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Messages - BaldricksTrousers
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926
« on: November 09, 2014, 05:01 »
It doesn't matter if it is a tiny niche that only has 20 buyers a year if you are the only one with pictures of it.
Surely something niche is better sold at a site like Alamy where it has the potential to earn more. And, also, RM - so that repeat and additional uses are also paid.
With Alamy's low sales - meaning possibly no sale ever - and RM licenses going for $20 commission (and 25 year RM licenses kicking about), I would think there is an excellent chance of SS delivering bigger returns on something like this. One SOD or EL at Shutterstock could be worth more. The Arab foods I'm doing at the moment are mainly intended for Photoarabia, in the hope that they may develop a decent market in the Middle East over the next couple of years.
927
« on: November 09, 2014, 04:18 »
It's quite popular in the Middle East as part of a meze. It doesn't matter if it is a tiny niche that only has 20 buyers a year if you are the only one with pictures of it. It's no different from shooting something that sells 20 million licenses a year, if evry picture of yours has a million competitors. In fact, it's better, because my image is always going to be on the first page of the search, if I shoot Girl With Headphones I probably won't be in the first 40 pages.
It's shredded chicken in a walnut, bread, stock, onion and spice sauce drizzled with a mix of walnut oil and paprika. It's surprisingly nice, actually.
928
« on: November 09, 2014, 02:00 »
in the past it made sense to have a few million images on sale, but now ? every possible subject and location and concept has been shot to death from any possible perspective.
Actually, it hasn't. I shot Circassian chicken this week, which is a classic Ottoman dish, and SS did not have a single picture of it before that (though it did have something resembling a waldorf salad that was mislabelled as Circassian chicken, presumably because there was a walnut present). Incidentally, it is interesting to see how poor the quality of food pictures on a google search is if microstockers haven't got stuck into the subject.
929
« on: November 08, 2014, 05:48 »
What Achilles is missing is that while he can look at how everything is working and be satisfied that the important sales side of the site is in good order, his contributors can only judge the site from what they are able to see - and if the reporting of sales is not happening in the way it is supposed to, then it raises concerns about other things. For years people have been perplexed by curious sales patterns at DT - a week or two of nothing but subs then sudden clumps of credit sales with few subs, then back to just subs again. In June my sales slumped 30% for no apparent reason, in July they were back to normal but August saw them down to about 25-30% of normal. September and October were a bit better, but still 40% down on the previous year. Search changes? Slump in DT's overall sales? New competition in my niches? Who knows?
This time I've been able to reconcile the earnings report during the reporting delay with the downloads reports that eventually appeared, but last time this happened I wasn't able to do that.
I wonder if the sites themselves can be confident about the accuracy of the figures they get. iStock certainly seems to have more than enough accounting problems. Once you've sold a subscription to someone, how would you know if the computers failed to record some of their downloads? Wouldn't it just seem that they were using less of their download allowance than average - and there would be nothing terribly strange about that.
I don't doubt DT's honesty for a moment, but when I see server delays and strange sales patterns I wonder about the robustness of the programs that record our earnings. The only guarantee we have that everything is OK is an assurance from Achilles.
930
« on: November 08, 2014, 02:56 »
anyone had any real world contact with this site? their ftp has been dead for over a month and they don't respond to emails
Yes, I've been to see them a couple of times. They're in the same town as me. They've got offices in one of the Doha skyscrapers. They seem to be OK when you meet them in person.
931
« on: November 07, 2014, 20:33 »
You could take a look at Photoshelter. It's not the cheapest option but it offers a lot of tools to help manage sales. It has a good many top professionals among its users. You have to market yourself, though. I just use it for storage at the moment but having thousands of my images archived there means that I could quickly convert it for direct sales
BTW, the fact that I pay a couple of dollars a week for the service means I can be confident that the site will continue to operate and that it is not suddenly going to use some obscure clause in the agreement to "monetise" my content by doing something I don't want with it. I'm employing them, rather than being an asset to be exploited.
932
« on: November 07, 2014, 07:28 »
SS could take their market-share to 80% over the next couple of years ... and that would be a significant cause for concern.
i'm sure this is what's gonna happen, at this point SS has an unlimited supply of cash and nobody can beat them at their own game, certainly not FT or DT.
