|
MicrostockGroup Sponsors
This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.
Messages - gbalex
Pages: 1 ... 30 31 32 33 34 [35] 36 37 38 39 40 ... 64
851
« on: September 14, 2013, 13:28 »
...Looks like they are also taking steps to port BS images to agencies, large corporations, media and retail stores via skyword. I expect to seem them push more downloads to BS in lieu of SS.
A few of the large companies skyword serves IBM, GMC, CoxMedia, United Way, Market Watch, TransUnion, Stack, Auto Trader, Etc....
And no word of this great new deal to contributors? I'm no longer at BigStock (I left in March because they wouldn't let me opt out of subscriptions - I'm not part of the bridge to BigStock which would have at least let me have the 38 cents I have on SS) but I think some sort of notification (a) that contributors would earn royalties on the freebie intro program and (b) about the skyword program and how the earnings from that would be paid and at what rate is the least an agency should be doing.
They act like they own our content, but they don't.
I completely agree, why help support the downward spiral. I strongly suspect that the .38 royalty at BS will be fleeting once they start getting a large volume of enterprise business downloads. I don't think there is any way they can make a profit paying .38 to contributors combined with the ultra low prices they are charging buyers. I think we will see SS porting most of their large business acquisitions over to BS so that they can pay us far less in royalties; without having to endure the stigma of reducing rates at SS. They do not make these announcements because they know it is a bad deal for contributors. http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20130517-907312.htmlhttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-02/cox-said-to-discuss-merger-with-malone-backed-charter.html
852
« on: September 14, 2013, 10:53 »
don't see that promotion here but I see the following
Check their twitter feed, they are offering 5 free images for 7 days or 35 free images.
853
« on: September 14, 2013, 03:50 »
They have no problem devaluing our assets. Looks like they are also taking steps to port BS images to agencies, large corporations, media and retail stores via skyword. I expect to seem them push more downloads to BS in lieu of SS. A few of the large companies skyword serves IBM, GMC, CoxMedia, United Way, Market Watch, TransUnion, Stack, Auto Trader, Etc. http://www.skyword.com/skyword-press-release/skyword-taps-bigstock-image-database/Snip The collaboration with Bigstock further strengthens Skywords content offerings for increasing a brands presence on search and social media. Skyword works with big brands, agencies and media companies to streamline and automate the critical steps in the content creation process. Leveraging Skywords award-winning Content Marketing and Publishing Solutions, http://www.skyword.com/#fancyboxID-1
854
« on: September 13, 2013, 17:10 »
Or customer demand for those images has dropped for some reason. Not even shutterstock can force people to buy images they don't want.
Customer demand drops gradually, not overnight. We are talking about ports that sold very well for many years.
855
« on: September 13, 2013, 15:44 »
It is real, I have talked to many long term contributors who have seen huge drops since June of this year.
As contributors we have been hearing no one knows what sells for years and it is hard to determine the true commercial value of images.
The reality I am hearing from people who have a long record of being able to produce content that sells well, is that they are experiencing large and significant drops over night. Buyer's bought their content in numbers for years and in a matter of a month port sales dropped 30% to 70% overnight. Some of high volume illustrators seem to have been hit particularly hard.
Those types of overnight drops have nothing to do with the contents in those ports. SS either did it on purpose or the site bugs are spreading and getting worse.
856
« on: September 11, 2013, 16:24 »
Dear Getty,
You destroyed the community spirit at iStock. You yanked customers around with prices and raised them to high to fast. You kicked out one of your most helpful artist, remember Sean? You mocked us when we said sales are slipping and you said all is good.You are not up front and honest with how you did cash prices. Now take all the artist you shafted and their collective blogs and the forums they visit like this one and there you have it, business is not booming anymore. It's not your site!! iStock was doing just fine before your so called great changes for the customer! Stop blaming SS and site design for your own demise because you did this to yourself! Now Drop RC's pay a decent % to the artist... oh did you realized a lot of artist were buyers as well or maybe they knew a lot of buyers? SS has content and buyers don't care who owns it! they advertise on podcast and in the mail. They don't call my house offering me credits! they advertise in other countries and are pushing forward with their brand! Now you can figure it out can't you?
