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Messages - PaulieWalnuts
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776
« on: March 02, 2014, 10:11 »
They're decent but I think you're shooting from a Flickr/social media or creative art perspective. "That's cool" is different from "that will sell". The idea for stock is that buyers look for images that help them advertise and promote a product or service. Would any of these help to do that? I'm not sure but I'd guess very little.
And then there's competition. Stock is flooded with ordinary images. So if you take a quick snap of local attractions so has everybody else. If you plan to sell anything it needs to stand out and be unique. To me these don't look unique. They look like quick walkaround snapshots.
For stock you'll probably need to make some changes to how you think commercially about what to shoot. If you like to shoot stuff like this you may want to consider POD art print websites.
777
« on: February 25, 2014, 22:05 »
What type of client? the ones who try to get you doing stuff for half of the price?
Any kind of prospective client that after they contact you you immediately know from past experience that it just isn't going to go well. Maybe they start off by asking for a ridiculous discount where you make almost no money. Or they want stuff for free and suggest that you'll more than make that up in the new business they bring you. Or they ask want you invest a ton of your time for them to spend very little money with you. Really any situation you know is going to end most likely unprofitable or with so many problems that it's not worth your time.
778
« on: February 24, 2014, 22:48 »
PITA = Pain In The A$$. You know the kind. They send you an email and after reading it you immediately think "if I accept them as a client I'm going to lose money". What do you do with them?
779
« on: February 11, 2014, 19:42 »
Those are just examples so you may want to do a bit of research on what keywords and phrases to use. Google has a keyword planner tool that tells you what keywords and phases people use and the amount they're searched for. So as an example, maybe Animal Stock Photos is searched for 1,000 times per month but Horse Stock Photos is searched for 5,000 times per month. Both are relevant but the horse version gets searched for more often and may be better to use in your content. https://adwords.google.com/ko/KeywordPlanner EDIT: And if you want to see the content Google is looking for, simply do a search. Google puts search words in bold so you can see it's looking for the search words and phrases in the title, description, overall page content, and URL. If you optimize all that content you should (hopefully) get better results.
780
« on: February 11, 2014, 18:53 »
No. Symbiostock is coded to have a good SEO footprint. Other WP sites might not have a good SEO and then images wont be found. Thats where Symbiostock is strong, the SEO is good. Your new WP plugin might have buried your images because of poor SEO. Not saying it is, it might. The fact that people find his site through google says it all.
I am using Yoast SEO plugin, just like on SY. My images are already being indexed by google, just like on SY. My images aren't buried, they are getting found. I do check searches all the time from other computers besides my own. So far, I don't see that as an issue. My issue is I don't have more hours in the day to get new images up and the rest of the images I already have shot up!
Cathy, I just want to point out an example of something that could use some tweaking. Hopefully this helps. On your animals collection your page title is "cathyslifestockphotos.comAnimals Archives - cathyslifestockphotos.com". Search engines use this to index your pages. It may be better to have something like "Stock Photos of Animals and Pictures of Horses | Cathy's Photography" The title on your Horse with Halter page is exactly that. Horse with Halter. You could probably add another nine words to that or use a auto-suffix like "Stock Photos and Animal Pictures" so the title becomes "Horse with Halter | Stock Photos and Animal Pictures". More relevant content = more traffic. Just trying to help.
781
« on: February 11, 2014, 18:33 »
I'm probably going to regret jumping in here to try and help but...
I've seen some comments of no sales. Direct sales are difficult no matter what the system is. Google likes Wordpress so Symbiostock has that benefit by default. You need to have the right technology, content, and sellable images to get traffic and sales. If you're missing any or all of those then your chances decrease.
About the content, I checked out a few sites and they have stuff like Abe Lincoln Photography as page and gallery titles. That kind of stuff will only help people find you by name. Which I'm guessing nobody is looking for your name. If you want sales/traffic it may be a good idea to learn SEO. And I don't mean tricks to game Google. Producing good relevant optimized content so more of the right users can find you. From what I remember Photoshelter's SEO guide and some of their other guides are decent primers. Just sayin.
782
« on: February 09, 2014, 19:04 »
Maybe I'm missing something here but can you not buy a $99 license of Adobe Photoshop Elements, which is frequently discounted to half that price, and open PSDs? Or use an older copy of Photoshop?
783
« on: January 18, 2014, 20:57 »
lb for lb MACs are at least twice the price - I'd prefer to spend on CPU and RAM than badges or complete non-essentials like SSDs.
I would hesitate to put SSDs into the non-essential category. The increase in performance is pretty amazing!
