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Quote from: stockastic on March 23, 2010, 15:23
Interesting diuscussion .  As others have said, while I respect the technique, originality and effort, this isn't the sort of photo art I'd buy to hang, and I have a hard time imagining its application as stock.   I'm probably wrong on both counts.  Sure "dog grooming" and "small business" would apply, but what success would she have getting that through IS's CV, and would she get enough search exposure to ever recover the cost of producting these images?

I have a feeling that when the trendy espresso-sipping 20-somethings  at a microstock see something like this  it gets fast-tracked. I wouldn't even blame them, I guess.

I suspect that most of the those 200 downloads have been printed and now hang on art directors walls. That was my first thought on seeing them.

Best seller of the day is not worth considering as useful information. Many of the day's 'best sellers' are new(ish) uploads with frequently one view and one download. I've also had 3 or 4 downloads of one file in a day and it has never appeared in best seller of the day whilst files that have only ever sold once or twice in their life up until then do appear.

Another totally useless 'tool' is 'most searched keywords by buyers'..........CHRISTMAS is the biggest 365 days per year.

 

Quote from: studioportosabbia on March 11, 2010, 23:55
I'm a non US resident so why should I pay tax and what is Fotolia doing with the money?

It's a US law.  I understand it, I only think 30% is absurdly high for this reason (non-resident not benefitting from any US-government policy).
[/quote]

It is absurd to subject non-US residents to a 30% tax rate especially as they are unable to claim it back or benefit from any US government policy regarding rebates/exemptions for eg low wage earners. Due to my low-income status, I don't actually pay anything on my FT income simply because the entirety of my income (incl. FT sales) after deduction of allowances places me in the 0% tax category.

But all tax authorities in the Western world are now looking for methods to boost their tax withholdings which are very significantly down in the past 2 years and I guess that this is a way to get more in.........No taxation without representation no longer applies, it would seem.

Quote from: mantonino on March 06, 2010, 18:37
http://www.fotolia.com/id/8801232

How is that image possibly allowed?  It's in the INFINITE collection *!  Shouldn't it be checked? Am I missing something obvious?

Many of the Infinity collection images that I've seen are old and dated. I've even seen one with a 1990's laptop in the shot. I reckon they are often  cast-offs from old RM and RF collections and receive little or no scrutiny from the 'rejectors'. The price level must be hugely off-putting to anyone searching for an image at microstock prices. There are usually two or more on every search page and I regard them as visual dilution of genuine microstockers' images. Cannot imagine that any are sold at those prices when a buyers is looking for micro.

Made fatal mistake of taking my small portfolio out of subs for the first 2 weeks of Feb. Best selling image went from page 1 or 2 of its category to page 9 now and the effects are now showing in reduced regular downloads which were frequently 'L' or 'XL' for that image. The trouble with being a bit of a one trick pony, I suppose. Peeving nevertheless.

The Labour Charter of 1927, promulgated by the Grand Council of Fascism, stated in article 7:
"The corporative State considers private initiative, in the field of production, as the most efficient and useful instrument of the Nation," then goes on to say in article 9 that: "State intervention in economic production may take place only where private initiative is lacking or is insufficient, or when are at stakes the political interest of the State. This intervention may take the form of control, encouragement or direct management."

"The Italian dictator Benito Mussolini  defined fascism as the merger of the State and the Corporation. It is that social system in which the interests of the State and the corporations merge together."

The State makes these laws at the insistence of the corporations that control it, in order to ensure that  corporations, such as the owners of Facebook etc, increase their profits at the expense of everyone else and their individual  rights. In this age of corporate kleptocracy, you surely didn't imagine that social networking via internet was free!

Have to wonder though; will the products produced in accordance with the new British law be legal in the rest of the EU and the US?

Or take one contributor at FT, Ioannis Kounadeas, sapphire with 246 images of plasticine man. Amazing.

Quote from: Peiling on February 09, 2010, 13:49
maybe we should open another account in another currency  and start uploading there?

Bin there done that. Alas, without success. Have GBP account, opened Euro account with different images. One image on the Euro account started selling quite quickly and I had 7 ppd's in 2 weeks for that image. Then it stopped absolutely dead. Never sold again. I got a friend in the US to check if that image came up on page 1 or 2 if he used the keywords associated with it and it did. Account is a zombie account now (only has about 30 images now as I stopped uploading to that account).

I did work out that the most unprofitable sales from FT's point of view are Euro exclusives making a sale in the US market for USD but that was when the Euro was $1.50+. I can think up all sorts of jiggery-pokery conspiracy stuff to 'explain' it but my sample is really too small.

Had a good Feb too. Despite having stopped subs for about 2 weeks..........restarted because I thought  ppd's were going down too. Uploaded no more than 8 images since start of 2010/no rejections but also not a single sale on any image uploaded since beginning of January (mostly food but perhaps a little too specific).