As a buyer the thing that annoyed me more than anything else was the content they were serving us. The old IS allowed the cream of the crop to rise to the top of the searches. When they started serving crap content at high price points in lieu of better content, buyers became annoyed. Add to that, the many stunts they pulled on submitters and I will never ever be going back to buy from the site. The same goes for sites which choose to follow suit.
857
« on: September 10, 2013, 17:58 »
if iS lowers the price of all the indie stuff (that is also on FT, DT, SS etc) won't that mean those other agencies will be forced to lower their prices too?
I think they've played this really well and the goal may be to smash the competition (at our expense, of course).
Business plans @ our expense is the micro mantra these days. This group has never been fair and they get uglier every day. It is long past time to afford them the benefit of doubt. They have proved who they are time after time, year after year. We only have ourselves to blame if we leave our images on IS and BS.... the giant * sound is getting louder.
858
« on: September 09, 2013, 16:10 »
I've been with DT from September 2006, and I think they are putting us down more and more every year. I don't think I will stay with them for much longer.
How about you?
My experience seems to be the opposite - they are my best agency, and growing in sales! So no plans to leave here 
My earnings have actually been fairly comparable the last few months between the two.
I think it's fair to say that is very unusual.
I started contributing to DT in December of 2010. My monthly revenue at Shutterstock exceeds my total income at DT since I began.
I haven't uploaded to either in a long time. DT has stayed pretty consistent and SS has been declining for a while.
My earnings on DT have exceeded my SS earnings since June of this year. Last month by 28%
859
« on: September 06, 2013, 13:53 »
It's not inconceivable that when Carlyle Group eventually lose patience with their irksome 'investment' ... that SS might become the next owner.
Lol. And in a universe of infinite possibilities, it's not inconceivable that a consortium from the Microstock Group might one day own it. Or maybe the people who run the mini-mart along the road from here. But this is certainly also equally as unlikely Shutterstock and Getty are completely different businesses on completely different scales. Also - Getty is the same business no matter who owns or operates it.
The idea of SS taking over GI is nothing like as absurd as you think. The scale of the 2 businesses is not too far apart and the gap is narrowing every day. SS has annual sales of $220M and growing, GI is $900M and reducing. SS has a market capitalisation today of about $1B. Getty's market value, just before H&F took them over, was under $2B (Getty's sales were higher then too and they didn't have all that debt either). Smaller businesses launch takeovers of bigger rivals every day. They can borrow money based on the value of the greater business if their bid is successful.
SS have stated their intention to become the biggest player in the stock image industry. The quickest way to grow in a competitive market is via the acquisition of rivals. Imagine how dominant a combined SS/GI business would be and how much more control of pricing they would then have. If you were Oringer, wouldn't a takeover of Getty be your ultimate goal? He's now in touching-distance of achieving it. All it needs is a willing seller.
