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Messages - Jo Ann Snover
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901
« on: October 28, 2020, 19:17 »
I can't help you with information about sales there - I'd never heard of them before your post. I did go and look at the site though, and for me, the biggest no-go is that they don't read metadata from uploaded files - you have to provide it in a separate file or enter it on the site. https://submit.pressfoto.com/documents.html?doc=metaAnother big missing piece is what they actually pay. Front page says "up to" 50% and the ranks page has a useless table with how much each rank is paid in USD (40 to 70) but without knowing prices, who knows what that means https://submit.pressfoto.com/documents.html?doc=ranksThe contributor agreement says 50% of net revenue goes to the contributor for on demand sales (i.e. PressFoto deducts any currency or other fees first before doing the split) and for subscriptions, it's a share of the pool of revenue. Does not mention a minimum (unless that's what the ranks table is trying to say) https://www.pressfoto.com/pricingI'm guessing if they were selling well we'd have heard something here. Monkey Business Images, Pressmaster, and Wavebreak Media (though Zoonar) are there, for what that's worth., but they seem to be everywhere  On an unrelated note, they have 22,000 free files on Freepik https://www.freepik.com/pressfotoI think the contributor has the choice about whether to offer free files (but I can't imagine why one site would help another site build traffic via freebies - how does that help PressFoto?)
902
« on: October 27, 2020, 14:04 »
903
« on: October 23, 2020, 23:32 »
The free collection has grown - not by a huge number, but the total today was 78,094 vs. 77,283 on Oct 15 Videos, illustrations & 3D are the same as before. Vectors shrank by 25 - I hadn't expected to see things leave before the 1 year commitment was up. Photos grew by 629. That appears to be one new portfolio added, Eugenio Marongiu https://stock.adobe.com/search/free?creator_id=200924422The other note is that the undiscovered content in Free is greater by 609 images - possibly that's the newly added portfolio. Either no one is downloading the free images, or the free downloads aren't being tallied (although you'd hope they were), o the undiscovered content numbers are not refreshed very often as downloads occur. Given how big the download counts are at other free sites, I had assumed we would see some huge decrease in undiscovered content in Adobe's Free section as downloads took off...
904
« on: October 23, 2020, 23:04 »
I checked the giveaway a few minutes ago - $19,408 left in the upload bonus pool
I think it's good that few people took them up on this offer as it was all too vague and handing over our valuable assets to folks with a half-baked story isn't a good plan...
905
« on: October 22, 2020, 13:07 »
I had a thought last night that perhaps there would be a difference between the "Premium" content and "Standard" and that I should check that. For Images - photos, illustrations & vectors - and templates there are both categories. For video, it's all one price tier. It's probably not surprising that the percentage of unsold work is higher for the premium categories - 98.05% unsold for photos vs 81.6% unsold for standard photos. The premium categories are tiny compared to the standard - 147+million standard photos vs. 3+million premium Another oddity is that there are 8 premium vectors - 100% unsold. Just looking at the eight, I haven't a clue why they are "Premium" (but then I often think that when looking at photos) It seems that either there's not much of a market for high price content, or selling it "next to" much cheaper content of comparable quality isn't a good idea, or there are too many places to get the same high priced content and some other agencies are getting the business. Or something else entirely Bottom line for contributors to "standard" sections at Adobe is, IMO, we're probably going to do better where we area
906
« on: October 21, 2020, 22:29 »
I hadn't noticed a search filter at Adobe Stock until today - could have been there for ages. This is what the information button next to it says to explain it: Undiscovered Assets
Use this filter to view content that has never been downloaded by anyone on Adobe Stock.
Please note that this content is not sold with an exclusive license, and may be downloaded by other customers at a later date. This Undiscovered filter may not be updated in real time.The frequency of update obviously might make a difference to the numbers I gathered today (if it hadn't been updated for several months, it'll be very inaccurate), and without knowing how many images have been recently added to the collection - a flood of new content would obviously increase the percentage of content unsold - it's only a rough guide, but... I went by category of content - photos, illustrations, vectors, videos, templates and 3D - and noted the numbers in that set, and the numbers with the undiscovered box checked. That let me see the percentage of content that had never been sold. The percentages were higher than I expected. I calculated the same percentage for my portfolio. You can't use filters on your portfolio, but in the contributor dashboard, with your portfolio sorted by downloads, you have 100 images per page and then count whatever's on the last page with any downloads. For anyone who wants to see how their portfolio measures up to the collection overall, here are the overall numbers: | Media | | Unsold percentage | | Photos | | 81.95% | | Illustrations | | 79.81% | | Vectors | | 80.23% | | Videos | | 96.83% | | Templates | | 9.7% | | 3D | | 18.38% |
Editorial use images (that's photos + illustrations + vectors) 85.86% unsold Bear in mind that templates is a tiny category - just over 45k templates total - and 3D even smaller at 15k total. Video stands out with a very high percentage of unsold work. I was happy to see that my unsold percentage was much less than the collection overall. If you were a new contributor, I'd ignore percentages until you've been selling for at least a year. A longer-standing contributor who saw unfavorable numbers might want to consider how to improve - such as change subject matter. Those numbers shouldn't be a high bar to clear.
