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Messages - Pauws99
Pages: 1 ... 31 32 33 34 35 [36] 37 38 39 40 41 ... 195
876
« on: November 09, 2018, 15:29 »
For the first time Fotolia is egual to shutterstock this month. Big change now. It is the same for you ?
Miles ahead at the moment...though for me they often start strong and SS reel them in slowly. They have never beaten SS in a full month for me...this might be the month.
877
« on: November 09, 2018, 09:17 »
I just don't get why the SS inspection "service" is so unhelpful surely it would save them as well us time us to tell people why the release was rejected instead of playing some guessing game.
878
« on: November 09, 2018, 03:25 »
From the age range I would draw the implication that for many this is a supplement to retirement income rather than being their sole or even main income. Its a very small sample though so hard to draw any definite conclusions.
879
« on: November 09, 2018, 03:17 »
Interesting fingers crossed for me....sounds like some of the big corporates are moving to adobe.
880
« on: November 08, 2018, 04:30 »
about the main subject "Why Shutterstock is accepting everything" :
in my experience, Shutterstock was accepting everything for videos 1 year ago, now they are more selective and don't reject randomly but each video that has some issue, you can resend, and generally, they are refused again if they have some problem.
the person that will review them is not always the same.
other agencies like Pond5, have made the opposite and now accept everything, they just refuse the big violation of the copyright of what they cannot sell at all.
about the salary of the reviewers, I think that they cannot pay more, because they have a lot of files to review quickly and the money they earn is not unlimited and they prefer to distribute to contributors
if you look at the SS stock option trend and company public charts you can find in google, you can see that they have grown a lot in terms of gross-profit:
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SSTK/shutterstock/gross-profit
but the Net Income was flat and depending on their revenue share.
This year, after many years of flat income, they have probably changed something to keep more money for them, saving in RS or salaries:
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SSTK/shutterstock/net-income
So they cannot pay too much the reviewers if they want to survive
I believe they have said they are trying to reduce the increase in their costs so yes.
881
« on: November 08, 2018, 04:08 »
I'm experiencing a very poor start to the month too..the few sales I've had have been of my better sellers... up till recently I was getting a lot of sales of my somewhat dubious older images that had never sold...I suspect a big change in the algorithm which may be working out badly for some of us.
You want to remove your portfolio! dont you! 
You seem to have some kind of cognitive dissonance issue here the only one suggesting pulling ports is you. I guess its not surprising when you make so many contradictory posts.
882
« on: November 07, 2018, 17:22 »
So now we have moved into "minimum caps"?
883
« on: November 07, 2018, 17:18 »
i have a photo of dubai who was in first line in a search of more than 75000 image of dubai ...it sells everyday ..near 1000 sales, now slipped already in 2 page...and clearly not sold for the last days...thanks shuttestock. now i understand the lost of sales of last days...good job ss
"content sold are always the same for years. the sites of micro are biased towards old and establish contributor who uploaded in the past." 
884
« on: November 07, 2018, 17:15 »
The way I see it SS have created a huge problem for themselves by taking on a massive number of new and naive contributors who contribute no income as their images are unsellable who then clog up their expensive (relatively) support with basic questions including not selling...every hour spent dealing with a none value adding contributor is money down the drain. Of course if they'd maintained at least some standards they would need less support staff to deal with "professional" level issues.
You mean like new people or anals who if they don't get an immediate answer, keep writing every day for the same issue, until the message based is so clogged with repeat questions from the same people, that support in swamped in a morass? Thus none of us get any support while they try to wade through the nasty mess. [/quote] Exactly ;-). In my past life I had some involvement with front line customer support ....a very small number of customers were responsible for a huge number of queries. I suspect that experienced professional contributors very rarely contact customer support.
885
« on: November 07, 2018, 17:10 »
I'm experiencing a very poor start to the month too..the few sales I've had have been of my better sellers... up till recently I was getting a lot of sales of my somewhat dubious older images that had never sold...I suspect a big change in the algorithm which may be working out badly for some of us.
886
« on: November 07, 2018, 03:04 »
I hope there's going to be some serious development of the Adobe stock site. At the moment I think the Fotolia site is far superior to the very simplistic Adobe site. Fotolia has a lot of features I like a lot, whereas Adobe stock is boring to use and has almost no useful features.
We are working hard to continue developing the Adobe Stock Contributor Portal. I expect to continue to see many new and exciting features in the months to come.
