclusivity expired.
Obviously this will be different for everybody. Demand for your images, uniqueness, sales and marketing experience, search engine knowledge, social media skills, and a ton of other factors will affect your results. It has been a ton of learning and work so far but absolutely worth it for me.
You need to offer something that buyers can't get on micro. If you're selling the same apples on white as micro why would they bother coming to your site? Why would they pay higher prices? They wouldn't. Have a strategy that makes sense and commit to executing it.
Thanks to the people who took the poll or responded.
478
« on: September 18, 2015, 18:00 »
You can't blame them for trying. Photographers are the cause of this. If photographers always said no or even responded with a bit of a %$#@! tone this kind of stuff would never happen. But plenty of photographers gladly hand over their work to these vultures which encourages them to do it more.
But hey, if one of your friends said you could get free (gas, camera equipment, haircut, etc) by simply telling a business that you'll make sure to give them credit who wouldn't do this? Unfortunately it seems like the only people that fall for this stuff are artists. What other business could you do this kind of thing where they wouldn't look at you like you were crazy?
My most recent one was a designer that was doing (paid) work for their client that was having a swanky private party at some ultra affluent location. After telling me this, he asked if I could email him the full-res original file for a specific image. Normally I try to be diplomatic but it was one of those days where I just wasn't in the mood and couldn't believe the ballsiness.
Sometimes exposure might make sense in trade for work for certain situations but I haven't come across one yet.
479
« on: September 18, 2015, 11:25 »
Clearly, Adobe has decided to make buying photos effortless with ONE CLICK Downloads, NO USAGE RESTRICTIONS, NO EXTENDED LICENSE issues, ONE SIZE buying, right into Photoshop!
Just to be clear: They are not showing any restrictions in the download/purchasing process. That doesn't mean, they don't exist.
Because as an Adobe customer, you are agreeing to their overall Legal Terms (http://www.adobe.com/legal/terms.html) which also includes the "Adobe Stock Additional Terms" (http://wwwimages.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/legal/servicetou/Adobe_Stock_Terms_en_US-20150313_hpc.pdf) which also include the "usual" Extened License requirements.
However, at this stage you are not able to purchase an Extended License through Adobe Stock itself but you will be asked to license the file through Fotolia. At least that's how Adobe presented this step at their CC 2015 launch event.
This suppresses sales of extended licenses, IMO. I think the issue has less to do with the existence of the EL and the legal agreement and more to do with ease of purchase and the marketing of them. Not mentioning them at all in the buying process and making customers jump through additional hoops to purchase them will surely deter people from doing the right thing in cases where an EL is appropriate.
Does anybody even get extended license sales anymore? I'd guess this usage is so heavily abused that extended licenses may eventually go away for most micro sites fairly soon. I don't think most micro buyers even know what an extended license is. And for the ones that do know why would they care? So what if they breach terms? Who's checking? Nobody except for maybe Getty. And even when Getty goes after infringers the thieves raise a big stink and try to shame big bad Getty for asking them to pay for what they stole. When I pulled most of my images from Istock I suddenly got a few calls asking how they could license the images because they had them planned for projects. When I asked about usage, several of them planned on using images for resale. When I asked about extended licenses they had no idea what I was talking about. So they were planning to use my cheap images, with the wrong license, to probably make a boatload of money and I would get a percentage of a few dollars. No thanks. On my website where I now only license images as RM I got a $450 sale a couple days ago. And 100% of $450. I understand the idea of making it easier for buyers to buy. To make more sales. But is the end result really more money in the pocket of contributors?
480
« on: September 02, 2015, 09:43 »
'You wanna know what else discourages sales of wall art? People being able to take FAA images from Google that are big enough to print an 8x12 with."
Hard to say if that is true or not. I know small images make up about 2% of my sales. For example last month i sold 10 prints over 20 inches. Maybe there are hundreds of people out there just downloading my 900 pixel image and making small prints. but i think that it is more likely it is fairly rare.
"the ROI was not worth having my work stolen for web sites."
They don't actually steal, they download a copy with no license. I am not sure where the loss comes in. As a stock seller I have thousands of images all over the internet that can be downloaded. Why would I not use my own images to promote my own products when I allow those who license my images to do so? I am not going to stop making real money because of imaginary losses.