I'd agree. I tested the boot time between a HDD vs Hybrid HDD/SSD. HDD was 42 seconds. Hybrid was 20 seconds. I haven't timed anything else but a lot of apps seem a lot quicker to load and run with the Hybrid.
And I'm not sure the price thing is accurate. I always believed this too but when I spec'd out a Dell laptop with similar configuration to a Macbook Pro the price was pretty close. Seems like Apple doesn't make bare bones stuff which is why PC is cheaper on average but not apples to apples.
Of course it's quicker to load. What do you spend your time on, loading or working and is 20 seconds at the start really worth the money? When working it's all in RAM anyway.
You're right. RAM means everything. Carry on.
784
« on: January 18, 2014, 19:14 »
lb for lb MACs are at least twice the price - I'd prefer to spend on CPU and RAM than badges or complete non-essentials like SSDs.
I would hesitate to put SSDs into the non-essential category. The increase in performance is pretty amazing!
I'd agree. I tested the boot time between a HDD vs Hybrid HDD/SSD. HDD was 42 seconds. Hybrid was 20 seconds. I haven't timed anything else but a lot of apps seem a lot quicker to load and run with the Hybrid. And I'm not sure the price thing is accurate. I always believed this too but when I spec'd out a Dell laptop with similar configuration to a Macbook Pro the price was pretty close. Seems like Apple doesn't make bare bones stuff which is why PC is cheaper on average but not apples to apples.
785
« on: January 17, 2014, 13:30 »
So they come back producing point and shoots? This segment is in a downward spiral for sales because of phones. P&S's probably won't exist in a few years or will morph into something else.
If they don't come up with something innovative they may not be around for long.
787
« on: January 12, 2014, 10:56 »
I'm a PC user that just picked up a Macbook Pro. Regardless of what you get I'd agree with some of the other comments that specs are probably most important. Especially an SSD over a regular hard drive seems to have a big impact on performance. Or a hybrid version that combines SSD/HDD. Then after that a bunch of RAM. I have my Macbook connected to a 24inch Dell and it works great. I haven't used any of the all-in-ones so not much to add there.
Mac vs Windows is personal preference. I went to Mac because of my experience with my Iphone which has been flawless for the past year. So far OSX Mavericks has also been pretty painless. I grew tired of wasting time on tech problems.
788
« on: January 09, 2014, 14:09 »
Update to the original post. Thanks for all the help. I picked up a refurbished Macbook Pro to see how things go.
Overall it's been great so far. Macbook Pro is built great. Nice quality. Track-pad is fantastic. And so far after a month everything just works. No crashing. No errors. No frustration. All software has installed without problems. Printer connected and worked like magic. On Windows this was a trip to the printer website to download and install the driver software and deal with whatever problems came up. Makes me wonder why I didn't pick up a Mac to try years ago.
The negative stuff that I've found has been pretty minor.
I did end up buying Paragon. Not sure why Mac can read NTFS drives fine but not write to them without third party software. I found that Mac has built in ability to write to NTFS but it's disabled and requires a hack to enable but it's "not supported" by Apple. Odd.
I bought MS Office for Mac. I actually like the interface better but it's a version behind Windows. There seems to be a lot of missing features compared to Windows. And the PST file import didn't import nicely in the Mac version. Folders are messed up, Calendar and reminders are off, etc. I hate to say it but this doesn't surprise me because as a Microsoft product user for a long time I've just come to accept that this kind of stuff is normal.
I ended up buying the $10 p/m Creative Cloud subscription for Photoshop and Lightroom. Lightroom is cross-platform but Photoshop CS5 isn't. I found out that Adobe allows platform transfers but only on current Photoshop versions which is CS6. So I would have needed to drop $200 to upgrade to CS6 which is already an old version. Not a big fan of the cloud stuff but not much of an alternative.
Other than that I'm just getting used to finding keyboard functions I'm used to using in Windows.
Just ordered an Ipad and AppleTV.
789
« on: January 09, 2014, 10:21 »
I'm in the Chicago area and -17F and -40F wind chill were fun. Northwest Indiana declared a state of emergency and shut down all roads and expressways except for emergency vehicles. I'm going to try to get downtown this weekend to get some shots in.
790
« on: January 06, 2014, 08:53 »
I hate the 24/70. Sold mine. Too much CA and S-U-C-K-S (leaf really?) in dust. And no Image Stabilization. Get the 24/105 which has IS and less CA. Only goes to f/4 but I use the 50mm f/1.8 if I need smaller DOF.
