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Messages - pancaketom
Pages: 1 ... 29 30 31 32 33 [34] 35 36 37 38 39 ... 91
826
« on: November 02, 2015, 13:46 »
Also keep in mind that this is probably almost 100% due to video sales. If you have lots of video - you really should get them up at P5. For stills - unfortunately it isn't going to make that much of a difference (at least in my case recently).
827
« on: November 01, 2015, 19:38 »
Sept wasn't that bad for me there, Oct was dire. I made more when I had under 100 images there (I have over 2,000 now).
828
« on: October 24, 2015, 18:22 »
I put up a few unique images on Alamy, mostly RM stuff. I think 2 of them sold. I should probably upload a few more, but I have a hard time motivating for the limited sales. Certainly I have had better return on my time putting my microstock stuff up there. I'd probably have a better return on my time making more micro stuff than doing Alamy specific things. Still, I'll be traveling this winter and I'll probably try to get some market and other shots w/ people for Alamy that wouldn't be accepted at most micros.
829
« on: October 22, 2015, 18:24 »
I wonder if they are gradually replacing best sellers with wholly owned content.
830
« on: October 07, 2015, 23:53 »
This looks like a very simple business plan - "let's screw our suppliers and take all the money for ourselves".
Thats been their business plan for 4-5 years now. Just accellerating as they get more desperate. The water is starting to simmer. Us frogs will be boiling by January 2016, methinks.
I already hopped out and only have a toenail left in to see if the temperature ever gets reasonable again...
831
« on: October 07, 2015, 13:12 »
At least in the past the DT search has been too influenced by the contributor so that if you had a heap of pictures in the same search they would all come in a row. This makes similars annoying so instead of fixing the search they didn't accept what they thought were similars. I am guessing the search became too much of a positive feedback system with new images never seeing the light of day, so rather than fix that, they started rotating portfolios. While these fixes sort of hide the problem, they don't really fix it and in the long run are detrimental.
DT has had some really poor months for me, but they usually are in the top 2 to 4.
832
« on: October 01, 2015, 00:08 »
Except that images move up and down based on download volume, not manipulation. When are people going to accept that?
I've seen some of my images make its way to the top and it stays at the top. It go down or up a few places on occasion, but that only means other images have more downloads then mine or vise versa. It has nothing to do with SS "spreading the wealth".
I've been keeping track of some of my images for months, almost every day. Change isn't drastic, it's incremental.
Do a search for "Pets". Our fellow resident's pic is still at #3, like it was a few months ago.
until it isn't - like when my best seller went from the #3 spot where it had been + - maybe 10 spots for a few years to I couldn't find it (at least page 25) overnight and not surprisingly the sales dried up too.
833
« on: September 21, 2015, 13:02 »
I have also a "strange theory". I believe that people's earnings are depending on the area where they are. I read a lot of information about earnings on this forum (and not only here) and I believe if I l lived in Germany, U.K., U.S.A, and so on, my income would have been higher. Also, if I lived in Moldova, Georgia, Syria, etc. my earnings would have been lower.
What do you think ?
I wouldn't be surprised at all if the local search tends to show local artist's work. Of course this makes no sense for most images, but if some bean counter saw some small benefit to it it would be implemented. If you live somewhere far away from most photo buyers that would hurt your sales. I am tempted to change my address to NYC.
834
« on: September 21, 2015, 02:02 »
you are missing a critical part of the equation. Is that over all time and all sites, or one site per day (that would be fantastic) or all sites per week, per month, per year?
When I started 1$ per image per month for all agencies combined was sort of the standard rule of thumb. It is a lot lower now. The total of number of downloads depends more on if you are on mostly subs sites or ones that are more credit based - although that is also going towards all subs these days too.
If you look back there are some interesting posts here re: overall averages at SS gleaned from their SEC filings.
835
« on: September 20, 2015, 20:39 »
It is certainly true that the searches are not neutral and they are not static. If nothing else the sites want to change their searches to keep them from being gamed. They also don't want the results to always appear the same. Most sites with exclusive content say that exclusive stuff gets a boost. Many sites have some sort of ranking based on the photographer. One of the great things about the old SS search was that it didn't do that.
Any time the sites change the searches there will be winners and losers. If they really mess up the search and the shopping experience the buyers will go elsewhere (eg IS).
It is also in the interest of the sites to attract and retain new photographers. I used to wonder if small sites would produce a few bogus early sales to spur uploading since they didn't have to pay out 'til the photographer had made many more sales. The sites also don't want to discourage older photographers since they supply a good percentage of the HCV images. I think it is pretty obvious that although the pie is growing it is also getting sliced up into more and more pieces so that the average return per image is falling. One way to try to "spread the wealth" and keep more submitters happy would be to follow a big sale with a relatively poor placement for a bit. This would be hard to prove, although seeing your images move down in the search following a big sale would be pretty good evidence. Personally I have enough crappy days followed by more crappy days that a few crappy days after a big day aren't going to prove anything.
Whatever is going on, search placement is the key to getting sales for the more common keywords and the sites keep their search sauce pretty secret.
836
« on: September 20, 2015, 10:54 »
Quote: " Serban himself has stated it outright in order, as he put it, to give everyone a fair chance". are you sure he said that? that is a dreadful statement from a business man. This is a cut throat business and may the best man win and I don't think you find many happily giving it away just to be fair.
No, it was another DT admin (Dudau) who often puts his foot in his mouth. This is what he said -
"The "similars" policy has been relaxed a bit, since we updated the uploads limit, and I can say that's an acceptable selection. However, the placement changes continuously, in order to give everybody a fair chance, so what you see today on the first page it may not be there next week or the next month, depending on too many factors to be described here. As I said, it's a game of numbers and quality, and the ideal situation is to have both. If not, one should focus on at least one of these, in order to succeed."