Other than view statistics and the weekly position, what specific feature are you referencing that is available at Fotolia and not Adobe Stock?
-Mat
How I fear those words 'new and exciting'....!
Ha Ha! Yes, you are not alone. Change can be scary and I understand how the industry can leave you feeling a bit jaded. That being said, I would encourage you to look at the changes we have added recently...we increased the minimum payment amount for all contributors, we have distributed thousands of codes for free Adobe Creative Cloud accounts to contributors, provided free access to Adobe Portfolio and more.
We have an entire team dedicated to the success of contributors positioned around the world. Our only job is to ensure that contributors have the tools you need to succeed.
So yes, I stand by it...we have (more) new and exciting features on the horizon.
-Mat
The only agency I can see at the moment making genuine improvements!
887
« on: November 06, 2018, 16:47 »
semms like i reached already my annual quota
Oh no, please! We already had the daily cap and the monthly cap conspiracy, do we need a yearly one too?
You forgot the weekly one ;-).
888
« on: November 06, 2018, 14:56 »
.
why? no one OWES us a living - and agencies pay what the market requires - stock photography has ceased (if ever) to be a full time job for most; those who continue just need to have a realistic expectation - for me, stock provides a sizeable chunk of my travel expenses, not a sole source of income
If one (can) like what he does, no problem with that,
so just some thoughts:
For example it makes sense a country have a legal minimum wage,
otherwise you will always find somebody make it cheaper
-> wage will go near to zero
this causes problems, just take a look globally,
if you cant afford a meal, the cook cant afford to buy your work and so on
-> only the biggest will survive (with max power)
furthermore i would suggest a minimum healthcare system etc is not a bad ting.
So, saying no one owes you a living, seems only one side of a point of view.
Think about -from what ever you live at th e moment- says this to you tomorrow.
The point is I think that selling stock is not a job and microstock agencies aren't the government.
889
« on: November 06, 2018, 09:04 »
Great post Mike!...I have even had agencies offering to buy the whole portfolio, only a few months back some clown obviously from some agency!...its all BS from the beginning to the end!
I tell you people and on this point i do agree with people like Laurin etc, etc. This business will just go further and further down the toilet until we start boycotting certain agencies who are the ultimate destroyers of this business!
You could make a start by pulling your port from Shutterstock.
Dont pull your port at Istock! rather let it hang in there and earn some money!...better you get something then nothing isnt it!
So I take it when you say "we" you actually mean everyone else? Or do you consider Istock one of the good guys?
Hahaha! no agency are " good guys" thats not business, thats not comme il faut, in business! but you should still leave your port, its earning something isnt it?
Absolutely but then I don't suggest boycotting sites
890
« on: November 06, 2018, 08:00 »
Great post Mike!...I have even had agencies offering to buy the whole portfolio, only a few months back some clown obviously from some agency!...its all BS from the beginning to the end!
I tell you people and on this point i do agree with people like Laurin etc, etc. This business will just go further and further down the toilet until we start boycotting certain agencies who are the ultimate destroyers of this business!
You could make a start by pulling your port from Shutterstock.
Dont pull your port at Istock! rather let it hang in there and earn some money!...better you get something then nothing isnt it!
So I take it when you say "we" you actually mean everyone else? Or do you consider Istock one of the good guys?
891
« on: November 06, 2018, 03:14 »
Sales of the first week is horror. Why are they playing with the site too much i really don't understand. What is the logic of removing Most Popular button in search page?
The "logic" is to give customers a wider choice than the same old images. Whether the way it is implemented achieves that is the real issue. My sales so far this month are horrible...looks like the latest change has gone against me.
892
« on: November 05, 2018, 16:21 »
Which in turn reminds me of how professional photographers felt about microstock.  ...
These two things are not equivalent - I'm somewhat frustrated that this comparison is raised any time anyone who contributes to microstock complains about something being unfair or unreasonable. Just because two groups of people are unhappy does not make what happened to them the same.
Microstock was a competitor to traditional agencies offering similar products on different (more convenient) terms. Part of the reason that microstock initially took off was that there was a new way to buy something of equivalent quality with less hassle (instant download from a web site with no price negotiation, sales rep hassle or contract to be negotiated). Most of the previous generation of stock producers started out doing this as a side gig with out-takes from custom shoots.