http://www.stockmarketstudy.org/wordpress/tag/sstk/page/2/Snip SSTK Questions/Answers So our strategy is really volume leadership Ross Sandler Deutsche Bank Would you talk about that for a sec, the landscape because weve taken a lot of questions about it, as the IPO was happening in the sense, but you guys are now officially that the largest online royalty free inventory business out there. How would you characterize the competitive landscape today versus maybe a year ago, between a few of those bigger guys that you just mentioned and some of the smaller? Which are you more focused on if at all? Thilo Semmelbauer So our strategy is really volume leadership and Ross, youre quite right that in volume terms, we delivered more downloads, paid downloads last year than all of Getty combined. And Getty is certainly continues to be the revenue leader in this space. If Getty is sort of in the $800 million to $1 billion revenue range, we think the market is somewhere in the $4 billion to $6 billion range, just for stock imagery. And given our size, $170 million last year were really still a very small player in a large and growing market, and we see opportunity for several big players continuing to dominate in the market. So and obviously we want to be one of them. In terms of changes in competitive dynamics, Id say in the last year, not significant changes. Getty continues to be a big player. Numbers of years ago they bought iStockPhoto. From everything we can tell, Getty is not growing but they continue to generate lot of cash. Its a strong business. There are always new players popping up and disappearing because as Tim mentioned barriers to entry are very low in this space but barriers to scale are high and were not really seeing were not seeing anybody else anywhere close to where we are. More SS PR http://pandodaily.com/2013/03/28/shutterstock-dives-into-gettys-domain-with-offset-a-premium-photo-site-next-step-video/Snip Shutterstock is one of New York techs quietest success stories. From a nondescript Financial District office, the company grew to $219 million in revenue*, with 250 employees, Snip Managed rights images make up the majority of Gettys $1 billion in revenue (the rest is through its Shutterstock competitor, iStock). Thats not terribly efficient revenue, though, as most of it involves a human, a handshake, and a complex contract. Offset seeks to upend that entirely, as the first set of high-end images sold royalty-free, online, without an agent. The images will cost between $250 and $500 to use. Images of this quality arent available royalty-free elsewhere, a Shutterstock spokesperson said. http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=23442750Snip For the year 2013, the company is increasing its expectations for revenue to $227 million to $229 million, adjusted EBITDA to $48 million to $50 million, an effective tax rate of approximately 40%, capital expenditures related to network servers and technology of approximately $5 million and capital expenditures for non-recurring leasehold improvements related to headquarters office relocation of approximately $10 million.
860
« on: September 05, 2013, 12:20 »
We can blame SS & Fotolia for driving the price of our assets down and keeping them down for over 8 years so that they can gain market share. The margin has been so high that I am sure they could have raised prices and done the same thing.
Driving the price down? Not my experience at all. When I joined, SS was paying .20 per subscription download and there weren't many options for anything else. Now they pay almost twice that, not counting all the on-demand and other non-sub sales. They did it by raising prices and royalties to match. As far as I know they haven't raised prices since the financial meltdown in 2008. To raise royalties without raising prices would be to cut their share, which I can understand their unwillingness to do. And I can see and hear some of where their share goes, in all the advertising they do on radio, on podcasts and on blogs. They think that'll draw more customers, and I'm willing to believe they're right.
(I won't defend Fotolia. They have cut my royalties several times, which is why I stopped uploading there. I don't know if there is room for them to raise prices, nor do I particularly care. They're a small contribution to my bottom line.)
It might be useful to remember that iStock started as a free image exchange, then went to a broader sales model. They kept raising prices over the years, even as they cut my share of the selling price. Now they've raised them too high and lost sales, or maybe the two are unrelated. But they're facing declining revenues even as their debt skyrockets, and that's a recipe for disaster.
You are confusing the IS greed and contempt for contributors with market dynamics which are two different things. IS contempt for contributors who are also buyers can not be underestimated. This is where we have all been naive, while we were in a financial meltdown since 2006, SS was thriving, gaining market share and the cash was rolling in. During this time we did not hear a word of this from Jon, he kept SS's profitable success hush hush. He could have raised sub prices but chose not to so that he could gain lion size market share by keeping prices for customers down at the expense of it contributor's increasing production expenses. While the price of producing images rose for contributors our sub compensation has not changed for over 8 years. Do you remember what type of images were coming in to the micro sites when the sub prices were .20C. Let me remind you. Yuri was still shooting blurry poorly lit lizards in his back yard in 2005. This is Jon Oringer's port on SS and the majority of contributors did not even reach this level of quality. http://www.shutterstock.com/portfolio/search.mhtml?gallery_username=shutterstock&page=27.The bar has been raised substantially since 2004 without Commensurate compensation. If you earned a .38 royalty in 2008 we did so by substantially raising the quality of our images and shooting HCV work. The quality and content bar continues to rise as well as the costs to produce those assets, the sites benefit from all of this without incurring any of the expenses to produce those images.
