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Messages - cascoly
Pages: 1 ... 32 33 34 35 36 [37] 38 39 40 41 42 ... 170
901
« on: August 27, 2022, 12:45 »
Same thing what happened to me, did your sales go down after your account was blocked?
yes - blocked means NO sales for the time blocked; but returned to normal afterwards. i havent uploaded much for months and sales have been steady
902
« on: August 26, 2022, 20:13 »
They didn't say "illustrations only" in the email sent out Thursday, but looking at what was eligible in my account, that's what it appears they're including in this round.
thanks, that may be the reason - nothing shows up on my dashboard, but I got a fair number accepted on the 'first' round
903
« on: August 26, 2022, 11:48 »
This month has surprised me after all. Some news, good news and of course "exciting" news. For those who have not yet noticed.
Adobestock's new nomination for the Free Collection against one-time payment goes into the 2nd round in 2022...
i couldn't find that -- where did you see it?
904
« on: August 26, 2022, 11:39 »
... After editing, (1) got past the AI system, the other (19) were immediately rejected. This morning, the reviewer approved that (1) image and it's now in my port. But I thought there was noise?
It's frustrating, but it looks like editing an image to trick a computer is the only way at this point!
for some images i'll use PS neural artifact removal filter
905
« on: August 26, 2022, 11:38 »
1. There is no consistency in reviews. Some reviewers are ridiculously strict and reject just about everything while others are more reasonable and sensible. That doesn't mean that bad photos pass but good ones generally do depending on the reviewer. So you need to resubmit, often multiple times.
definitely - i've found some reviewers will reject an entire batch for the same reason, even though only a few might actually be at fault - resubmit gets most accepted
3. Focus rejections are a 'catch-all'. I took a couple of photos of a fairly unique church but the sky is completely washed out. Not much I could do about that unfortunately. The church is in focus but it isn't a great photo because of the sky. I accept that. In my opinion, they didn't want the shot and used focus as the excuse.
they're very strict about 'posterization' in skies (so mild other agencies accept)- often occurs with bracketed HDR. i sometimes can fix with just a light Gaussian blur. i reduce to 4mp then use AI gigapixel & reduce to 6mp (all quickly done in batches). these are accepted after both noise & focus rejects 6. I have the resubmission process down to a 'fine art' so it costs me very little time to do it.
that's the key -- and SS is the only agency for which i'll do this
906
« on: August 26, 2022, 11:27 »
Before the last message from AS, there was no message at all for 3 months. I thought they had kicked me out and forgotten about me.
The fact that they have now written a message to me gives me some hope that they are investigating the case.
I don't know what the problem is. AS has not written anything clear.
I don't give details here yet.
I want to wait and see if AS gets back to me.
i can understand your position, but then shouldn't you have refrained from posting in the first place?
907
« on: August 26, 2022, 11:25 »
Similar to what? Similar to others in your own portfolio? Or to someone else's? If the latter then I can see why they might lock it.
i had a short suspension when i submitted a group of shots of whimbrels on a beach - singles, doubles, flocks, walking, flying, etc - only similarity was they were all whimbrels. most of the series were accepted by other agencies the biggest difference is other agencies just reject with a note, but AS blocks your account (and all sales). since i can't predict what they'll consider similar, esp'ly if they're looking at previous submissions, I've stopped uploading
908
« on: August 25, 2022, 12:42 »
The average revenues at AS are also on the way down for me.
I have less and less individual sales with 3.30 and subscription/custom sales now seems completely arbitrary to me.
actual # of high sales is stochastic, ie, cant be reliably predicted my RPD is .5 to .6 for SS rather than .1 - .2 if all sales were subs AS has .6 - .8, again higher than a purely sub basis and these numbers have been steady over the last few years also a month w lower $ custom sales can be the equivalent of one with just 1 high priced sale. when the price of custom sales can vary from $2 to $100+ it's hard to see any pattern
909
« on: August 25, 2022, 12:08 »
I track everything with an Excel spreadsheet, that has each image name, titles/keywords etc., when it was sent to each agency, when they replied and the outcome. It takes some time but not too bad once set up. Each batch of uploads goes in its own folder labeled by the day so I can easily go back to them if needed. For example, when Adobe started taking PNGs, I could easily go through each upload folder to find which contained PNGs, then from the image names back to the spreadsheet to retrieve the description and keywords, going all the way back to 2009. I have another spreadsheet to keep track of earnings. Used to track lots of other things but decided it wasn't worth the time.
what's your portfolio size? with thousands of images it would seem to take a lot of time tracking each agency - worth the time at $.10 per image or low sales volumes?