907
« on: October 21, 2020, 11:26 »
Is there any editorial in the free collection?
You can do a search yourself to see - right now, nothing The overall numbers appear to have crept up slightly (about 100 more) but when you look at individual categories, it's not clear where. Another odd stat is that there are 10 images in the free section that are not included when "Safe Search" is enabled - the default. No easy way to know exactly what that is - free nudes??
908
« on: October 19, 2020, 13:12 »
i just took a look at my own portfolio to see what it showed for various images.
Where there is a property release, I get pretty good similars for both more from this series (images of similar scenes) and more from this model (anything with the same piece of property). My best guess is that the "series" similars are based on the first 5 or so keywords and that possibly your keyword order (rather than the presence or absence of keywords) is why only two show up for you.
Could that explain it?
Where there's no property release, I also get good similars for images that were not uploaded at the same time but have similar initial keywords, so it doesn't appear to be upload time that connects them.
909
« on: October 19, 2020, 08:48 »
I received my payment this morning
910
« on: October 18, 2020, 15:51 »
Here is my guess....you may never get the real numbers but I will give it a guess. I would guess it is $100 dollars to $ 1 on the money that Adobe makes on the cloud software. For ever $ 100 dollars they earn on cloud software they earn $ 1 dollar on stock photos. They really are and have always been a cloud software company. Maybe someone knows the real numbers of Software to stock photos. With giving away 100 good images a day stock photos can't be the end game. If Adobe makes it 100 images a day images why not just go unlimited images a day ?
Adobe wasn't always a cloud software company, but it's a very long way from its origins. And it's true that the pittance that they make licensing stock content is insignificant to the current execs. Take a look at this recent article about their best ever Q3 numbers and rosy outlook for Q4 https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/09/17/adobe-continues-its-streak-of-setting-revenue-reco/Jim Pickerell's article on the free section mentioned that he estimates Adobe Stock's annual revenue at $250 million. If you look at Adobe's Q3 earnings summary and add their expectation for Q4 2020 to their actual for the 9 months YTD, it's $12.79 billion for the whole year. So closer to 50 to 1 than 100 to 1, but still... https://news.adobe.com/news/news-details/2020/Adobe-Reports-Record-Revenue-Sept/default.aspxThe major problem as I see it was that some factory suppliers were willing to participate in this scheme. They've given Adobe cover to make this look less destructive than it actually is.
911
« on: October 17, 2020, 16:18 »
Just a reminder to anyone with a balance at StockFresh that it's now time to send in a payment request. I did (for $40.95) and it's now pending.
I had to throw together an invoice in Word and upload a PDF of that with the request - as I don't have a TAX ID document - so I'm hoping I've done all that I need to.
You have until Nov 1 2020 to make your request
912
« on: October 16, 2020, 20:00 »
Lets hope that most of the 'free' results are like the 'elephant' search in photos only....
Most of those are Wirestock, and in addition to being spammed with totally irrelevant keywords, they're the weak link in the "Free" collection. That's good news for anyone with content in those categories - as in it's not much in the way of competition for other contributors with decent images.
913
« on: October 16, 2020, 16:54 »
Not good for the purchasers of those so called "download it for free images" either. Once you think you can download a few "free" images, the catch is that, there is a big cancellation fee if you no longer want to download other images...
I think you're confusing Adobe Stock's new "Free" section containing 77k images (initially) with the teaser for paid subscriptions (where you get 10 free images when you sign up). The free section doesn't require a sign up and there are no fees at all. Go back to the original post and follow the link Mat provided to the FAQ
914
« on: October 16, 2020, 10:50 »
I keep track of these emails. My last one from Dreamstime was July 23 2019; the one before that was Feb 12 2018. They do happen, but they haven't been frequent or numerous.
915
« on: October 16, 2020, 03:19 »
...Microstock killed traditional stock. Giving away images for free will kill microstock.
