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Messages - michaeldb
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51
« on: September 01, 2015, 18:33 »
I got the email. I'm not doing new stock images any more, but I am buying some. So I went to Fotolia site to take advantage of the sale today, but could find no sign of it or any promotion for it. Is it available to all customers? 
52
« on: August 26, 2015, 18:26 »
SSTK hit the top ten most shorted stocks on the NYSE a few days ago.
Interesting. One thing that investors in SSTK will have to keep in mind now is that if the stock starts to go up fast, it may not be for any fundamental reason but because short-sellers are moving to cover their positions. This can make a stock very volatile for reasons which the average investor does not perceive.
53
« on: August 13, 2015, 19:36 »
Why would anyone be in a hurry to install Win 10 in a Win 7 PC now?
I can see a concern if you need to buy a new PC and don't know if Win 10 will work with CC, or if you want to get past the horror that is Win 8, but otherwise why not wait until other people have suffered the bugs and MS has finally gotten around to fixing them?
54
« on: August 06, 2015, 18:46 »
Ouch. Good thing I only put a couple hundred in there. Time to buy more?
You gotta be kidding me. P/E is still sky high and the stock market bubble is about to burst.
Things do not look good for the overall market. The Fed is committing to higher interest rates but looks like it may have to do that in an economy which is not growing - that's bad medicine. Hence a lot people with profits in growth stocks are looking for reasons to sell and cash in now.
55
« on: July 08, 2015, 19:45 »
Yes, Lobo will be gone. New forum admin: Peebert.
56
« on: July 06, 2015, 18:57 »
IMHO definitely get rid of the background in the first one. And take the frog off the stool. With just the frog, the image should sell.
In the second one, I don't know. Maybe keep the background maybe not.
57
« on: July 06, 2015, 18:55 »
Interesting but strange story. I do 3D CG using Max and other software. Making images which are so similar - almost exact copies - from scratch would not be easy. It would actually be easier to make versions which are more dissimilar. It's nothing like, say, tracing a drawing. This whole thing leaves me rather puzzled and saddened. It could have been avoided so easily.
58
« on: June 19, 2015, 20:16 »
iStock started going down as a result of Getty squeezing the increasing money out of the middle-man position - at the detriment of the suppliers and end users.
iStock was and is a terribly mismanaged company from the beginning. The people who ran it acted like a clique of middle school girls. They gave a large percentage of their suppliers and customers no choice but hate their guts for many reasons. As soon as alternative companies became available iStock started to tank and the process continues to this day.
59
« on: June 18, 2015, 20:24 »
Good to remember too that selling stock is 100% of SS business
For Adobe selling stock is just the gravy on top
I expect that Adobe is also well aware that most of the hundreds of thousands of microstock contributors are Adobe customers as well. Another reason to try to keep us happy.
60
« on: June 17, 2015, 20:00 »
I know it is graphic designers, but what kind? what do they use it for most?
You are right, professional graphics designers use Illustrator and InDesign. They do work for businesses because businesses have money to spend on advertising. The guy who wants images for his book cover and the woman who wants pics for her blog probably do not know what a vector is. The surest way to make money is to learn about business and technology issues and what kind of illustrations are being used for ads and content about those issues.
61
« on: June 16, 2015, 17:52 »
Shutterstock stock was down today more than 5% (on a day when the general stock market was up about .5%). Probably not a coincidence.
Shutterstock management should immediately begin to rethink the way they have been treating contributors, such as diverting traffic away from our ports on SS and onto OFFSET where we are not allowed to contribute. I used to love SS, but their recent behavior is one of the reasons I decided to stop creating microstock and move on to things which have a future. SS should give microstockers a raise immediately. Time for them to stop investing their profits in other businesses and start thinking about the people who really contributed to their success.
62
« on: June 15, 2015, 19:42 »
What I don't understand is why RM and Midstock agencies aren't trying to be sure their images are at least technically sound. Cover all the bases. The standards have gotten * high in microstock; so why don't they also increase in the market that charges 10x the price? Pay more and get less? Oh yeah, that can be found in any market. When you pay more for something, you're not necessarily getting more.