910
« on: August 24, 2022, 13:14 »
thanks for mentioning backblaze!
i registered & started my initial backup which finished today (3 Tb) i was able to use 12 threads
911
« on: August 24, 2022, 13:08 »
i dont track rejects (i did it for videos but i dont submit videos anymore)
my workflow is similar to Pete's:
images go to an 'upload' folder
from there i ftp to most agencies except AS which go to an adobe folder
i need to further edit Adobe to take out editorial & what they might consider as similars
i move a few images to folders for FAA & pixify
finally i move all images to an archive folder (which gets backed up to an ex HD and backblaze)
912
« on: August 24, 2022, 13:00 »
Any chances of getting regular stock sales on these sites (Photodeck, Shopify, Smugmug, etc.) by organic traffic only, without doing any promotion (ads, social networks, blogs, etc.)?
Photodeck has good SEO in my experience. If you know SEO, how to structure SEO content, and have something unique buyers need, you'll get organic traffic. For me it's mostly Google with a distant second being organic social media sharing.
If you just take your ports from the micros and dump them in something like Photodeck or Shopify, I doubt many, or any, sales would come from this. I separated my ports. The stuff I have in micro is totally different from what I have on my personal website. The prices on my personal site are macro-level starting at $100 and going into the thousands. I make fewer sales but one sale can equal months of micro sales.
major reasons i decided to try pixify: "Shopify online stores have SEO built in and features to help you optimize your content. Some SEO is taken care of automatically: auto-generated canonical tags are added to pages to prevent duplicate content from appearing in search results, your websites sitemap.xml and robots.txt files are automatically generated, and themes automatically generate title tags that include your store name. Also, themes are required to have social media linking and sharing options to make it easier for you to market your store".https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/promoting-marketing/seo/seo-overviewunlike etsy, ebay,etc there is no central shopify host, your viewers can't wander to another store - instead you have a site such as cascoly.myshopify.com and can shift to your own domain eg cascoly.photography (these are pwd protected while i test finally, shopify has an extensive test mopde for complete checkout thru actual downloads, and also can test for particular errors Use credit card number 4000000000000002 to generate a card declined message.
Use credit card number 4242424242424241 to generate an incorrect number message.
Use credit card number 4000000000000259 to simulate a disputed transaction.
Use an invalid expiry month, for example 13, to generate an invalid expiry month message.
Use an expiry year in the past to generate an invalid expiry year message.
Use a two-digit security code number to generate an invalid security code message.
913
« on: August 21, 2022, 19:49 »
Any chances of getting regular stock sales on these sites (Photodeck, Shopify, Smugmug, etc.) by organic traffic only, without doing any promotion (ads, social networks, blogs, etc.)?
My husband's shopify account gets very good 'organic' sales - but he is not a photographer. He sells collectible highly sought-after physical items - so he gets sales via search engines.
I think its like everything else, it all depends on what you're selling, how sought after it is, and how much competition you have for your product.
However, on my old website (powered by Simple Site) I was getting a lot of traffic by posting to social media, writing blogs, etc. When I stopped that, the traffic died down to about half. I was still getting some traffic by not doing anything, but not as much, obviously. It was not an online shop though, and only had links to where my photography and video were sold.
When I was on Smugmug a few years ago, I never promoted the site, and never made any sales.
one of the reasons i went with pixify/shopify is that S has a good reputation for SEO - i'm getting ready to open my store soon, So we'll see. pixify has been incredibly easy to use and is optimized for photography. bought a new domain & getting google analytics going i'm also pairing it with a WP blog at http://cascoly-images.com, while building a base in twitter - adding about 800 followers this month using links to my FAA site
914
« on: August 20, 2022, 12:36 »
...
I had several good high price sales, both for images and clips, but sincerely never understand how much the upload quantity count.
Better one great image, or ten middle value images, in your experience?
i go by volume, since i can never predict what will be the best seller (and i doubt any agency can either!) s
915
« on: August 17, 2022, 11:35 »
I have send many years vertical and horizontal images to Adobe stock and always they are approved. But lately they are rejected all.