Dudau was one of the admins that has made this statement but Serban also said it. It's very difficult to mistake the username "Achilles" with someone else. Perhaps his post has been deleted, I'm certainly not going to go looking for it, but he's also stated that social activity, posting blogs and commenting on blog posts also factors into the search results.
I seem to recall that post was made April 1st.
837
« on: September 18, 2015, 23:06 »
Sometimes it does seem that way, but I haven't ever seen a change in search placement after a few big sales. I am guessing it is just the ebb and flow combined with the usual search monkeying.
It certainly doesn't seem as regular as DT where I get a run of subs, a few credit sales, and then nothing then repeat. If my credit tap comes on during a weekend it makes for a few poor weeks.
838
« on: September 13, 2015, 12:47 »
seems to work for me
839
« on: September 03, 2015, 11:39 »
I agree that a few full timers checking the first 10 pages or so of the most popular searches and then bringing the hammer down on the serial offenders could make a huge difference to the collection appearance in just a few months. The problem is that they have to be willing to do so - or even want to.
840
« on: August 26, 2015, 13:18 »
In a glorious irony, I got 15% more subs in July than June, but actually earned less for them.
Way to go, iStock. 
(That's only my experience. I know others got rising $$ from subs sales.)
Whatever, I hate 'cheap subs', and can't get my head round uploading files to get 75c, followed by a demotion for not selling as a credit sale and earning 34c.
Don't be so sure you earned less for them, maybe they are pocketing heaps from the subs program even if very little makes it to your pockets.
841
« on: August 23, 2015, 21:11 »
That's not exactly what's happening.
That is exactly what is happening, at least to my files. If it's not happening to your files then good for you but I and many others have complained about this in the iStock forums and we just get stone walled, being told it doesn't happen and everything is rosy in the garden and working as it should.
I got so fed up with this a while back that I raised a support ticket and was told that the popularity of keywords can affect the display order, which is absolutely crazy because you can put your four least relevant keywords last and have them immediately sent to the front because they happen to be popular in the searches, ruining the similars and best match relevancy.
The whole keywording system is so fundamentally flawed it's as if iStock are deliberately trying to lose sales.
Keywords move up as your file is downloaded, buyers should be determining the relevancy not an algorithm or some editor.
In my experience what SHOULD be happening and what IS happening at Istock are two very different things.
842
« on: August 11, 2015, 17:43 »
I think the economics for the established sites are very different than the economics for the contributors. There is a lot of demand for images, but the sales might be spread out so thinly and the agencies might take such a big slice of the $ that there isn't enough left for the artists.
That said, it might be too late to start a new site too without something different (canva) or some very deep pockets. Of course like it does for contributors, your expectations and what you bring to the table are what decides if it is worth it.
843
« on: August 04, 2015, 03:19 »
I doubt that demand is growing faster than everyone can upload pics. Overall sales per pic have dropped on SS. My $/image return has been dropping. If demand was growing faster than supply that probably would not be the case. If my present sales had increased linearly with my portfolio increase (demand growth = supply growth) then I'd be very pleased with my returns right now.
That said there is still the possibility of success at this depending on what you define as success. If you can consistently produce a lot of high selling images you could probably be successful at a lot of stuff though. Even if it isn't "too late" whatever that means, it certainly is a lot harder now than it was back when decent point and shoot shots were accepted and sold.
844
« on: July 29, 2015, 16:27 »
The duplicate keywords penalty is news to me too. I sure have plenty of them. If it would increase my sales it might be worth doing something about it, but I'd want to know for sure that it would.
Alamy has been my #2 earner for at least the last 3 years although I still get 0 months from time to time I also get rare ones that beat SS.
845
« on: July 26, 2015, 18:34 »
Much more fun would be if you could submit a best seller, a reject, and an accepted but never sold image and then they could critique them without knowing which were which. That I would watch.
846
« on: July 22, 2015, 13:41 »
My top earner made one or 2 DL a day on SS for a few years, then one day - bam - gone from page one usually line one or 2 and I couldn't find it searching out about 30 pages (out of 8,000 or something crazy). A month or so later I found it on page 3 and it got back to page 2. Now just one or 2 d/l per week. For subjects with lots of competition search position is almost everything. Sure, you have some influence on search position with keywords and image quality, but if you think that is all important you are sadly mistaken. It is more like the lottery situation mentioned above. Every excellent image with good keywording is another ticket but that doesn't mean you are going to win.
This month sales are weird (and mostly down)- more sales on Sunday than Wed or Monday (both like a weekend). I haven't had a good sales day all month that didn't have an EL or not tiny SOD. Usually there are a few with just regular subs and ODD.
847
« on: July 14, 2015, 10:23 »
I am glad to hear that they are still going, although I'd also be glad to hear about some sales there. Hopefully this ends the flatlining my account there has been doing. For a while they were doing ok, and they seemed to like some photos that I liked that other sites didn't always.
848
« on: July 09, 2015, 13:22 »
Within the last 2 month I uploaded 550 images.
I know my images is not in the "right" position yet because of the search engine system takes time. But right now I´m earning about 500 dollars a month, and if my old statistic "works" that will about tripple within 4 month´s time (search engine system )
I wouldn't count on that. The search giveth and the search taketh away. Depending on the images I'd say with 550 images getting $500 a month is about as "right" as you can get these days.
849
« on: July 08, 2015, 21:45 »
I'd much rather sites up the percent they paid us than lowering the payout threshold.
850
« on: June 23, 2015, 16:59 »
Thanks, I wouldn't have found that on my own... I don't know if any of mine have been deleted, but I have a baseline now.
It does seem that just a few images make up almost all my sales there (not surprising considering the usage).
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