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Messages - stockastic
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651
« on: December 12, 2015, 20:55 »
The question is, how could someone hack your account. It might be interesting, if you have used an FTP program, or the web-uploader or a special upload service. In the latter, I see the greatest risk. But even FTP programs can not be used with encrypted password in most agencies. Or maybe you have entered your password on a public computer? Or maybe Dreamstime was hacked? Could be the worst case!
That's what we'd all like to know, and of course never will. My own guess is that companies like Dreamstime are increasingly vulnerable to insiders, or semi-inside 'partners', as they've made their business ever more complicated while at the same time paying less attention to the low level details. All those shadowy "partner" sites must have some degree of access, and who knows who works at them, or who's hanging around in their offices. The constantly changing pools of outsourced reviewers probably have some network access too. And of course the IT work is let out to a 'trusted' contractor who significantly underbid the last guy. This is happening all over the place and companies are being forced to face up to the real cost of keeping data secure while still using it.
652
« on: December 12, 2015, 19:02 »
Many people have complained, on FAA's forum, about shipping costs and the official answer has always been - they are what they are, we have no control. And they show comparisons with other retailers to prove their point. I haven't tried to analyze this but apparently when you get into sizeable framed prints, the cost just skyrockets because the shipping boxes are so large.
I used to think that the answer would be to have local fulfilment via framing shops that sell prints. But then FAA made some deals with print/poster retailers that required us to accept a 50% commission cut and I opted out. So, FAA isn't going to be the answer and I really hope something better comes along.
Sorry if I hijacked a thread here.
653
« on: December 12, 2015, 15:38 »
I don't submit there anymore - or to any microstocks.
Just curious then why you're here?
Where do you license your work?
Mostly here for the entertainment value, but I still have photos on SS, DT, GL and Alamy. I sell prints on FAA once in a while and would really like to see more discussion of PODS. I don't take any photos for 'stock' anymore, just for print sales.
FAA is only 1-2% of my total. There is a shipping cost problem there. Charging >$300 for shipping, when the product itself costs $400 is too much for most customers. I lost potential buyers because of this.
Sent from my SM-N910T using Tapatalk
Yes the shipping is often a deal breaker. But I don't have any marketing of my own, the only sales I get are via keyword search. So for me, FAA is the only game in town. I never sold a thing on RedBubble. FAA is at least trying to reduce shipping costs by lining up international fulfilment partners, so prints aren't all shipped from the U.S.
654
« on: December 12, 2015, 14:17 »
I don't submit there anymore - or to any microstocks.
Just curious then why you're here?
Where do you license your work?
Mostly here for the entertainment value, but I still have photos on SS, DT, GL and Alamy. I sell prints on FAA once in a while and would really like to see more discussion of PODS. I don't take any photos for 'stock' anymore, just for print sales.
655
« on: December 12, 2015, 13:52 »
I'm thinking more and more that it's time to pull out of all these agencies. They've become money machine run by small crews who aren't up to the challenge of security in today's world. DT is probably being hacked left and right and can't even be bothered to respond to emails alerting them.
656
« on: December 12, 2015, 13:26 »
This business is always good for the agencies and will gradually be bad for contributors. But there will come a day that it will blow up for everyone, agencies included. They know it and they will squeeze it all to the last drop.
- A couple years ago, allegedly, SS changed the search engine and search results so that images from newer contributors would show first than those from the older contributors already in the last .38 payment tier. As a result, me and many of us started to see that our new images uploaded were not being found and sold. Like this, SS would pay more commissions to the first tier than they would to the las tier. Less money paid, equally satisfied costumers.
- Many new contributors, happy with their sales, are motivated and keep uploading. Many last tier contributors, with good or great work, feel it's not worth to keep uploading because their new images don't sell. Many new contributors will reach the last tier one day too and will feel the same. SS doesn't give a s*it. There are always new contributors signing in every day.
-With this new 1/10 examination (LOL), hundreds or even thousands of no less than cellphone snapshooters will be able to build a portfolio of ...say... 10 images in one month. They will have one or two sales during the same time. Eventually they will give up because 0.50$ a month is not woth it to bother. These sales times hundreds or thousands of contributors that will not ever reach a payout, is always 100% profit for SS.
-One day, the quality of work will be so low that there will be no buyers interested and the business will collapse.
How am I doing as a profet? 
Except for the mis-spelling of "prophet" I would give you a score of 10 out of 10. :-)
657
« on: December 11, 2015, 13:07 »
I've never understood their keywording system so I didn't even try. It's just too much hassle. I just cut/pasted all the keywords from the bottom box (where they're put by default, just to make things more of a pain) into the middle box, then entered a few into that little box (whatever it's called) and moved on.
If Alamy was serious about getting more contributors and new submissions, they'd have fixed this process long ago. But apparently no one there cares anymore, or can do anything about it.
I don't submit there anymore - or to any microstocks.
658
« on: December 10, 2015, 11:50 »
For me it all ended in 2014, I had a small fraction of the sales of previous years. I'd decided to give up in 2015 and close it; but I had a sale early in January so I left it alone. Then a bunch in August, and a bunch in October, so I've made a few hundred bucks this year and I'll leave the account open. It isn't like the other sites where you get about the same number of sales every month, and we'll never know why. Maybe some sort of contributor rotation.
659
« on: December 09, 2015, 10:35 »
I've posted this before, so I'm repeating myself: these are just meaningless numbers to impress investors.
They probably think their search code is so sophisticated that buyers will still be able to find what they want no matter how much repetitious junk is in the database. And remember, these tens of thousands of indistinguishable icons and pot photos aren't coming in through the normal inspection process (that would be impossible), so they might be 'tagged' and indexed in some specical way to keep them out of the usual search results, but still contribute to the total number of images they can claim to have.