Or DPC?
933
« on: November 07, 2014, 07:24 »
There's a price beyond which it isn't worth paying
considering the actual 2.7 billion capitalization and their 44 million images it would cost roughly 60$/image which is laughable as 80% of those pics hardly sell once or twice in their lifetime.
i think it's obvious their goal is a far sell out.
3 billions $ for SS is totally detached from reality, they've already squeezed the lemon to the bone, all they can hope for is gaining even more market share.
But they've already sold it, when they floated it on the stock exchange. Also, bear in mind that images are worth several times as much to the agencies as they are to us, plus you can play strange money-market games with companies, the way that Getty has been played by its various owners - nothing really to do with the intrinsive value of it's libraries.
934
« on: November 07, 2014, 07:07 »
They don't need to sustain the growth in the collection. If they stopped accepting images today they could probably still keep growing the business for years.
but the competitors would profit from that, they would push buyers into the "freshness" of their archive compared to SS's stale collection.
for what is worth, SS could be even bought by google or microsoft or apple, it's a realistic possibility.
I'm not proposing it as a policy for them, I'm just saying that the insane rate of growth in the collection isn't necessary, if they added a million or two images a year it would probably keep things fresh enough for the buyers to be happy.
Buyouts happen, look at what happened to Getty Images, but it's much easier to buy an ailing public company than one doing well.
It's probably just cheaper rather than 'easier' to buy an ailing public company. The current market capitalisation for SSTK is $2.69B. That would be loose change to Google or Apple. Apple is currently sitting on a cash mountain of $165B+.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/07/apple-iphone-6-cash-pile-tax-avoidance-us
I was thinking in terms of the optimism of existing shareholders. There's a price beyond which it isn't worth paying and if a large section of shareholders aren't willing to set their sights that low then a deal doesn't happen. If you want to get off a sinking ship, however, that is another thing altogether. If you had SS shares and were offered 10% above last night's close by a potential purchaser, would you grab the cash or wait for something better? Just now, Qatar's bid for Canary Wharf has been turned down, with the owners saying it is too low. Qatar could easily increase the offer, but will they think it's worth it?
935
« on: November 07, 2014, 06:46 »
They don't need to sustain the growth in the collection. If they stopped accepting images today they could probably still keep growing the business for years.
but the competitors would profit from that, they would push buyers into the "freshness" of their archive compared to SS's stale collection.
for what is worth, SS could be even bought by google or microsoft or apple, it's a realistic possibility.
I'm not proposing it as a policy for them, I'm just saying that the insane rate of growth in the collection isn't necessary, if they added a million or two images a year it would probably keep things fresh enough for the buyers to be happy. Buyouts happen, look at what happened to Getty Images, but it's much easier to buy an ailing public company than one doing well.
936
« on: November 07, 2014, 02:46 »
- Image collection grew 44%; currently exceeds 44 million images and 2.1 million video clips
this is huge, how long they can sustain such a growth ? soon they will have 2-300 million pics on sale, how are we supposed to stand out or even to make steady sales there ? however, i'm sure most of the growth is in the top selling niches.
They don't need to sustain the growth in the collection. If they stopped accepting images today they could probably still keep growing the business for years.
937
« on: November 04, 2014, 15:05 »
Apparently it is ok to use it if you are a professional photographer.
Suit yourself, I'll stick with Photoshelter.
938
« on: November 04, 2014, 14:47 »
Is CLUC gone?
I am getting 404 page not found.
http://www.istockphoto.com/profile/cluc
Good. Mark was one of the early heroes of iStock, back in the days before all the s.h.i.t.e. happened with the sites. He deserves respect. (Funny thing is, the first time I came across him, in the summre of 04, was when he falsely accused me of copying something he had done - but he subsequently realised that it was coincidence, not plagiarism and offered me a beer).
939
« on: November 04, 2014, 12:28 »
Who knows? But it would be a pita if you stored all your stuff there and then they decided you were using it for business and simply deleted everything.
940
« on: November 03, 2014, 16:59 »
I cashed out today, I've had four or five sales appear dated the 31st but my earnings have stood at zero ever since the cashout. No sales today? Accounting not up to date? Lag in how many different areas?