861
« on: September 05, 2013, 11:30 »
To me the most telling statistic is how leveraged the company is. As I understand these things, first H&F and then Carlyle saddled Getty with increasing amounts of debt to finance their purchases of the firm. So Getty goes from a leverage of 1.5 before the H&F acquisition to 3.2 afterward, and then from 6x when Carlyle buys it to 7.1 in June. That's less and less sustainable, and is a combination of declining revenues and increased debt. I'd say both are self-inflicted; SS and others are just getting the benefit of disastrous decisions by Getty and its past and present owners.
We can blame SS & Fotolia for driving the price of our assets down and keeping them down for over 8 years so that they can gain market share. The margin has been so high that I am sure they could have raised prices and done the same thing. I agree with your post, the most disgusting aspect is that the guys on the top make sure they benefit no matter how the cookies crumble. Leverage exists when an investor achieves the right to a return on a capital base that exceeds the investment which the investor has personally contributed to the entity or instrument achieving a return. Snip Leverage at Getty was about six times when Carlyle bought the company in 2012 and rose to about 7.1 times as of June 30, according to Moodys. Leverage increased to 3.2 times in 2008 from less than 1.5 times when Hellman & Friedman purchased the company, according to Moodys. Leverage increased during Hellman & Friedmans ownership after a 2010 dividend. We believe long-term leverage will be high because of Gettys private-equity ownership, history of special dividends and aggressive financial policy, Standard & Poors analysts wrote in a March 26 news release. http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-09-04/caryle-group-s-getty-images-ratings-on-review-for-cut-by-moody-s
862
« on: September 03, 2013, 14:30 »
In June there were submitters complaining about incorrect sort order results when sorted by Total Purchases. I noticed this soon after my best selling images disappeared from first page searches. When looking at the sort results, it looked like some of our most popular images had somehow been demoted as they showed up in the sort below images with less downloads.
In July SS disabled the Total Purchases sort on the Image Gallery Stats page.
863
« on: September 02, 2013, 08:22 »
Dropping like a stone, today on its way down it broke the $50 level. That's almost 20% decline since its recent height.
The only explanation is that the investors must have noticed the meteoric rise of Symbiostock and its image pool climbing over 100,000 last month. That, or some traders coming back from their vacations noticed only now that Yuri rebalanced his portfolio.
You must have read the article Shutterstock Valuation Makes Me Shudder. The analyst who wrote it thinks the stock is overvalued and that the low moat entry means that it will attract competitors. Shutterstock Valuation Makes Me Shudder Jul 12 2013, 07:00 | about: SSTK Editor's notes: SSTK's success has earned it a nosebleed valuation and will attract competitors in a low-moat industry. Slowing growth means 30% downside as the market gets the picture. There is one attribute that I will not tolerate in a growth stock trading at astronomical valuations, and that is the lack of a significant barrier to entry which will ultimately breed future competition and compress earnings in the future. Amazon (AMZN) is an example of a company with outrageous valuations, but one that has built out an infrastructure platform that grows increasingly harder to replicate as time passes. A company trading at nosebleed valuations, with little to no barrier to entry for competitors is Shutterstock (SSTK). Shutterstock is in the business of offering a marketplace for digital imagery, both still photographs and videos. Seeing a need to simplify the onerous process of licensing... http://seekingalpha.com/article/1545712-shutterstock-valuation-makes-me-shudder
864
« on: August 31, 2013, 14:31 »
How about they announce how long they plan to continue unfair treatment for the loyal contributors who have taken their time to upload and keyword directly to their site?
as simple as that but it will never happen, "we" accepted crap after crap and "we" still submit to them so why would anything change? (unless it is for the worst which is already happening with most exclusives, not even going to mention indies because those are in the trash bin for a long time)
p.s: I was thinking you were talking about iStock
Isn't it clear from their actions who you are dealing with. They are not honest or fair and they have no intention of letting us know what their plans are because those plans are not in our best interest. The owners of BS are no longer involved, read the quarterly reports. Instead we are dealing with the wall street crowd Jon has chosen to surround himself with. I no longer contribute to IS or BS. We teach these micro sites how to treat us, by what we are willing to accept. We will have no one to blame but our selves, if we willingly participate in the planned downward spiral.