The FT case for subs.............from their Newsletter this month........can also be read on their blog:

"Visibility
By following the rules above, you will achieve a better visibility. But there are further tips to increase your visibility:

1. By allowing the sales in subscription you will improve the ratio sold/views for each one of your contents. When a subscription customer wants to buy your image and you don't allow the sale in subscription, your content will be marked at 0 sold for 1 view. The ratio sold/view is an important criteria within our search engine. Images that are sold each time they are viewed receive a better visibility in the results page."

So, subs can be regarded as a bit of personal promotion. The price may be low but you're lucky we don't charge you for it.

Good on the guy. Bob Elsdale's "behind the camera" link.

http://www.wild-side-online.com/#/public/about/

Quote from: stockastic on February 26, 2010, 20:37
Eventually, there will be no monetary commission. Instead we'll receive Fotolia Credits, which have no cash value, but can be accumulated to get cool prizes like maybe a Fotolia tote bag or a Fotolia coffee mug.

Perhaps instead of credits they will be called Chad.............."Chad are more commonly seen in mundane, everyday settings. When a hole punch of the functional or decorative type is used, it removes a small amount of paper - a chad. Chad are also common in stores, where holes are punched so that merchandise can be hung on pegs or clips. Chad are also the small strips, pieces of paper or shred waste that remain of the documents fed through a paper shredder.[3] Chad can also be the result of punching holes in any sort of thin material, such as cloth, plastic, or even sheet metal."

Wiki

Quote from: gostwyck on February 25, 2010, 21:17

Quote from: madelaide on February 25, 2010, 21:10
Well, microstock agencies spoiled these buyers with extremely cheap prices.  There was never a need for such cheap prices, but that's what they enjoyed and got used to.

For most commercial uses prices are still absurdly cheap relative to the costs of the projects they are to be used for. If the image was wanted for purely private or non-commercial use though, say a one-off personalised greetings card for example, then the images are getting quite expensive.

Exactly.
The price of a microstock image already pales into insignificance compared to the costs of actually selecting that microstock image. I presume that designers and art-buyers do not work for $5/hour.

Quote from: FD-amateur on February 19, 2010, 23:04

Quote from: OM on February 19, 2010, 22:59As Gostwyck suggested a couple of weeks ago, they could be preparing to get 'absorbed' by aliens.

This would be the second law of thermodynamics applied to µstock. Ultimately, we will all end up as subs on thinkstock.

Excellent! 

It would be funny if it weren't true.

Quote from: FD-amateur on February 19, 2010, 22:59

Quote from: Red Dove on February 19, 2010, 22:50Anyway, I'm none the bloody wiser, but to you use an expression from my US colleagues "don't piss down my neck and tell me it's raining".

I'm learning a lot of great English expressions here all the time.  In Dutch we say to grease somebody up with his own fat.

Sometimes Dutch is far more expressive though. Take for example, "Teflon Don". "Zo glad als een aal in een emmer snot."

As Gostwyck suggested a couple of weeks ago, they could be preparing to get 'absorbed' by aliens. Boosting the bottom line and (maybe it's just me) acceptance rate has been remarkably high since Oct/Nov 2009. "All the better to be eaten with, grandmama."

Beam me up, Scotty.

Quote from: FD-amateur on February 19, 2010, 21:35

Quote from: madelaide on February 19, 2010, 21:17What are "credits awarded"?

Sounds like they are giving it away as a promo tool. Something like printing money.

Similar but subtly different. "We have been able to 'award'  extra credits because our contributors are generously paying for them. It's like the UK team once stated, We are the deciders and we decided that they would."

Quote from: gostwyck on February 17, 2010, 11:37

Quote from: OM on February 17, 2010, 10:49
I'm nearly 2 weeks into a subsless existence but it seems like the rate of PpD is dropping off from its previous tempo. It's too short a time to judge and, quite honestly, my portfolio is too small but I'm keeping a wary eye on it.

I'm pretty sure that opting out of subs, even if you could, would impact on the sort-order position of your images and therefore affect PPD sales too. As far as I'm aware a sub-sale still counts for the purposes of assessing the popularity of an image. I doubt that the impact would become evident within a couple weeks though.

The fact that FT were relatively slow to introduce subs (as indeed were IS via Getty/Thinkstock) suggests to me that agencies, generally speaking, don't like subs any more than their contributors do. However there is obviously a significant market for subs and presumably the agencies find them profitable.

Thanks for that info about sort order of images. I've checked on views/per day and there is no detectable change yet. On the other hand, from my tiny portfolio, I was often getting 2 or 3 PPD per day and the odd subs download. PPD sales were regular until I stopped subs. Now I have the feeling that they're less regular. I give it a month and report back with some figures.

