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776
« on: February 20, 2009, 01:38 »
The $150 should not be a big deal. I can sell more than that in individual prints from a single event -- races, parties, dog shows, high school sports. People love pictures of themselves and their family (or pets). My problem is more about the legal stuff, like licensing. Well no site will cover you legally. Those are editorial, right? You can set galleries private or password-protected an just give your customers the password. But I think for print Smugmug takes huge commissions on print. If your customers are in one place, you can as well make an arrangement with a local printer in a mall or so. If your audience is nationwide, Smugmug is a solution. Just have to read their fine print and commissions carefully.
777
« on: February 20, 2009, 01:16 »
This is just prejudice... Make it east of Prague then, or east of Bucarest  The web hoster of heroturko is/was in the Netherlands... I got a lot of trouble last year with my sites being attacked all the time by Russians and by Turks. The Russians did it for posting cracks and hacks, the Turks did it to post their political crap. I had to clean the server totally a couple of times and reinstall everything. I still don't know how they managed it... I had to shut one site permanently down, losing money - edabella.com/.
778
« on: February 20, 2009, 01:00 »
When Tineye.com will cover more of the net, it will be very easy to spot all uses of any photo. This technology does a visual search all over the net, like Google does a text search. It's fun to try out, even now... When I did a quick search of this image of me (just fill the link in in tineye), I found several instance of my picture on the net, also of course on a Russian template selling site (webgraf.ru) that sold it as template, and I never had an extended sale on that shot. Turkey, Russia and all places East of Berlin just laugh at us. They don't care for copyright. It's the same for software. The Russian hackers moreover have the vicious habit of attaching Trojans and viruses to pirated software, something that the Chinese pirates don't even do. Not that the evil is only East. Heroturko was till last week hosted on a Dutch hoster www.leaseweb.com - should be an easy takedown.
779
« on: February 20, 2009, 00:44 »
From the way Litifeta is talking here he wants a ecommerce site that he can market direct to.. Am I wrong? Hence he doesn't need a site that already has traffic, just the ability to sell.. Unless I am reading the above statement wrong.. Why not just email the shots then? If he has enough volume, he can set up his own domain and install Coppermine Gallery with a cart. That's cheaper than an 150$ SmugMug account and you don't need to pay Smugmug an extra 20% on sales.
780
« on: February 19, 2009, 21:46 »
Why don't you just use your own website and use a paypal checkout system? You can use it like a shopping cart and you just pay the paypal transaction fee.. Been there, done that. You need to attract traffic. It's better when a central entry point does that. As an individual you can't just do photos to achieve that. You need to have a meaningful blog for that. Ask Lee Torrens how much time he puts in his blog and his port...
781
« on: February 19, 2009, 21:26 »
Does smugmug do the licensing and collecting? I was never able to figure a way to use them other than direct sales of event pictures ... selling to individuals as prints. What am I missing here? I had a thorough look at the site yesterday. Yes they sell individuals but only for a parking fee of 150$ per year. It's like Mostphotos then, primarily photo sharing and commenting, but you can set your own prices. I don't have the faintest idea if you can make up for that 150$ by sales. They are quite high on Alexa, but remember, they basically are about photo sharing. The only advantage over having your own site with Coppermine plus a cart is that you will turn up in their search engine. But like Mostphotos, that engine isn't driven by sales but by community ratings, which are crap. I still don't know what to do. If somebody is interested and confident he can make up for the 150$, we should make a group like 'premium stockers' or something and crosslinks accounts.
782
« on: February 19, 2009, 19:44 »
To add to this point, until you know what the average downloads per subscription are, you cannot be sure that your 25c per download on SS represents a fair return. But let me put it this way using UK prices; if all SS clients in the UK downloaded their full quota of 750 images at UKP149, SS couldn't keep the lights on. Shutterstock doesn't give 25c but 33c guaranteed - minimum. Moreover SS has On Demand and Extended, so in my particular case, the first half of February I had an RPI of 60c on a few hundred downloads. Subscription can work if you have volume. Thanks for your MRF efforts. It will benefit any uploader with more than 10 models. I was under the impression that Vivozoom was a midstock site since it addresses corporate buyers that don't bargain over 10c if they have a warranty, but now it turns out that Vivozoom might be another Crestock: high quality combined with low volume peanuts for the contributor. Let's just see for now what the prices actually will be on Vivozoom and how much the volume. If you are that sure that buyers will only buy 10 images per month, why not take yourself the risk and set the price on 300/10/2 = 15$ per download? Just asking, no harm intended.
783
« on: February 19, 2009, 15:35 »
This thread came OFF TOPIC Finally! The * have been mentioned. This forum isn't immune to Godwin's Law after all. 