"Microstock is reaping what it sowed". That idea gets raised as discussions about changes - usually damaging ones - come up. I think it's way off the mark because it misses some really key details of how things operated with "traditional stock" and what microstock did when it started in the early 2000s. Prices in traditional stock were kept high in part because only a few people could participate - limited supply. Costs were different then - film & slides versus digital, and many more people were involved to help a customer locate a needed image - but isolated apples or citrus slices got those high prices as well, not just elaborate shoots. The business operated more like those from earlier ages with a guild controlling who gets to ply the trade - which is how you maintain high prices. Also, traditional stock was often licensed as rights managed (you pay a different price depending on your use, which countries and how big a business you are). That's a complicated transaction, not something easily and quickly handled. When royalty free licensing came along - pre microstock - there was lots of complaining from those who could see what that would do to their income, but it allowed a simple transaction to occur where the price is the price. It freed the agency from tracking usage (for the most part) because there were no time or geography or page-placement issues to check up on. It may have increased the buyer pool slightly, but not much When microstock started, its big change was not just that transactions were immediate and simple, but reducing prices drew in millions of small business buyers who would not (and did not) license stock images before. It wasn't just opening up the supply to anyone who could pass the agency's acceptance test, but massively increasing the buyer pool as a way of increasing demand as well. Most of the changes since have been either agencies trying to poach business from one another, not increasing the pool of buyers, or dropping any idea of acceptance standards to increase the supply of images - more of the same, not so much expanding the type of imagery available to buyers. I've heard many complaints about subscriptions being the source of, or start of, the race to the bottom in microstock. At the beginning, there were sane guardrails that made subscriptions work for all three groups in this market - buyers, contributors and agencies. (1) the number of downloads per day was capped, (2) subscription prices increased as the size of the collection increased, (3) only high volume (750 a month) subscriptions were available, and (4) no rollovers Once Shutterstock was successful, every agency wanted to get their piece of that action, but in spite of their claims that subscriptions would bring in new buyers, it always canibalized credit sales. Agencies experimented with lower priced subscriptions, lower volume subscriptions, no restrictions (daily limits went and only the monthly remained). The worst of these schemes had to have been the Dollar Photo Club, with a 10 image a month subscription for $10, with rollovers. Until Getty came up with Premium Access that netted contributors fractions of a cent per download that is There is nothing inherently unsustainable about the original microstock model. The good news was how successful it was; the bad news is that success (i.e. lots of profits) brings in predators who are only looking at the money they can wring out. Each erosion of contributor earnings - whether it be a royalty cut, increased rights for the same license price, or trying to compete with free - encourages a similar move from the other agencies. In Adobe's case, their primary business is something other than licensing stock. We're barely a blip on their radar screen and how they perform - or don't - as a stock agency doesn't impact what they care about - see this article and this one on recent stock performance. I used to work for a computer company that started as a hardware company, but evolved to both hardware & software. In selling hardware and trying to make their quotas, sales reps would frequently sweeten the deal by including free software. As part of a software group whose budget was set on the basis of paid sales, we were scr3wed as we received no credit for those freebies. The company cared about hardware sales, their primary business. Adobe has done a deal with factory contributors so they get paid for these freebies, but other contributors with similars can't compete with free and it beggars belief to suggest that their sales won't be affected. Adobe may view this arrangement as fair, but I don't. However, Adobe will prioritize their primary business and we - stock contributors - are in their thoughts, if at all, as a deal sweetener. I don't think freebies will kill microstock, although it may well put many of us small-business contributors out of business. If you look at Shutterstock's latest uploads (screenshot from a few minutes ago), this is likely what microstock will mean a year or two from now  
916
« on: October 15, 2020, 16:51 »
I thought it worth adding to this thread as Wirestock has some 5,000 images in Adobe Stock's free collection. No idea how this deal was done - for the other factory contributors they negotiated a one year deal ( according to Jim Pickerell's article) Two things stood out for me. One was that the Wirestock contributions are noticeably different (not in a good way) from the other very high quality content in the free collection. The other was that Wirestock images kept showing up in searches where they didn't belong. The keywording is truly terrible. As just one example, a lighthouse image had keywords for Maine and New England, but it clearly wasn't from there - the title "Building on a rock formation at the seashore" is clearly what you get when you let someone who knows nothing about the image do metadata. The image is actually from Italy, the Punta Palascia Lighthouse. I didn't know that (only that it wasn't Maine), but a Google image search helped me out. Something similar with "Harbor with colorful buildings by the ocean" which has modern, skyscraper & marina (there isn't one) as keywords, but none for Riomaggiore or Italy (what's in the picture) I know that keywording and uploading is no fun, but if you're thinking of handing over your images to Wirestock, bear in mind that if the keywords are useless your images may never sell because no buyer will ever see them in a search for which they are applicable
917
« on: October 15, 2020, 13:41 »
Mat, One more suggestion for results when there's nothing found in the free section
A one word search where video was the media selected and there were no free results showed one row of images, and then one of videos, one in 3D and the last "All Free" where it's just images from the free collection.