My experience is that the average person will take anything they can easily get and do whatever they are able with it. Mostly because they don't think they're doing anything wrong. If a person can copy an image off the internet and easily use it for their blog or make a print out of it why would they buy it? The answer is they wont buy it so why should I make it easy for them to take it? If the image has an unavoidable watermark the person will most likely keep looking until they find a suitable image that doesn't have a watermark. A small percentage will spend some time removing the watermark. It's human nature to try and get something for free. When you remove all of the free options then people will pay. This is what's happening with newspapers. All news used to be free. Slowly news sites are charging money or are going out of business. Eventually when the weeding-out process is done we'll have only pay based news. If you want access you'll need to pay. True, people can download and copy my images from all kinds of places including from clients. But what matters is the license type. All of my RF images have no way of tracking infringers which is why I'm no longer doing RF for my new work. I have a simplified RM license so I know who has permission to use it. Those who don't have permission will be contacted. They don't actually steal??? What do you call taking something without paying for it? If I go to a store, take a product, and walk out what does that make me? An undocumented customer? I have a feeling this will lead to the argument "they weren't going to pay for it anyway so who cares of they take it". If they weren't going to pay then they don't get the image. Simple. Part of the reason we have the problem of "unlicensed customers" is that it's broadly allowed to happen with an "oh well" attitude from people like us.
481
« on: August 27, 2015, 07:53 »
I think if you do a search you'll find dozens of posts
I also think anybody who wants to do this should come back and post after they have a business plan and funding
482
« on: August 26, 2015, 12:12 »
The FAA guy (Sean Broihier) believes watermarks hurt sales. He's said so on the FAA forum. So watermarks are pretty low on his business development priority list. He's spending his time on T-shirts and hoodies.
I think he's right - watermarks do discourage sales of 'wall art'.
You wanna know what else discourages sales of wall art? People being able to take FAA images from Google that are big enough to print an 8x12 with.
483
« on: August 26, 2015, 11:53 »
Has DP hit the status of swanky offices, free food and trips or are they still in a basement somewhere? They are likely lowering commissions so they can survive - but not many of us care.
Depositphotos Inc. 110 E Broward Blvd #1700 Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301 Street ViewMap View Looks like a pretty nice expensive corporate office building in the ultra affluent city of Fort Lauderdale Florida a few blocks from the Ocean. I doubt they're in the basement. Maybe they should have skipped the ocean view to make sure they could compete without having to cut contributor rates. Seems to be a pattern here. Live it up and when the party bucket starts getting empty go shake down contributors.
484
« on: August 26, 2015, 10:01 »
"You'll make more money if we lower the commissions and the prices." Right. I've heard that before. 
Uh yah right. Seems like contributors are always first to get hit. Was there any mention from any of these agencies of attempts to reduce operating costs? Reduce labor costs? Trim the swanky offices, free food, or trips?
485
« on: August 26, 2015, 09:15 »
Hey,
you can never wish a site admin to watermark all the images on of his site, firstly, technology is not fully supported for such a task. Watermarking images one by one will cost a lot of time, even batch watermark tool can be time consuming thanks to users uploading not in the same time. Secondly, you never know the site add a solid watermark. A better way to guarantee this is to add watermark yourself(watermark).  Just tell you on this. You may not know that Youtube watermark (check here to know: Your unknown Youtube Watermark ) unstable watermark to videos. So what you can expect other site to protect your ownership. If they had added a watermark to yours, it's already better than other sites.
Oh, if you sell your images to a site, then your copyright becomes site copyright, they will have the right to decide whether to add watermark or not instead of you.
I only got two things out of this reply None of what you said made sense to me You have a watermarking tool to promote
486
« on: August 05, 2015, 23:22 »
Hey now folks play nice. There are enough pennies for everyone.
487
« on: August 04, 2015, 07:47 »
I wont agree with "too late" attitude no matter how many posts i see about it. I simply know its not too late, actually its very simple. Digital media market demand is growing faster than we can upload all our pictures at once.
I know people who earn 2k $ per month. I know people who earn 5k $ per month. I know people who earn 20$ usd per month ... its all matter of quantity and quality and most important planning when you are uploading what kind of motive.