660
« on: December 07, 2015, 11:04 »
Or they could be increasing the value of their premium service. The more junk there is to wade through the more sense it will make for buyers to pay the extra for help searching. We could even see the search engine get worse so they can keep the best algorithm for their own premium team.
That's a possibility. My own cynical point of view is that at this stage in the life cycle of a public company, every decision is ultimately based on the stock price, which in turn is based on big "numbers" put up in front of investors. So SS wants to be able to announce that they've increased the size of the collection by some ungodly amount, and also signed up more customers for premium search, and those two goals fit together. They also want to announce that they've increased the number of contributors by some large number, and this could explain the lowering of the entrance bar. I think it's actually just that simple.
661
« on: December 06, 2015, 23:02 »
...what i still haven't figured out is when this marijuana reviewer works, so i can time it nicely
and not have to waste my time re-submitting when the bozo is not working.
Let me know when you figure that out. Since he obviously can't recognize duplicates, I'll just submit all my photos a second time, and double the size of my portfolio.
662
« on: December 06, 2015, 17:51 »
While it's hard to say what the real effect of this change will be, it's even harder to imagine the intent. Things seemed to have stopped making sense, from a contributor's viewpoint, a long time ago.
The bar is low. Some time goes by. Ooops, now the bar is high, everything is rejected for 'lighting'. Now it's really, really high, and your photos have LCV. But look, here are 10,000 nearly identical icons. And 10,000 dopey photos of a bag of pot. Guess there isn't any 'bar'. And now, the entrance exam has been made really easy. How does that fit in? Who knows. And, speaking for myself: at 36 cents a sale, who cares anymore.
663
« on: December 05, 2015, 12:07 »
This particular law is over the top. But so is photography in public. We have to work out a new set of rules that makes sense for everyone, not just stock photographers.
I don't want camera drones buzzing over my head. I don't want Facebook's facial recognition software tagging me in photos taken by people I don't know. I don't want some talentless 'artist' shooting candid photos of me through my windows at home. I don't want to go into a museum or conservatory, or stand at a scenic overlook, and have to step carefully around a dozen tripods. I don't like being unable to see a historic site because of endless family and tour groups lining up for photos.
In this case the driving force was parents' crazy fears of their kids being photographed by strangers. I'm not a parent myself so I can't really grasp why this is so terrifying, but of course the news media give us on-line pedophiles every day and people apparently think that having a child's picture 'on the internet' makes him a target - except of course for the 50 pictures of that kid they post on FB themselves every week.
664
« on: December 04, 2015, 20:22 »
I understand the aggravation of being hassled by donut cops - I've had that experience. And I'm a big civil liberties guy. But I have to agree with the city in this case - there's a 'right' to be left alone, that's coming under heavy pressure. The old laws don't work anymore and we have to push back against hidden cameras, GoPros on everyone, video obsessed geeks, @ssholes like Arne Svenson, and a thousand idiot geeks with camera equipped drones. I'm a photographer too but I'd also like to be able to sit in a park without showing up on YouTube as "weird old guy in the park today".
665
« on: December 03, 2015, 12:10 »
Very sad news. SS has been corrupted from within.
That's the elephant in the room. There's no way these thousands of junk photos made it through the 'official' inspection process. They were back-doored.
666
« on: December 02, 2015, 17:31 »
It will end up as an all-you-can-eat buffet of junk food. All the lukewarm day-old French Fries you can eat, for one low price. I haven't seen that business concept tried yet, but personally, I would not invest. :-).
667
« on: November 30, 2015, 15:47 »
Credits are the ultimate 'funny money', a currency that the agency controls, with no fixed exchange rate. A credit is worth whatever they say it is, at any particular moment.
668
« on: November 30, 2015, 13:31 »
I use a tablet. No hovering.
669
« on: November 30, 2015, 11:59 »
That's something that always annoys me in UI design - icons with no obvious meaning, and no easy way to find out that meaning. Hey and I don't even get a 'green dial' - or that 'pencil' thingy next to it - wonder what that means?
670
« on: November 29, 2015, 18:44 »
Do you think following/collecting has any effect on search placement?
671
« on: November 29, 2015, 11:49 »
I recently got 'in' at Crated - well at least they accepted me into the search - but I'm not seeing many signs of life. The site hasn't really changed for something like a year - same 'featured' artists in 'community', main page hasn't changed. No new live gallery events since that one in 2014. Last blog post Oct 16th, a trickle on FB. The search results seem very incomplete and inconsistent.
I'm uploading photos but without much enthusiasm.
I won't post my link here because I want to remain anonymous on MSG. Too bad there's no forum on Crated.
672
« on: November 25, 2015, 16:32 »
If it's that easy, I'd expect SS to be full of stolen stuff. Well, maybe it is.
673
« on: November 25, 2015, 14:45 »
What I mean is, how does someone get in possession of other contributors' full size images?
674
« on: November 25, 2015, 13:51 »
I was able to see one about a half hour ago but they're gone now. The guy had over 1,000 online and from the looks of them, all stolen.
It would be s-o-o-o-o-o interesting to know how something like this is possible at SS.
675
« on: November 24, 2015, 13:41 »
It's not much different than a subscription; the whole idea is to get the real money in upfront 'fees' which contributors never see, then pay royalties on a token 'sale price'. If you're at an agency and your conscience bothers you for more than a moment, just say that buyers are really paying for search functionality, not imagery. Eventually I think some agencies will stop using the word "royalty" altogether.
There's nothing we can do except stop giving our work to companies that operate like this.
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