If a buyer has specifically selected videos, showing images first isn't helpful. Show videos from the paid section. If you must add something from the free section, show videos, not images.
918
« on: October 15, 2020, 13:13 »
JoAnne, none of those links are working for me.
I just tried a couple and they worked. Chrome, MacOS, I am logged in to Adobe Stock (although that shouldn't matter)... Tried on my phone too (Android, Chrome) and that worked as well
919
« on: October 15, 2020, 12:57 »
I just went on the Adobe Free section. I went through about 1000 images... 99% of these images are model/people images. Very good model/people images. If you shot models I would guess your sales will go to zero in the future. It will be interesting to see if Adobe adds more diversity to this collection with different types of images. One of the big contributors was Rawpixel.com. I do not know this photo house but very heavy on the typical stock model picture. Typical but very good images.
If you want to take a look at the major contributors to the free section - and I agree that for the most part the content is excellent - I made a list of links yesterday. There are some really odd (ironic) elements to the deal these contributors & Adobe made with each other: Jeremy Bishop (~4,000 assets free) also has a portfolio on Unsplash. One of his free photos on Unsplash is a paid download at Adobe Stock. Not only is he undermining the rest of contributors with his decision to do the free section, he's undermining Adobe with his Unsplash portfolioThis guy's photos are gorgeous. I can't square his Unsplash bio "I love supporting and inspiring creatives around the world...." with all of the above. https://stock.adobe.com/search/free?creator_id=207154988Another of the free collection contributors, Artinspiring, is also at Freepik (premium section). I'd give him/her an award for keyword spamming (this Santa showed up in a beach search I did). These aren't a few accidental, slightly relevant terms... https://stock.adobe.com/images/isolated-santa-claus-standing-on-white-background/127807443vector woman swimming suit standing little dog flat girl beach beautiful bikini body cartoon cute female power happiness holiday illustration lady person young attractive background positive carefree caucasian character cheerful chubby dance enjoyment fashion fat fun happy isolated joy jump long hair overweight party plus size pretty puppy self acceptance https://stock.adobe.com/search/free?creator_id=206203859Here's the rest of the list. It was very dispiriting to see Jacob Lund's great work in this collection - remember he was setting up software for direct sales and came here to gauge interest? The only weak link/good news for paid contributors here is Wirestock. For all the other contributors of illustrations or images (I didn't look at video as I don't really have a clue how to evaluate it), these portfolios show you what not to bother shooting during the coming year. No one can compete with free. Which also makes me wonder how the agencies that are selling the now-free images will feel about what Adobe has done. This free image is $25 at Pond5, $19.99 to $199 at Alamy (at least in theory) and also at Shutterstock, Dreamstime and Deposit Photos. There are lots of other examples like this as the factories spread themselves around Oct 20,2020: Edited to add that I noticed today that at Dreamstime, the above image is still there but has a banner I've not seen before: "This image is no longer available to download". Pond5 no longer shows it "Oh no! It appears this item is no longer available on Pond5. Try searching again to find something else you might like." Shutterstock, Deposit Photos and Alamy are still showing the image. No idea if this is something the agencies initiated or WavebreakMedia didWavebreakMediaMicro (over 10,000) https://stock.adobe.com/search/free?creator_id=200849471wavebreak3(~4,200) https://stock.adobe.com/search/free?creator_id=206922540 Rawpixel.com (over 10,000) https://stock.adobe.com/search/free?creator_id=204567087Wirestock (~5,300) https://stock.adobe.com/search/free?creator_id=208428317 Caia Image (~4,000) https://stock.adobe.com/search/free?creator_id=209253708Jacob Lund (~7,000) https://stock.adobe.com/search/free?creator_id=224608Hero Images (~7,000) https://stock.adobe.com/search/free?creator_id=209254274Morgan (111) https://stock.adobe.com/search/free?creator_id=39318Good Studio (~3,000) https://stock.adobe.com/search/free?creator_id=206710010 Gstudio (~4,000) https://stock.adobe.com/search/free?creator_id=201303411 Visual Generation (~4,000) https://stock.adobe.com/search/free?creator_id=201052191
920
« on: October 15, 2020, 11:40 »
Mat has apparently sweet-talked the powers that be into including a row of paid results into free searches! And this is hot off the presses - I was doing some test searches this morning and the feature wasn't there, but just in the last 10 minutes or so it is. It doesn't make this new Free section good, but it is an important step that paid content is now on any page for a free search. One request for multi-word searches with no free results (like the example I posted yesterday): I still get two rows of alternate two word searches in the free section before I get the paid row of images, a paid row of videos, etc. It'd be fine to see some alternate searches suggested (with just words) for the free section, but as it is, it looks as if a wrong search in the free section is preferable to paying for anything
921
« on: October 14, 2020, 15:14 »
...I reached out to the team ... I expect changes will be made in the future.