Many big RM agency collection images high-res have always looked noisy, OOF, or just outright laughable technically every time I've zoomed in. Maybe it's time the technical bar was raised, across the board. The smartphone and iphoneography stuff is now bringing the technical standards back down, perhaps. A camera that's always in your pocket is better than no camera... but does that make the image worth hundreds of dollars, even if it was captured on a piece of crap? I guess so. Art is always subjective. Feed me 3 bottles of sriracha sauce with a few beers and and bunch of old taco meat and let me vomit it on a canvas, and then I can sell it to the highest bidder as .:abstract art:.
I agree with what you said, but I am a little baffled by the illustration. What does alt-text on a snapshot of Bill Nye apparently being hypnotized by electric utility meter have to do with? Just asking.
63
« on: June 13, 2015, 21:49 »
Some companies are reaching for new paradigms: Canva; Creative Market (owned by Autodesk which sells 3DS Max and Maya) and this site: https://www.pixelsquid.com/This is what this site says on its landing page. Future of Stock Imagery
Substantially easier for designers to create breathtaking and believable scenes with minimal effort. The good news is this is a real, well-funded, professionally run business (the parent business is the largest seller of stock elements for CGI) and they are looking for submitters. Non-exclusive royalty starts at 60%. Here https://www.squid.io/ Customers pay $10-$50 for individual image licenses. The bad news is there is going to be a steep learning curve for people who only know photography. The future of stock may be new ways of selling images and whole new ways of making them too.
64
« on: May 29, 2015, 19:20 »
Great link. I suppose it will only be available in the UK, but maybe Netflix or Amazon Prime will stream it. It's interesting that it must be a re-packaging of Shark Tank which was itself the US version of the UK program Dragon's Den.
66
« on: May 25, 2015, 20:38 »
I'm not a photographer but:
The photos look ok on the webstite story, but how would a cell phone pic look when blown up to 4865-inch? $90k good? Somebody needs to email those NY suckers 'art' collectors: "The Emperor of Fine Art has no clothes."
67
« on: April 25, 2015, 17:01 »
I like the conceptjust join and now waiting for that invitation email.
Hope this will success and make the change that the micro stock and creative market needs.
Regarding the USP and 'no middleman issues' consider this from an article Reason magazine today, "...a self-branded "decentralization' movement coalescing around the idea that recent breakthroughs in computer science have made it possible for individuals to exchange goods and services without the involvement of any third party.
Some of the highest profile firms in techincluding Uber, Lyft, eBay, Etsy, and Airbnbare essentially marketplace operators that facilitate trade between independent buyers and sellers. In return, they extract fees, put limits on who can participate in the market..."It seems like a really good site which does what Etsy does could succeed, and even possibly unseat SS some day. Just because a (loser) site like FAA does something seemingly similar does not mean that a really good peer-to-peer site could not succeed big time. I stopped doing microstock because it doesn't pay enough any more. I read MSG to keep up on the business, and I will watch FocalPool to see what it happens, and wish it good luck.
68
« on: April 18, 2015, 17:34 »
Yes, the key players stand to make more money if they drive the stock prices higher by squeezing contributors. However they do not rely on that solely to make money from SSTK
They regularly grant themselves stock at a cost to themselves of 0$
For instance on 04/13/2015 they granted the new Chief Marketing Officer Aditi Javeri Gokhale 42,000 shares of SSTK - Award at $0 per share
They also set up automatic trades to sell this stock and then grant themselves more at a cost of $0 every few months.
http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/Stock/SSTK/insideractions
Wish they would do that for contributors...
*not holding breath*
69
« on: April 17, 2015, 20:03 »
As a private individual, I have come to expect nothing of benefit to me from large publicly-owned corporations.....and, so far, I have not been disappointed. Every individual, whether employed or as freelance, has to work harder and harder for less and less reward to satisfy the demands of the stockholders for ever greater return. It's the way the system works and I'm used to it by now. 
With all do respect, if everyone thinks like that, you give them free hand to screw you over till you have no other choice then to pack up and find a day job.