Gonna buy a 17-40mm since I just got a home interior shoot
If you hate CA than you will not like the 17-40mm. It also has a super sharp center but really soft corners. CA really doesn't bother me because Lightroom easily gets rid of it. I really like the 17-40mm. I never really liked the 24-105. It has a soft zone between about 60-90mm where it's not sharp at even f/8. But it seems like the agencies are dropping standards so maybe it's not as much of a problem now.
791
« on: January 05, 2014, 14:22 »
I have the 24-70mm v1 and it's a nice very sharp lens. The 70-200mm f/2.8 goes great with it.
792
« on: December 28, 2013, 10:39 »
How do you see which of your prints are available on Amazon?
Anybody know?
Try searching for your name or FAA account name.
793
« on: December 20, 2013, 09:13 »
Diversify. That's my word of the year.
Yep, same here. I haven't been spending much time on microstock lately. I've seen excellent growth every year until 2013 where growth totally stalled. 2014 will be spending more time on my own site, shifting to macro to see if there's any life left in it, and experimenting with artwork and other non-stock channels.
794
« on: December 15, 2013, 08:11 »
I didn't read your other thread to see the responses but here are a couple thoughts. I read the Depositphotos article. I know nothing about them and have nothing against them. But something seems off with this article and the numbers. They're on track for being valued at $100M? But had $6 million dollars in revenue the previous year with "plans" for $15 million this year. And they have 130 employees with $6M in revenue? These numbers seem a bit odd to me. Are they a success? Well, that's subjective and opinions will vary. A competitor to Getty or Shutterstock? Technically yes, performance-wise they have a small piece of the pie. So if $6M revenue is successful to you then yes it's possible to make it. Regarding starting up a new site in general... Any person that's going to be a success will run the numbers, know what needs to be done to build the business and do it. Not come here and ask if a bunch of contributors think there's still an open door. Photoshelter dropped over $1M to try and compete as a stock agency and failed. Dozens of people have come here touting "I built a new cool site, come join" and they are long gone. Any new entrant will need to bring their A-game. I think there is still plenty of opportunity to succeed with a new site but the game has changed in the past several years. A few years ago you may have been able to do the "build it and they will come" approach. I think an example of that would be Stockxpert. They seemed to have grown without any major money. Today, I think that approach has slim chances of making it. There are there are plenty of obstacles such as: - Content - Top contributors who produce sellable content are hesitant to join new sites from past experience that it's a waste of time. No content, or unsellable content, means no revenue
- Money - I think Shutterstock spent over $30M in marketing last year. How will a new site market themselves and compete without deep pockets? This also goes back to contributors. Without sales coming in contributors will abandon ship
- Unique Model - Why should a buyer use the new site over the other established players? What's different? If you go with "we're the cheapest" contributors probably won't make enough money. Or "we have the biggest collection" or "we have the best collection". That's all been done.
The new successful site will have leaders with proven industry experience, financial backing, a solid plan, and a unique value proposition. An example of that would be Stocksy. And they knew what needed to be done and made it happen. EDIT: Or they they will come up with a completely new business or licensing model that disrupts the existing model. Best of wishes for you on whatever you end up doing.
795
« on: December 03, 2013, 13:18 »
I'll chime in here as I had a photoshelter account for about three years for both my wedding and portrait business and stock business. Worked ok for selling prints, and it was a great easily indexed backup tool.
But (and a big but) you really really have to push your own site on to buyers. For some reason their google indexing is an absolute shambles and your images didn't show up in google images, and your galleries wouldn't show up in google searches. Surely that's one of the benefits of having your own site?
There were numerous posts about it on their forums with zero resolution. They recently released newer versions of their templates, and I really did take the time to look into their and try and create a new site. They certainly look the part, but the functionality just wasn't there for me. Poorly thought out navigation, that wasn't customisable enough to bend it to your will, yet "template" enough that your site would look like every other photoshelter site (bar the images).
It may work for a dedicated stock sales site, but you'll get no traction whatsoever in google, without marketing yourself heavily, all the while paying for the privilege. I didn't get anywhere near making back my membership fee investment over the last three years in print (from wedding and portrait) or stock sales.
If you're going to be paying a fee for a site, be sure that you've got the audience waiting to buy your images. It's not an easy "flick a switch" and all your images will be front and centre.
I will give them credit for the FTP system though (slightly off topic) I could use that to upload stock images to Photoshelter in the first instance, keyword, meta tag etc there, then farm out all my images to the micros. That did work well, but wasn't really worth the entrance fee. Especially when picworkflow does pretty much the same job, and only charges you a cent per upload, you're not tied into that at all.