784
« on: February 19, 2009, 14:49 »
The same think will happen to stock. After all these brilliant expert posts and insights from your (anonymous) side, wouldn't it be time you showed some of your portfolio like we do, plain mortals? Where is the meat?
785
« on: February 19, 2009, 14:34 »
Ouch RT, thanks for spelling that out... We really would not expect any of our customers to download their full quota - this would most likely be stockpiling, which is contrary to our terms (and in which case we would terminate the license). We expect the average quota downloaded to be low - with a number of clients downloading maybe only 5-10 images over the whole month. Our expecations are therefore that you would get substantially more per image from us, than say what Shutterstock is paying. This is quite confusing for my simple brain. The buyers are attracted to the site by the possibility or authorization to download 750 images per month, but they are not allowed to do so, since that would be " stockpiling".  Well why in the first place you allow that many then? If you expect just 10 downloads per month for the model to work, why then not set a monthly download of 10? If the buyer claims he is not stockpiling at all and he needs those 750 images, you don't have a leg to stand on since he has been allowed 750. How will all this be accounted for?   Buyer A buys 10 per month for his 300$, so per image that's 30$, and the photographer gets (assuming 50% for the sake of simplicity) 15$ for those downloads. Buyer B buys 300 per month, and for those images the photographer gets 0.5$ per download. Since buyers have a full month to download, we can only know at the end of that month what the actual $ is, since he can download just a few the first days, then consume his allowance the last days. Since not all subscription packages will start on the same day, that means that we will know our exact earnings at least a month behind the actual sales. Sounds like a lottery. Everybody wins, from a pencil to a million. Maybe you win the million As it appears, we don't have a predetermined amount of $ per download then, but we just will have to hope and to pray? Guarantees for the corporate buyers are great. What about guarantees for the contributors? How much per download will we get? Please enlighten us.
786
« on: February 18, 2009, 21:38 »
Is great LOL !!! I got a couple each month at 1.07$ and 2.48$. It's good to see new prices like that. Not all agencies can have good ideas like that LOL. Like the Greek philosopher said, panta rhei (everything changes all the time). I got On Demands almost daily this month, and one extended. But suddenly, I only sell only subscription on DT, knocking it down to nr. 4. I think it's all one big conspiracy since Canstock made me an extended but Bigstock came to a halt. The exclusives on iStock sure miss a lot of cheap thrills
787
« on: February 18, 2009, 12:58 »
In my view, the free images sections of MS sites only benefit the agencies, not contributors. Correct. I heard from a few people that freebees don't affect sales on your paying port at all. They just get downloaded by freebee hunters and bloggers that would never buy an image. It's a different audience. Buyers can't afford to chase for freebees since their hourly wage doesn't allow it. I'm one of those freebee hunters too sometimes, and I don't even bother to look at the photographers name. It only benefits the site by boosting their SEO. If I want to give away freebees, I want to do it myself.
788
« on: February 18, 2009, 12:43 »
If the jupiter deal was designed to get some of the other assets than StockXpert may be in trouble. The blunt truth is we don't know what Getty intends to do with StockXpert. But in general, corporate logic is that when a larger fish catches a smaller fish in the same pond, it's not for the well-being of the smaller fish. Look what happened to all the small innovative companies that Microsoft bought. It's totally different when a corporation buys outside the pond. In that case they want to diversify and they will do all possible things (injecting capital etc.) to let the small fish thrive. Getty didn't buy Jupiter to get a foot in Microstock, since they have iStock already. Perhaps they want to turn it into a bottomline subscription site competing with Shutterstock. Who knows? But one thing we can assume safely is that StockXpert as we knew it is gone. And that is so.
789
« on: February 18, 2009, 12:27 »
So, it's a $2/hour job then! More like 1$. There really is no money in Microstock, not when you start now. The first mice got the cheese. Better move on.
790
« on: February 18, 2009, 00:43 »
With something like 50-100x more images on-line now it just happens to be a lot more competitive than it was __ and it's only going to get tougher, much tougher, in the future. If you can't hack the pace now then don't hold your breath in expectation of it getting easier any time soon. It won't. What I suspect is that we amateurs will be kicked out in the long run and everything will be like in the time of macro, with a limited number of very talented pros. The only difference will be that they used to sell for 100$ and now they will have to sell for 1$ per image.
791
« on: February 18, 2009, 00:32 »
I tried the suggested steps, using the "fair use" justification. In that case HeroTurko could claim "fair use" too. Pardon my French, but I don't see much difference between putting uncopyrighted music or uncopyrighted images online.
