And what about the mystic about titles and ranking?

I just read again on an agency that we should give different titles to similar images, not really sister images, maybe wider view or vertical versus horizontal. And that agency also wrote: Same pictures on many different agencies are okay, but google doesn�t like it, if they have the exactly same title. So it influences the ranking on google.

But it's hard to say that there are a lot of stock image buyers who search via google. Possibly a few, probably not many, but that opinion isn't based on any inside knowledge of any agencies.

I've been on FAA for about 8 years, and by some miracle I usually sell a few photos every month.I've been reading their user forum all that time, and I've seen the issues.   You want opinions on FAA, you've come to the right place, I have them.

The FAA "Artist Web Site" sounds like a good deal, and it's better than nothing, but it has some serious shortcomings.

It's not really a web site, just a customized view of the FAA site restricted to your work.  You can't use your own domain (although you can redirect it).   

Customization is very limited; you can't actually get at the HTML or add any of your own. 

The big issue in my mind is Google.  FAA plays lots of games to funnel Google keyword searches to their main site, not to "your" site.  I think it's very questionable whether an FAA 'Artist' web site gets indexed in any meaningful way, or has useful search ranking.  You never build up your own 'domain authority', you're just adding to FAA's.  And since you don't own the domain, you can't hook up Google Search Console and see what's really happening.

If you use Google's site performance tool, you'll see that an FAA 'artist' site ranks poorly for speed, due mainly to the overly large JPGs they're serving, which the browser has to resize (this is NOT the case on their main site).  And it's also bad on mobile devices.  Google is probably penalizing these sites because of this.  While you can have keywords and a description, the image pages overall are cluttered and repetitious, likely to be rejected by Google's crawler.

Bottom line, one of these 'artist sites' can be useful IF you have your own ways of sending customers to it.  But I don't think you can ever build up a Google ranking.

These are just my opinions and observations.  If someone thinks they're getting good Google ranking for their work on an FAA 'artist' site,  please jump in here.

I'm pretty certain you are correct with the above. FAA mostly works for those who do marketing themselves (I don't), they don't pretend otherwise. However, some of their claims, like 'Fully customisable artist website', as you noted, are Trumpian in hoodwinkery.

A similar thing happens, or did until recently, I probably haven't checked for a couple of months, with both iS/Getty and Alamy, whereby if your file turns up in a Google search and  you click on the file and it takes you to a general page, on which your file may not even be visible, which you'd think might be annoying for buyers, but I don't know how many buyers do a google search for stock.

Quote from: Lizard on September 25, 2020, 13:08

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Quote from: Lizard on September 21, 2020, 18:26

   
 
One of the things that makes FAA convenient is that you get your personal pixels.ccom site which is basically FAA store clone  which you can use as a store implemented in your personal website or by app on page, or via link to your pixels store where only your work is shown. 

EXCEPT for the little fact that when  someone does a search on 'your' pixel site, the results come from the entire FAA collection, so any users you may attract are soon lured away

No it doesn't. That happens only on your FAA profile page. On your personal pixels.com site only your work shows up and nothing else.

I was 100% sure in this but I just checked again. Only your work shows up and its a huge +

It's happened in the past. Then a bunch of users complained on the forum there, and eventually it was fixed.  I think this happened more than once.

I've been selling there for years, usually a few a month.

Really strange, Im there from 2013. and somehow it never happened to me, and Im on my account almost on daily basis so I would probably have noticed. That not happening is one of the main reasons i use FAA at first place because than the personal store would lose its purpose.

pixels does a nice display of your work, it's the search that lures people away

 i noticed this when  i first returned earlier this year & FAA acknowledged this was the case and went on to say pixels wasnt really meant for personal sites but to display the entire collection by all!

I've just been again on my pixels site, and like last night, I can't seem to do anything there which brings up anyone's images other than my own. What are you doing to bring up a general search?

What about Photo4Me, it sells well?

wordplanet wrote:

I'm also on Photo4Me, a UK site and have only sold European scenics there.

I have one pic there. Seemed like you had to get into a lot of likes to get likes back which might push your photos up in the rankings. The market is mostly UK, as far as I know.

All I know was when some were complaining about low earnings, Gagne said you need more and then said how about 75,000.  I suspect she has a lot up somewhere.

According to her own website she is exclusively on iS and Getty; the few random Getty images I clicked on are "E+ collection" so ported over from iS - but it was too small a selection to know whether she can also upload to G directly.