There are always people who will succeed no matter what adversity there is. There is just a lot more adversity then there was when I started eight years ago. 10 years ago you could have been a so-so photographer, knew nothing about business, and watched earnings grow nicely. Today you would either need to live in a country with ultra low cost of living or you need to bring your A game if you want to earn a living. And by A game, I mean you have business experience, a sales and marketing background, are endlessly motivated, understand metadata/SEO, and can monetize trends. Oh yeah, and you're an excellent photographer. But so is everybody else these days so that doesn't mean as much as it used it. So it's not too late for the right people. But those people already know that.
488
« on: August 03, 2015, 17:38 »
5 years? That's crazy. Maybe if they we paying insane money but not at those prices.
489
« on: July 31, 2015, 17:07 »
I wouldn't see it as viable way to make a living but, as a pure hobbyist, I could just build up just on my hard drive OR find an audience for the stuff I produce and make a few bucks in the process. Micro provides this.
I still go back to the "is it worth it to you" question. Even with stuff laying on your hard drive you still need to select, edit, add IPTC data, submit, get rejections, resubmit, and then actually make a sale. If you have two people working 40 hours a month one may make enough to buy a cup of coffee while the other can make a house payment. If I was the cup of coffee person no way would it be worth it regardless of how much of a hobby it was. If it covered my mortgage it would be absolutely worth it. I just wonder what percentage of micro people are coffee vs mortgage for that 40 hour a month scenario.
490
« on: July 27, 2015, 11:53 »
I'm also a Sony user. My first experience with Sony's support/repair vendor Precision Camera is that they're absolutely incompetent. Not sure how their new Pro support is but I'm considering it. Sony really needs to check into this company or get a different support partner.
I thankfully haven't had to use Nikon support. I recently sent a Canon camera in for repair and it got lost. Not sure who to blame. Post office can't find it and Canon said they have no record of it. Either way, not good.
491
« on: July 27, 2015, 08:48 »
chuckcars,
A handful of embittered contributors are determined to push everyone different out of this forum, just ignore them.
Don't you people ever get tired of patronizing newbies? Everybody started somewhere. If I could find other avenues for my work I would follow them and never look back to micro. Than again, micro doesn't bring the bread on my table. Apparently those other avenues make some people so very bitter that they have to take it out on someone, why not on newbies. They should climb down from their illusory pedestal and face the reality of present days not history.
Newbies will learn only by practicing and observing, not from the useless advices and trolling most (and I said most, not all) of the auto-entitled pros are offering in here.
The history of microstock is the same as the history of the entire economy worldwide, there is nothing new to learn about it.
I'm not bitter. Just enthusiastically challenged.
492
« on: July 27, 2015, 08:38 »
I dont think it's ever too late as long as you know what to expect and are happy with that. There are a few things to consider.
Supply probably heavily outweighs demand for general nature images so I wouldn't expect a lot of sales for this type of work unless it's very unique.
The current trend for contributor earnings seems to be down for most people.
Everyone eventually hits the wall where no matter how many images you create your income doesn't keep pace or even drops.
So your options are to create a high volume of images, increase saleability of your images, or both.
So I think the "is it worth it" question really goes back to you. Based on your current sales is it worth it to you? If not, can you increase your image quantity or quality to make enough sales to where it becomes worth it?
493
« on: July 26, 2015, 09:40 »
...Honestly, Scott isn't going to do anything positive for contributors. His job will be to enrich Adobe at contributors' expense. He is in all likelihood compensated based on how he impacts revenue and margins. We hurt both.
Why do people belive that everything must be a zero sum game?
Why do people belive that every transaction must have a winner and a loser?
...
When microstock started, large numbers of customers were people and organizations who had not previously paid for stock images & illustrations. It was too expensive and difficult to buy from Getty, Corbis, Jupiter Images, et al.
None of this is about beliefs, just about observations of the last decade in microstock.
This is so true, before microstock came along it did bring in large numbers of customers who had not prieviously paid for stock images. Difficult to buy? No. Expensive? to a point, mostly if you were a small business trying to get caught up in the web and blog craze of that era.
The one thing you did forget to mention however is that it also brought along large numbers of photographers who had little to no experience whatsoever and starting selling photos for way way way below market value.
The professionalism in the stock industry was still valid up to this point with those very agencies you mention and so many more.