865
« on: August 31, 2013, 09:40 »
I had to read the first paragraph 8 times and I still don't understand a word of what they're saying.
"We're trying to get more sales, but we haven't a clue how to go about it, so we'll keep throwing stuff to see what sticks. Hold onto your hats, it'll continue to be a bumpy ride."
Doors The End is perfect background music for reading these newsletters
866
« on: August 31, 2013, 01:26 »
Funny how the rejections suddenly go up when the que starts getting lower.
Rejections that call for resubmission = double, triple, quadruple money for reviewers depending on how creative they get with finding reasons for rejections.
867
« on: August 30, 2013, 15:12 »
I have been with BigStock since 2005, so I was not eligible for the 'Bridge' simply because I already had all my images on BS for years. I've been at the .38 level on SS for a long time now, so there's a good chance I would have been invited to join the Bridge if I was not already on BS to begin with. I am thoroughly disgusted with this injustice - people who joined the site YEARS after I did now receive a much better return than I do. I came close to deleting my portfolio when they intoduced .27 subs, but just stopped uploading instead. It's a shame because I always loved BS, they treated me good, that is before SS took it over and ruined it. Just like iStock did with StockXpert. It's like a reoccurring nightmare you can't wake up from. 
They just used it to get the images they want ported over. I doubt very much that they will honor those .38 rates indefinitely since doing so will cause them to lose money at the very low subscription $.16 prices they are charging for each image download.
868
« on: August 30, 2013, 12:49 »
You would have to buy two subscription plans at SS at the 12 month price to equal the 50 downloads per day that the 12 month BS's subscription Plan offers.
If the buyer downloaded all 50 images at each site for .38 royalty both sites would incur a loss. At .38 bridge royalties, the loss gap between sites is just too big. I highly doubt that BS will continue the bridge program for long.
Bigstock $4,060.59 loss
Shutterstock $2,168.58 loss
As soon and they port over the majority of the images they need for the target demographic they will drop royalties to normal BS rates.
869
« on: August 29, 2013, 02:52 »
Funny how the Weekly Top 50 suddenly quit updating after 9 years of working perfectly. Almost makes you think they do not want us to see who has those top positions now...
I hope it was deliberate that the Top 50 stopped working, and I hope they don't ever "fix" it. Those lists were nothing more than copycat fodder.
That was my first response also, but after talking to a few of my friends who also used to make it into that list on a regular basis we have started to wonder about the timing of our drops and its demise. I think many of us were not fans.
870
« on: August 28, 2013, 20:26 »
Funny how the Weekly Top 50 suddenly quit updating after 9 years of working perfectly. Almost makes you think they do not want us to see who has those top positions now.
It looks like it stopped working around february as one of the images i see is valentines. I have been looking at that from time to time to see if they updated but nope...
Exactly and sales dropped of the cliff in March.
It's just weird how the jolly old share price keeps rising despite your protestations of how sales keep falling ... and most others are reporting the opposite. I reckon that's worthy of an editorial in 'Amazing Phenomena' magazine.
You don't pay attention well do you? Sales are not falling "for SS" and it is not at all surprising that the share prices have gone up! Mean while I just saw one of the classic old timers with more HCV images in her port than any of us will ever shoot complaining about sales dropping off a cliff. Bet most people do not even know who she is and she is smart to stay under the radar.
871
« on: August 28, 2013, 13:59 »
Funny how the Weekly Top 50 suddenly quit updating after 9 years of working perfectly. Almost makes you think they do not want us to see who has those top positions now.
It looks like it stopped working around february as one of the images i see is valentines. I have been looking at that from time to time to see if they updated but nope...
Exactly and sales dropped of the cliff in March.