Quote from: rinderart on September 22, 2020, 13:59

OK...MSG account closed, Im done. be well.BTW. I don't get 10 cents.  got a raise today from SS.

Im sorry things got a bit hot and that you decided to leave and I can just wish you the best.

He said last week that he was going to leave here very soon.

Hi there,
Just signed up to the forum. Looking forward to getting involved many times.

I have quite a few photos I'm going to upload of wild birds and flowers so my question is, would you isolate them or not?

Why not try some of each and see what works for you?

Thanks for reply.

I don't think my account is hacked. Nothing suspicious happened.

Nobody can see my friends, not even my friends. Maybe they showed ad to so many people and some of them happened to by my friends.

I think that's probably what's happened. How likely is it that the buyer would know the person in the photo was you?

I don't know how much they can use and re-use picture that has the cheapest license. I got 0.33$ on Shutterstock. It's not one of those extended licenses where I sometimes get 50$.

They can re-use it as often as they like online, no EL needed (check the licence agreement below).

What if ad is a scam? Can they forbid them to use it further?

I don't think there is anything about that in the SS licence agreement:
https://www.shutterstock.com/license

Jo-Ann beat me to it, but I'm posting the reply anyway, so that you can consider:

You might like to think about whether you are really happy using yourself as a model (I'm not) - you have very little control over how the image is used, and the image can be misused against the terms of service.

Also be aware that FAA's main (not 'only') market is the US*, so you should prioritise providing material for them. The base prices (even without artist commission) seem very expensive to me (in the UK) but I've heard a few people say that the prices are fairly standard in the US market.

Be careful about believing too much of what they say, both officially and on their forum. Things aren't necessarily what they seem there.
That said, I've heard that the quality of purchased products is good, and I get a few sales there, so I just keep going.

*This is a "random selection" of recent print sales, so you can get an idea of what sells: https://fineartamerica.com/recentprintsales.html

Why in the he** are they removing so many sports images .... godalmighty!

Like photos of politicians and celebs, to avoid conflict with Getty togs.

Alamy has responded to Photo Archive News that kindly shared my post on https://photoarchivenews.com/news/stock-photographer-i-love-you-alamy-but-im-breaking-up-with-you/

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Alan Capel : Commercial Director:

Our business is in good health, even during these challenging times, with investment and growth plans in place as part of the PA Media Group.

Alex has raised some interesting points but we don�t see his experiences as representative of all our contributors. As with any large-scale diverse platform, there will be peaks and troughs for content creators. Many factors play into that, including the quality and diversity of imagery, visual trends, comprehensive metadata and crucially, demand from customers.

We will continue to listen to our photographers and contributing agencies and build a business that rewards great photography and meets the needs of our current and future customers.

Your experiences may not be representative of all Alamy contributors (Live News is a different category, and even there prices can be falling. Though every now and then I see news about a good sale [among people I actually know] in among the general reports of ever-decreasing value sales), but I'm as sure as I can be that it's representive of the vast majority of Alamy contributors. If your port is doing badly, I'm pretty certain that's the case for most non-Live News contributors.

Grumpy Old Woman aka Stoppy Scottish Cow here.

Happily, never contributed to SS, as I wouldn't knowingly upload for 25c. (Yeah, ironically, I'm leaving files elsewhere which can earn less, though the average is the right side of $1. Sometimes only just.  Occasionally submitting, but only when I incur no expenses other than time and electricity.

Quote from: ShadySue on September 10, 2020, 06:13

Quote from: trabuco on September 10, 2020, 06:03

When the new ones become exclusive their old pictures become exclusive too? Or are just the new ones?

Just the new ones.

The wrong answer.
Don't mess up "exclusivity" and "sale price". Yes, the old photos will stay in the "essential" collection and will cost 1 credit.

But on iStock, exclusivite means not "pictures' exclusivity" but "contributor's exclusivity" - you will be the exclusive cobtributor, and ALL your RF-imagery must be exclusive for iStock. It means that all your accounts in otger agencies must be turned down.

You will still able to sell your imagery in otger agencies via other licenses though - for example, via RM license, ir as goods on POD services.

Sent from my LM-V600 using Tapatalk

Sorry, I totally misinterpreted the question.
Absolutely, the old files will now be exclusive, like all one's RF files.
Somehow, I thought the question was about whether the old files would be sold at 3 credits, which is a pretty important question if someone had an existing port of several thousand files. However, that wasn't the question.