Mat, I don't envy your situation, and I know you're relaying information on our behalf, but... We - contributors - have heard a lot about things Adobe will be doing on the contributor side of things, but not much has been delivered. Getting the stats back to what Fotolia had, searching our portfolios (on the contributor side) by keywords, and on and on - you know the list, I know. If we could get a commitment from the development team and a rough date for when these changes (to ensure paid content shows in free searches) would happen, that would make this more than "let's do lunch sometime". Jim Pickerell's article says "Adobe intends to monitor and fine tune the collection on a daily basis". It doesn't provide details, but if work is ongoing, let's make this less of a gut punch for existing contributors by keeping paid content visible. If I were in a position to define what should happen, in addition to showing paid content in searches with very few results, I'd also say that every single page of search results of free images should have one row of paid content (preferably up top, but even below would be OK). IMO, there should never be any page without some paid content visible. You could make the paid content row smaller thumbnails if you wanted, but it should just be there somewhere so the site doesn't look like Unsplash.
922
« on: October 14, 2020, 12:46 »
Pictures perhaps help show how completely invisible the paid content is when searching in the free section. I did some two and three word searches in the free section, and when nothing shows up, other searches in the free section, including "All" are shown rather than showing the content in the paid section that matches the search. This really undercuts the message that the goal is to drive more business our way... Click on the thumbnail to view a larger image: 
923
« on: October 14, 2020, 10:59 »
I was busy searching the free collection to see what the competition is for those of us who hope to continue licensing our work.
A couple of observations:
-Every agency which has started a free collection has said it would drive traffic to the agency and thus boost sales. I've never seen any evidence that it worked out like that.
-The Adobe Stock free collection - conveniently there's a drop-down so. you can search only that image type - is less helpful than the free agencies which Adobe Stock, Shutterstock & others have affiliate links with. At least there, there's a line of images top and bottom for the paid content with the free stuff in the middle. There is nothing directing users to paid content while searching the free content
- Connected to the above, the free section has content from Wavebreak media (~14,200 images in WavebreakMediaMicro and wavebreak3), Rawpixel.com (over 10,000), Wirestock (~5,300), Gstudio (~4,000), Jeremy Bishop (~4,000), Good Studio (~3,000), Artinspiring (~4,000), Caia Image (~4,000), Jacob Lund (~7,000), Visual Generation (~4,000) Hero Images (~7,000), Morgan (111). This is all high quality content, largely indistinguishable from the paid content.
- When a search in the free section turns up one or two results, there's a blank page underneath. Wouldn't offering content from the paid section to fill up the page make sense? Isn't offering your paid license content a reasonable option when there is not much in the free section?
- When there's nothing in the free section for a search, content from paid sections is shown, as is a line of totally unrelated images from the free section! Why continue to promote the free section with random images?
About the only good news from a purely personal point of view is that most of the type of content I offer isn't covered in the free section, but I can't see how contributors (other than those who got paid to create this collection) will benefit, short term or long.
924
« on: October 09, 2020, 13:59 »
I had a small portfolio with Pond5 for several years and sold photos for $12 (full size) and PSDs (only a few; they're more template-like) for $25. In June I uploaded most of the rest of my portfolio there and changed all the photo prices to $10 (full size).
I have opted out of the various partner deals -which is possibly why, after 2 sales in July, it's been nothing since. Given that Pond5 will reduce prices if they want to, I don't see any reason to lower mine further.
As far as the $449 - $795, there are distribution agencies such as Westend61, Mint Images, Blend Images and a host of others who license via Getty and the high price collections at 123rf, Shutterstock, Adobe, etc. Their prices are the same everywhere. I don't honestly see how it works to mix all these prices together, and Pond5's price slider in searches has such a tiny space for lower prices, it's hard to say you only want to look at images $25 and below.
925
« on: October 09, 2020, 11:37 »
I saved the URL for my image - that gives a 404 error today For the portfolio link I see this amusing suggestion that I should check for spelling errors or typos to see results And no reply yet from support at iStock...
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