Reminds me of a docu called Food Inc. Chicken farmers squeezed dry by corporates to the bone until they cave.
So what are YOU going to do about it?
To me the handwriting on the wall was when SS put a link on the Shutterstock landing page to send customers to OFFSET, where I was not allowed to contribute. That signaled a change - the SS I used to love - the one my images earned 6 figures in revenue for - was gone. I quit creating images for microstock then and have moved on to other things.
70
« on: April 05, 2015, 21:57 »
Do you think there is any real free market economy in the world without any interfering from the government? Name few if you can please
Disneyland? Can't think of any others.
71
« on: April 04, 2015, 19:33 »
One main thing that a lot of the workers don't understand is the difference between cost of "living wage" and "minimum wage". The living wage is what you need to have a decent life in that area so for example if you live in San Diego, California you would need around $30 an hour to have a good apartment and food on your table. In Louisville, Kentucky you would need $14 per hour to have the same standard of living. Minimum wage was never intended to be 'Living wage'...
If someone's earnings aren't high enough to match the living wage of the city what's the solution? Use the government to force higher pay? Or maybe let the market dictate who can afford to live there? Can't afford to live in ultra expensive San Diego or Seattle? Simple. The United States is huge with a lot of affordable options. Move to an area you can afford. Debate over.
Except that's not what people are doing. They just complain and expect someone else to fix their problems for them. That seems to be the way of things nowadays. I don't buy that there aren't opportunities for the next generation. There's plenty.
There's plenty of opportunities for people who have the right skills for jobs that are in demand and are motivated to get a job
It seems like the go-getter is a dying breed.
It is widely reported on the Interweb that The Millennials are quite a departure from previous generations of humanity, in ways which are perhaps not all positive.
72
« on: April 03, 2015, 21:33 »
I wonder if the business owners who are tacking on a visible surcharge for the wage increase also tacked on visible surcharges when the cost of coffee went up, or the cost of flour, or the cost of every other thing they buy on a daily basis. Seems to me like they are making more of a political statement.
I suspect the 'political statement' theory is true. But it's also true about the costs of flour, coffee, labor and everything else: When businesses have to pay more to be in business, they have to raise prices or else operate at a loss. If costs of labor go up 15%, then most of what businesses buy will go up (suppliers eventually have to pay higher labor costs too). The result is that employees make more money, but the things they buy cost more. All that has really happened is inflation. Unfortunately gov can't create new wealth by passing laws.
73
« on: April 02, 2015, 19:51 »
Anyone think the Feds should set a minimum commission standard for stock photos artists compensation?
One million dollars. (Why not? If you want more money just pass a law saying that people have to give it to you. We'll all be rich!)
74
« on: March 30, 2015, 18:14 »
Honestly, I know few reviewers and they earn between $1000-1500 and usually work about 4 hours a day with some experience. It might be low salary in USA, UK or Germany but it is a hell lot of money for such short hours in 90 % of the world. In my homecountry 2/3 ppl earn less for full time jobs! And it doesnt mean that people in east Europe or Asia are idiots and lazy workers.
wow...please let us know the name of that company that pays 1K-1.5K for 4 hours a day work?
That works out to about $8-$12 an hour. It's around minimum wage in most states.
I think you're right. Some years ago I was offered work reviewing images by a friend of mine at one of the agencies. The rate of pay was to be about $10 per our (a lot less than I was making by being a contributor at that time).
75
« on: March 27, 2015, 19:41 »
That's some scary chart Sharpshot. Any idea why that happened?
Probably some search changes killed off my best selling images. They cut commissions a few times and I stopped uploading because there was no incentive to carry on. Then there's the increased competition, especially when istock exclusives dropped the crown and started to use FT. I'm not sure why some of us have seen a big earnings drop while others have been OK.
My earnings have stayed fairly stable with SS, even though I haven't uploaded much for a long time now.
As I recall, FT had a policy starting years ago that the search results would punish contributors who did not submit new images. When I stopped submitting, my sales at FT started to fall and they are still falling, compared to SS and DT.
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