Shutterstock is trying to screw its own contributors by providing cheap but largely useless support in an effort to cut costs. They aren't crowdsourcing the same or a similar service, but trying to palm off something even worse than cutting and pasting boilerplate just by calling it contributor support. As soon as they come up with some broken AI software "equivalent" they'll fire the underpaid gig economy workers
The party to aim our ire at is Shutterstock for treating contributors with disdain and letting go professional support staff. The gig economy "support" folks will soon be collateral damage, so they should be looking for their next gig now.
Misguided and wrong headed as it may be they are crowdsourcing contributor support as far as I can see. https://www.directly.com/ The way I see it SS have created a huge problem for themselves by taking on a massive number of new and naive contributors who contribute no income as their images are unsellable who then clog up their expensive (relatively) support with basic questions including not selling...every hour spent dealing with a none value adding contributor is money down the drain. Of course if they'd maintained at least some standards they would need less support staff to deal with "professional" level issues.
893
« on: November 05, 2018, 13:48 »
Sounds like a real devils masterplan.
A fairly unambitious one though....not going to fund an island liar that way
894
« on: November 05, 2018, 03:09 »
They will have to other means to access the money. I know it must be tough cos surely entities like PayPal wont deal with Iranians.
As shutterstock are a US company will they even be able to be on their site though? I believe also the US are flexing their muscles to stop other countries trading with them.
895
« on: November 04, 2018, 09:08 »
I would be very surprised if it was less than 80% and of the remainder very few put in more than a token effort.
I don't remember if I read this here or on a Facebook forum, but...
The group leader of some forum I follow said that he talked to the heads of Shutterstock, iStock and Adobe at a conference earlier this year. One of the facts that he heard repeatedly is that 85% of the images on their servers NEVER sell. Only 15% of the images comprise 100% of their sales.
Their problem, of course, is that they have no way to determine which 15% those will be. If they could figure that out, they could save a ton of money on servers (hardware and electricity and the manpower to keep them all going).
They also said (and my memory is a little more foggy here) that a similar ratio exists for the submitters, where only xxx (I think also around 15%) of the photo submitters make enough sales to reach the payout levels at least once a year.
I reckon its even more than 85% given the recent rate of new images. I'm surprised how my sales have held up relatively well and I have no illusions that my images are much more than "OK for stock". Pareto would expect 80% of sales to be made by 20% of all images.
896
« on: November 04, 2018, 08:31 »
A lot of the stuff stated in his article happen to me back in 2011. By my third year I made $7,800 thus pretty close on taking three good years to reach the $6,000 level. I wonder what percentage of newbies come in thinking they will be the next Yuri only to quit in less than six months? My guess would be at least 50% or higher!
Good read... 
I would be very surprised if it was less than 80% and of the remainder very few put in more than a token effort.
897
« on: November 04, 2018, 07:32 »
Decent read mostly but as I often say on my soapbox return per image on its own is not a good of measure of success. What if your image takes 1 day to process or costs $500 for the model etc?
Return on investment is the key indicator.
898
« on: November 04, 2018, 05:06 »
Where is Wemark. Still in business. My images are still not reviewed. Anyone had their images review ? I am guessing another one bites the DUST.
Before even starting. That's a new record. Blockchain is really innovative (in the hipster startup sense).
I still can't see what practical use Blockchain has for normal people. After all these years of "innovation" I still can't buy a Pizza with it!
899
« on: November 03, 2018, 11:47 »
Mine haven't for an outfit that claims to be on the side of contributors not good.....
900
« on: November 03, 2018, 06:41 »
I don't understand the offer being made - but no, I haven't heard of Shutterstock buying out images before.
What I don't understand is that copyright transfer to Shutterstock is a one time legal transaction for which I would expect a one time payment from SS. Once they own the copyright they are free to do what they want with the image(s).
If they're talking about minimum payout for the first year with the possibility of more money later, that doesn't sound like a copyright transfer but a complex rights managed deal.
If the restrictions on the sister images are forever, I'd suggest that you try and sell the copyrights to all of the images rather than give away any earnings for sister images at all images for all time, particularly if the subject matter/people/props/location is one where you have many images that would no longer be licensable.
$1,500 is a nice royalty, but they're asking for a lot of rights, so don't shortchange yourself.
Quite right! they dont buy images outright! why should they!
The email says they are doing on behalf of a buyer so not them paying. I don't though if its something Shutterstock would do though. I know Dreamstimes do it.
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