My experience has been a bit different. All of my pages and images are indexed by Google and Google Images and I have good search results for my target search terms. But, it has taken a lot of SEO work to get good results - sitemap submission, keyword analysis and planning, optimizing content, results tracking, making adjustments, etc. I'm using a Graph Paper Press Wordpress template with mine and Google loves Wordpress. Plus it's CSS/PHP so I can change whatever I want. The Photoshelter platform has SEO configuration but I wouldn't call it overly optimized which is why getting good results with Google can be difficult. If the Photoshelter sitemap isn't automatically recognized by Google Webmaster Tools your site probably wont get indexed well or at all until the problem is corrected. Photoshelter has a lot of quirks. Like you said, they tend to ignore problems they're unwilling or unable to fix which is frustrating. If you're willing to accept and work around the quirks it's a good platform. Any personal website requires a lot of work. Unless you have some rare images that are in high demand, it takes lot of effort to draw traffic and get sales. Symbiostock seems like a good Wordpress platform but I don't see anybody here saying sales are pouring in so I think getting traffic and sales is a problem no matter what platform you use. I did a lot of research and Photoshelter and Photodeck seem to have the most complete systems for people who want to do all types of licensing like RM, RF, Personal, and prints. I'd suggest evaluating them both. The new Photodeck system is really slick.
796
« on: November 29, 2013, 18:34 »
Very sad. Seemed like a nice guy. My condolences to his family.
797
« on: November 26, 2013, 22:18 »
I've been with them a few years. I use them mostly for prints at the moment because I'm GI/IS exclusive so I don't have much to say about the stock functionality.
They can do RF, RM and personal licensing. RM is a calculator much like Alamy and other RM sites. The standard RM pricing seems a bit high but you can adjust it.
Photoshelter's SEO isn't highly optimized but you can get good results. Photoshelter doesn't do marketing to buyers so it's up to you to drive traffic.
The backend is pretty mature and the front end is highly customizable if you get the right plan.
Some of the stuff I don't like...
I think the new Beam isn't all that great. Not user friendly, confusing and too many clicks.
They are very slow to fix problems and add new features.
They take a percentage of sales in addition to the monthly fee.
I would strongly suggest evaluating Photodeck. They recently completely redesigned their system and the results are pretty impressive.
798
« on: November 24, 2013, 09:43 »
All your images will be on the internet at 1000px longest side and the watermark is tiny. The reasoning is that a watermark puts off art buyers, and they wont do anything about the 1000px image because its an art site and in general they dont care if their images are downloadable at that size. It seems that it is only a concern to people who also sell stock. They dont care about stock. They forget they also sell postcards and 1000px for postcard is plenty. Even for a small canvas. Anyhoo, the owner of the site made it clear to me that he doesnt care.
PS: FAA's SEO is really good, so your images will be on top of the google search, therefore most likely will be stolen.
I've found quite a few of my photos on blogs where they either have the FAA watermark or are cropped right above the FAA watermark. I actually found one where they cropped out the FAA watermark to where you can still see a small portion of the top of the watermark letters. Since the majority of stock sales are smaller sizes this is a problem. Google grabs the full 1,000 megpixel size source file and makes it readily available for stealing. This bypasses any FAA security such as disabling right-click. Unfortunately, with the Royalty Free stock licensing the FAA thefts compound the stealing problem because we have no idea which is a legit purchase or a theft. If my direct sales ever do well enough to go solo I may offer a simplified hybrid RF/RM license limits usage to one company or project so I can track thefts.
799
« on: November 23, 2013, 19:33 »
I wonder if this is tied to the Yuri/Scoopshot deal.
I think if the obstacles get sorted out that mobile stock is going to be a significant part of the industry in the next few years. The model is still young. But buyers have been asking for more "real" and timely pictures and we now have higher megapixel phones putting out good-enough images. Seems like the timing is right for this.
With Scoopshot the big obstacle seemed to be quality control. There's no review process. Some of the images I saw were interesting but most seemed unusable. How would they weed out completely unusable images? With Moment, using existing experienced contributors with a review process mostly overcomes that problem.
But in order for this to be effective they will need a lot more contributors in order to get worldwide content to fulfill requests quickly. That means they will probably wait to see what gaps they end up with and then start letting in a lot more amateur mobile contributors. We already had this pro vs amateur shakeout with marco and micro. Looks like a potential flood of mobile amateurs could be coming.
Will be an interesting next few years.
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