The cut throat race to the bottom sell hundreds of images for 0.25c royalties did not even exist prior to this.
None of this is about beliefs, just about observations of the last decade in microstock. And observations of watching an industry in free fall.
While it brought in new buyers who previously couldn't afford images, it also immediately dropped the prices for large corporations who were now paying a few dollars instead of a few hundred or a few thousand. So in the end did contributors come out ahead with this change? Regarding difficult to buy, maybe, but that only seems to have become an issue when RF came along with the easy-pay-and-use-for-everything-indefinately model. I'm using a simplified RM model on my website and haven't had any complaints from buyers.
494
« on: July 26, 2015, 09:26 »
To the OP, it is a bit confusing but I like the potential. The prices and royalty percentage are steps in the right direction. The Royalty Free license is a no-go for me. All of my new higher end images are Rights Managed only.
495
« on: July 26, 2015, 09:13 »
I guess it depends on what you shoot. I have a D800 and 5DMII. Both great cameras. The 5DMIII would probably have an advantage with faster frame rate for moving subjects. The D800 is higher resolution. Other than that it's probably down to personal preference of brand, features (flash vs no flash, etc), and how it feels in your hand.
496
« on: July 24, 2015, 07:52 »
Congrats to Scott. Just curious. When he was at SS what did he do for contributors that this move to Adobe means good things for us? And I ask this because as a fresh IS non-exclusive I didnt keep track so I really have no idea.
497
« on: July 19, 2015, 15:45 »
With any of these sites the results depend on a lot of different things. And yes I'm not big on FAA focusing on small margin products. I'd rather see them offer a wider range of high demand high margin prints like wood or whatever.
The fact that he posted this means its a concern for them. Maybe like if contributors keep spreading stuff all over he'll have no option but to adopt a similar model to Zazzle or whatever. And if he does head that route hopefully my personal site will have grown to a point that it won't matter much or at all. I'm working on reducing my reliance on partners.
498
« on: July 17, 2015, 19:37 »
This is an old post but for whatever reason I just got another email from FAA for this http://fineartamerica.com/newsletters/five-percent-commissions.html. And I'd say it's even more relevant a year later. Since then I've worked toward equalizing my pricing. I've dumped Zazzle, CafePress and all these other sites that are competing on lowest price where I'm the collateral damage. And I'm avoiding any new low price sites. I only now support sites that can match my personal site pricing and at the moment FAA is one of them. Wanna know what? I keep raising my print prices and my sales volume is going up. I have no problem selling prints, and even some stock photos, in the hundreds of dollars that these sites are selling for a small fraction of that. And on top of that, even with bottom feeder prices, I rarely sold jack at Zazzle or elsewhere. The only thing that I ever sold at Zazzle was 25 cent magnets and postcards. Total waste of time. So why can I sell $400 canvas wraps on my site but Zazzle can't sell them for $200 or even $100. What that tells me is price isn't the problem. It's false price competition and while these sites battle to survive they're taking us down with them.
499
« on: July 17, 2015, 19:16 »
Several of the articles I've read about stock images state there's a huge potential market and that sales right now are only scratching the surface. I'm not sure where they get their info or why library growth would be outpacing sales growth in that case, as it certainly seems to be.
Probably because sales downloads are growing but prices are dropping and there are a flood of new images. Buyers love it. Sites are probably seeing record sales, revenue, and profits. But as more contributors are competing for a smaller slice of a lower priced pie we're not quite seeing the same wonderful results.
500
« on: July 17, 2015, 14:16 »
It's an interesting thought. Why don't we just talk to them and tell them what is acceptable to us as a whole.
It's the "us as a whole" part that's the problem. Getting millions of people, or a least a large percentage of the top people, to come to agreement and stick to it is the challenge. It's the same challenge whenever someone comes here and suggests forming a union.
So currently if someone approaches one of the top sites and suggests pricing standards the response would probably be "hhaahaahaaha, good one".
Right now supply (us) seems to be far outweighing demand. And with record amounts of new images being submitted we are indirectly telling these sites we are perfectly happy with the way things are so there's no reason they would listen to any proposal to change pricing in our favor.
Find a fix to the "us as a whole" problem and you (we) will have the leverage to propose price and royalty changes. As it is now they own the boat and are the captain and we're just the workers rowing to wherever they want to go.
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