Quote from: lisafx on February 16, 2010, 22:53

Quote from: OM on February 16, 2010, 21:25


Yes. I'm getting a feel for things slowly and I have neither the time nor inclination to submit to the other larger agencies just yet.

Ah - that explains it.  Thanks for clearing up my confusion . 

I have a feeling that soon the only way to avoid subs will be to go exclusive somewhere.

Hi Lisa,

I have to say that I'm still having my doubts about canceling subs. I'm nearly 2 weeks into a subsless existence but it seems like the rate of PpD is dropping off from its previous tempo. It's too short a time to judge and, quite honestly, my portfolio is too small but I'm keeping a wary eye on it. I have noticed that the views/newly uploaded images is slower than it was with subs. But I just hate getting 30+ pence for an "L".............that's robbery.

Quote from: lisafx on February 16, 2010, 15:02

Quote from: OM on February 13, 2010, 12:39

Just over one third of my sales are subs/premium subs there but these amount to a total of about 1/10th of my yearly earnings. Only got a small portfolio and have just canceled subs last week.........give it a month and see how it affects regular sales. Sometimes with new uploads, I get the impression (never applied the rigors of statistical analysis to it) that subs sales may lead to real sales sometimes.
Often a subs sale is followed a few hours later with an L or XL sale. Cannot be the same buyer because they already get L size in their subscription. It's puzzling. I'm wondering if subs buyers maybe get a daily view of all new accepted files that are in subs whereas regular buyers have to search for them??

(my emphasis)
What do you mean you "cancelled subs"?  AFAIK you can't cancel, or opt out of subs on Fotolia unless you are exclusive.  Are you exclusive at Fotolia?  l

For most of us we are stuck with subs on the sites that have them.

Yes. I'm getting a feel for things slowly and I have neither the time nor inclination to submit to the other larger agencies just yet.

Quote from: KB on February 13, 2010, 23:32

Quote from: madelaide on February 13, 2010, 23:14

Quote from: KB on February 13, 2010, 22:08

Quote from: OM on February 13, 2010, 21:56
I've now moved my images out of subs with FT. Payment for the contributor was just too derisory for the size of image. That won't affect them in any way and I'll have to see if it affects my regular downloads.

Are you saying you opted out of subs on FT? I didn't think that was possible, but if it is, I'm definitely interested in learning how to do it.

OM is probably exclusive there.

Oh, yeah, there is that way. 
Sorry; I completely forgot. Thanks!

I believe you can remove any exclusive photo's if you're part exclusive as well. I'm very small fry, fairly new and still trying to get a feel for microstock.
I depend on studio photography for a living but wonder if I'll be able to supplement my old-age  state pension with micro earnings in a few years time. I just don't have the time or patience to submit to other agencies at the moment. So I'll stick with FT until they screw me once too often. It's only pocket money at the moment and I'm sure that I could find something else to do 'photographically' that would bring in as much or more on a regular basis than micro........just haven't discovered it yet and besides, I'm rather lazy! 

Quote from: madelaide on February 13, 2010, 20:36
I never read much of the sales information in FT since they stopped showing the buyer's name (so I would see if I could find it in use).  Then today I entered that page and noticed a "Credit for subscription based photo sale by reseller", and found out this subs earnings came from a Norwegian company called Scanpix.

http://scanpix.no/

I can't see the prices in the English page, but there is something in the Norwegian page (Leaf, can you check that?). I also wasn't able to find my imagethere.

The only images I could find on the scanpix site appeared to be designated 'folio RM' when I ran the mouse over them. They had a total of around 21,000 images.

I've now moved my images out of subs with FT. Payment for the contributor was just too derisory for the size of image. That won't affect them in any way and I'll have to see if it affects my regular downloads.

Quote from: Pixart on February 13, 2010, 01:54
I looked over all my sales this year and it's subs, subs, subs and more subs. I was pretty worked up over this deal, but if FT is becoming a subs site maybe I should just give up.

Just over one third of my sales are subs/premium subs there but these amount to a total of about 1/10th of my yearly earnings. Only got a small portfolio and have just canceled subs last week.........give it a month and see how it affects regular sales. Sometimes with new uploads, I get the impression (never applied the rigors of statistical analysis to it) that subs sales may lead to real sales sometimes.
Often a subs sale is followed a few hours later with an L or XL sale. Cannot be the same buyer because they already get L size in their subscription. It's puzzling. I'm wondering if subs buyers maybe get a daily view of all new accepted files that are in subs whereas regular buyers have to search for them??

I'm on UK, requested payment last month, got Paypal through yesterday. No deductions because I filled out W8 (or something form) last year. No ITIN requested. No probs.