If customer want to do big vertical print from photo, he have to crop it from horizontal image. In that case image resolution isnt enough to do good quality print???
same here - when i submit H & V they are never cropped but separate images - similarly with a series - they reject because they are same subject, not because they are actually similar by any reasonable definition. and with such a series each other agency chooses a DIFFERENT set to accept so asking me to decide which tiny subset to submit really limits my chances- and, unlike other agencies, submitting 'similars' risks a suspension
916
« on: August 15, 2022, 12:08 »
In July I got one 25 dollars photo sale (oldtimer car) and that was my all-time best on SS. With my rather small port of 800 images, I usually have around 40 sales per month, and it is all about those few bigger sales that make the month, usually 3-5 sales in 2-3 dollars range. Compared with previous years, I see little difference, but my port is small, so those data are not that relevant.
I have been shooting in the area around very big football stadium yesterday, and at some point I stopped, and started collecting empty plastic bottles left in front of the stadium by drunk football fans, in order to return them to the grocery store for money. They were 15 cents each, and in total I made 6 euros in about an hour. My gf sometimes makes fun of me when sees a plastic bottle in the trash and she says: look! download! It is sad 
Makes you think doesn't it? We get paid about the same as we could make, by walking around and picking up bottles and cans with a deposit on them. Used to be old men in the local park, with bikes that had big baskets. They would pick cans for the Aluminum. Now with state mandated deposits in many places, the ride in the park could be even more profitable?
Maybe I'll take up a new hobby... 🤑
plus you'd get your 10K daily steps!
917
« on: August 15, 2022, 12:05 »
...
A couple of weeks back I got in touch with their support and the answer was rather vague: yes we have some issues for some agencies but we expect it to be fixed soon. ...
that's their standard response - but months later many problems are still there
918
« on: August 15, 2022, 12:00 »
.. If Leaf could come up with some fringe benefit for people who take the survey, that would encourage us to enter our numbers, that would at least add more data? Say for example, you can't post messages, until you take the survey?  Don't jump on me, that's just humor. But seriously, something that we'd want to have access to, that was locked, until we take the survey?
unfortunately that could easily encourage more false data - swamping signal w noise
919
« on: August 15, 2022, 11:58 »
I got into Canva pretty early and am glad I did because I make more there than anywhere else.
Yep, same here. Canva is close to my SS sales each month and about 3x AS
920
« on: August 14, 2022, 14:08 »
...
Rejections are within 24 hours, and if your photos are still in the account, then it takes 5 days until they are accepted, and probably only 1 of a series. ...
i've not seen any difference - rejects & accepts are always sent together. my series are accepted as long as not too similar, whereas AS rejects just because it's series, even when images are different. you have to adjust to each agency's quirks
921
« on: August 14, 2022, 12:35 »
For anyone considering uploading to SS again, it is more difficult to get content accepted and longer review times.
i've seen no difference - acceptance on 300-500/mo is same as earlier & review 2-3 days
922
« on: August 11, 2022, 11:30 »
...The only way we can get buyers to the better paying sites is to stop giving low RPD sites your content (or at least your best or newest content). Prices have long since dropped past what buyers are prepared to pay. The price drops are all agencies competing for the same pool of customers with each other now. Its entirely under our control.
how is it under our control? past boycotts have had no effect on agency sales, and buyers likely never even know they happened. a few among thousands of artists aren't going to cause buyers to move, esp'ly buyers with subscriptions
923
« on: August 10, 2022, 11:14 »
just had a $75 sale on SS - an example of why short term reports are statistically invalid - this 1 uncommon sale boosted my monthly RPD from $.60 to $4.40
924
« on: August 10, 2022, 11:09 »
At least some parts of the US arent entirely dominated by FOX 
actually the % of viewers is low for all cable news -Fox, the leader, has only about 3-4 million viewers
925
« on: August 09, 2022, 12:56 »
However, there is a much better solution from something we don't even have to cultivate - seaweed. We just have to think smarter.
One recent addition to the list of its environmentally significant use cases is seaweed plastic alternatives. A slew of biotech companies have entered this space and are developing sustainable and biodegradable plastic packaging using seaweed.
seaweed is also edible! I recently visited the Floriade outside Amsterdam the 'natural house' displayed building technologies using fungi, bacteria and other surprising natural sources https://mogu.bio/mogu-floriade-expo-2022/
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