872
« on: August 28, 2013, 11:34 »
What difference does that make? I sell more than one kind of image. You act like that's where I get all of my downloads. It's not. A search for "town" returns 428,933 images. One of my recent photos is No. 16 most popular and rising. No. 16 out of more than 400,000 isn't too bad for an image that's barely a month old, and not a person in it.
Your premise is that people on the top tier automatically got their images demoted. There's two examples where I showed you that isn't the case. It's older images that lost out in the search change, not older contributors.
That is only your opinion and not my experience or the experience of many long term submitters I have talked to personally. Our new files are not selling and that was not the case just a few short months ago!
So you've submitted several hundred new files since March and not a single one has sold even one time?
No they quit selling well in February. I used to regularly have images which hit the Top 50 weekly. Funny how the Weekly Top 50 suddenly quit updating after 9 years of working perfectly. Almost makes you think they do not want us to see who has those top positions now. http://submit.shutterstock.com/top50.mhtml?span=week&filter=all
873
« on: August 27, 2013, 09:44 »
They cherry picked ports based on the profile of the customers they planned on marketing them to in the future. If your images were selling well to that demographic on SS you fit the profile they were looking for. If you do not fit that profile you did not get an invite.
They will pay .38 just long enough port over the images they need to accomplish their business goals. It is going right over our heads, that BS can not continue to pay .38 royalties for your images at the prices they are charging BS buyers.
I am glad I did not join bridge. SS has devalued my assets enough, I will not devalue them further by offering files at a division of the company which has openly undercut parent company prices to gain market share in a large demographic that has historically been willing to pay more than SS is charging now.
If customers want my images they will have to buy them at a higher price @ SS or better yet a company that is not openly willing to devalue our assets to gain market share.
874
« on: August 26, 2013, 22:02 »
Is anyone surprised? Expect them to push more and more sales from SS to BS.
1 - I really don't think that BigStock has the same buyers as SS (BigStock has a different collection as well, yes the big contributors had option for bridge etc but many aren't contributing and another pile of contributors that never passed SS entry qc)
2 - SS is growing quarter after quarter, why would they risk their position to drive some buyers to BigStock?
that said BigStock is pathetic for me, I have done more this month at SS than I did in over 4 years and 5 months at BigStock
Look at the SEC filings and the Q2 Earnings Call Transcript, they are one in the same. While the analyst's and key SS OP's Jon Oringer, founder, CEO and chairman; Thilo Semmelbauer, president and chief operating officer; and Tim Bixby, CFO. speak about and give financial info for Skillfeed and Offset they never mention Bigstock once. Because they consider SS & BS one in the same. As I mention before large enterprises are a big part of SS's market push and they have expanded their sales teams substantially in the last two quarters to accomplish their goal of getting more large enterprises on board. Just who do you think the analyst's, VC,'s, CFO and stock holders would rather see get the lion share of that huge business? Of course they would like to push it to BS because they will make far more money. Why do you think they started the bridge program and why do you think they continued to offer the .38 cent incentive for 6 months? http://seekingalpha.com/article/1616602-shutterstocks-ceo-discusses-q2-2013-results-earnings-call-transcript?part=singleExpanding Direct Sales To Large EnterprisesSnip As Jon mentioned, direct sales continues to be one of the fastest growing parts of our business and our growth accelerated in Q2 as we continued to refine our approach and expand our team. Across agencies, publishers, media companies and large corporations, both the number and the size of the deals continue to increase.Snip Tim Bixby So overall, the download growth was pretty consistent in all territories. ...direct sales to large enterprises both in the U.S. and outside the U.S. are continuing to grow at a faster clip than the overall business, and so those tended to drive that number higher. But we do see quite strong growth across all the product lines.
875
« on: August 26, 2013, 17:04 »
Is anyone surprised? Expect them to push more and more sales from SS to BS.
Pages: 1 ... 30 31 32 33 34 [35] 36 37 38 39 40 ... 64
|
Sponsors
Microstock Poll Results
Sponsors
|
Show Posts