792
« on: February 18, 2009, 00:27 »
have you ever noticed that J G from CutCaster always try to be the white Knight of Microstock group ? No but I notice anonymous creeps registering now and then spilling their jealousy-inspired unsubstantiated rants.
793
« on: February 18, 2009, 00:03 »
flemishdream, if i am off base, pls point me back to the right lane  Well my rant was inspired by looking at my Dreamstimes sales, just to find out that I only had subscription sales for the last 5 days, one of them 24 cents. I remember a post of Achilles somewhere in 2006 where he advised to upgrade our cams to 10MP since we would make up by XL earnings. That was hardly the case, and then they introduced subsciption after the fact... That's why I was so pissed off at Crestock too, after finding out they give away top sellers for 25c. I don't mind subscription at all to honest sites that tell in advance that subscription is their main business, like Shutterstock. That's fine and they get a minimal size of 5MP. What's happening now is that for me, SS sells much more on demands and extended than DT, but SS has my 5MP and DT has my 10MP. There was a thread in the DT message board where a designer (0 upload, 0 sales) said that customers expect value for money, and they don't expect quality from microstock, not at 1$ per download. I answered that he might be right and that uploaders would probably quit uploading full sizes and the best at microstock, and that if DT continued to be predominantly a subscription site, I would only upload 4MP in the future. Of course, I expect that my post will be removed. I'm more and more inclined to do volume shoots, process 10 minutes maximum (levels, cloning) and leave all the other stuff like noise reduction. Then downsize to 4MP to subscription microstock (included DT, StockXpert) et voila, all noise gone and tack sharp. The very best ones, let's say 10%, I will only upload to midstock, or even iStock with minimal processing as they like. I guess many came already to that conclusion. Subscription is not viable for contributors in the long run. The extra quality microstock now wants, compared to 2005, takes extra equipment and extra processing time. It should stay worthwhile or nobody will upload any more in the long run. Fun? Deviantart was fun. Stock isn't that much fun, it's work. SS (yellow) vs DT (red) earnings in Feb 2009. Will the real subscription site please stand up?
794
« on: February 17, 2009, 23:07 »
I am submitting my images without checking any of these... Would I get a better chance to have my images accepted if I check these? It won't help acceptance but I will help earnings, so check all by any means.
795
« on: February 17, 2009, 20:12 »
If you can sell 120,000 images per $0.33 it's would justify to use this camera for micros :-) On SS: 150k photogs x 120k images per month = 18g images per month. That's 18,000,000,000. I suspect the market doesn't absorb that. My point is that many "for fun" photographers don't count. But then, also Ferraris and Maseratis got sold
796
« on: February 17, 2009, 20:03 »
Well, Its about the quantity in micro. Its not like you sell 10 images/year? Correct. I'm back at a 3-figure income at SS this month, but they only get 5MP shots. The point of my rant was a bit that many microstockers confound gross income with profit, and that a lousy 2 year old D200 is good enough for microstock. It would be different of course if you sell most by macro, but I'm not good enough for that.
797
« on: February 17, 2009, 19:51 »
At least Art Manager will allow me to see if my images are online (or just disappearing). Right now I don't see my images anywhere. They're just gone. Same here. Zym seems to have lost many FTP sessions for me. My ad hoc solution is only to upload by the plugin. I'm totally blank now what they have or don't have, of my 177 10-photo batches. Before, it took forever to see your port by the Art Manager since it took forever to crwl through the pages. I hope it will be faster when the new version is ready. I will keep uploading and investing time since they give a decent return on work, unlike the many subscription sites, or sites that turned subscription like Dreamstime. The exception being Shutterstock that makes up by volume, extended and on demand. It's more a question of principle than of money. I don' work for stealth-subscription any more.
798
« on: February 16, 2009, 20:41 »
I sense some envy here. No since you are a fantastic and versatile artist. You would be the same with any cam. Technology is no substitute for talent. Anybody can buy an expensive cam. Talent (yours) is priceless. Are we supposed to have cheap stuff in micro industry? why? Yes, because prices are too low. I could well "afford" a D3x but I chose not to. Not for 33 cents per image.
800
« on: February 16, 2009, 01:55 »
Hardcore ScienceThe following is supposedly an actual question given on a university chemistry exam. The answer by one student was so profound that the professor shared it with his colleagues: Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)? Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following: First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.
As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different Religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell.
With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.
This gives two possibilities:
1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.
2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.
So which is it?
If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa Gibbons during my Freshman year that, "it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you", and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number 2 must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over.
The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct... leaving only Heaven thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting "Oh my God." THIS STUDENT RECEIVED THE ONLY "A"
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