Last time we had this, I went back through about three weeks reported sales to try to get a match between the change in the earnings balance and the images recorded as selling and there was no way I could find a sequence which matched the exact sum being reported.
Really, between this and 123's confusion and the completely obscure commission reporting on iStock it leaves me wondering how on earth people are meant to be able to keep track of what is going on. Or perhaps we're not supposed to.
941
« on: November 03, 2014, 16:48 »
How about letting us see a reasonable size preview of the image while we are keywording etc.? When there is a significant time lapse between uploading and keywording it's easy to forget how many people, if any, are visible as dots in the distance on any given image so an element of guesswork creeps in for the "one, two, threee, four or more" boxes.
942
« on: November 03, 2014, 09:25 »
I just got some sales from October 31 reported, three days late.
943
« on: November 03, 2014, 05:44 »
Now the earnings page has gone haywire. Apparently I've already earned about $6,000 in referral commisions in November and I've got three sales for zero earnings. It's also giving me an access prohibited error when I try to connect to the main earnings page.
944
« on: November 03, 2014, 05:01 »
*! Down to level 3 now. It's curious that when you think they have "underpaid" you for credit points there is no correction but when they "overpay" you the credits get clawed back.
The fact that they have corrected for this month's miscalculation shows that they are not capable of running their credit point system properly. My suspicion that I was "underpaid" by 200-300 points for September is even stronger now - and if I was I've been wrongly dropped a level this time.
I think these point systems are unfair rubbish anyway, since they penalise the contributor twice-over if the agency isn't doing its job or decides on search changes that adversely affect someone's sales. What's more, they can be rigged outright if the coding people are clever enough, by switching the search away from portfolios approaching a promotion level.
945
« on: November 02, 2014, 18:04 »
As an indie I would like to upload the same number of new images to istock as to the other sites. I know subs rely on new work. But the tiresome upload process on istock means they only get a few images every couple months when I have nothing better to do. An I almost always can find something better to do.
I agree and am in the same position. The return that new uploads are producing there now is so low that it really doesn't justify the Deep Meta hassle. I can feed the rest of the sites with one click on an FTP server, followed by three or four clicks per image per site. Only iStock demands that everything be rekeyworded and -prioritised. It used to be worth the effort when the earnings matched those of SS but now .... three or four minutes per image and only one in 20 generates a sale, and that for maybe $1.20? That's a pay rate of a dollar an hour!
946
« on: November 01, 2014, 18:42 »
First saw that before I hit the HDR hole. I think I've pretty much finished the course now (but I still suck).
947
« on: November 01, 2014, 12:53 »
I recall Sean Locke saying a while back that the only files of his that were getting decent sales there were those he had nominated, so I guess it does work. I find it too hard to keep track of sales there to tell with my own files.
948
« on: November 01, 2014, 08:40 »
That's interesting. In September I started more than 100 points above the level 4 floor and by the end of the month my earnings were well above the previous year's September tally. I was shocked when instead of going up my points tally dropped to just 2004 and I actually challenged them about how that was possible - they sent me a chart of figures that was pretty much impossible to work out, so I left it at that. In October I had a really lousy month, making only about two thirds of what I did the previous year, but this morning my tally has RISEN by 175 points. That seems to be equivalent of having an entire additional month's points added on - and put me back roughly where I would have expected to be if I had got the points I expected a month ago.
So my best guess is that September's points weren't properly accounted for and that has been corrected this month. If so, people may have been being paid a level below what it should have been - though I won't be affected in that way.
I think 123's credit point accounting system is severely flaky. It's not the first time I've had issues with it and right back at the beginning I was upgrated from level 3 to 4 after I pointed out that the calculation didn't seem right.
949
« on: October 31, 2014, 01:47 »
This is the right thread. Over a month since the change. 1 week is to short. 1 month isn't very long. Any change up or down could be normal variuation and nothing to do with the new.
My earnings this month are so far below anything that I have had for about 10 years that there is not the slightest doubt it is a result of the changes.
950
« on: October 30, 2014, 18:01 »
you still have fotolia,photodune,bigstockphoto. Photodune is very good, sales are increasing there.
i dont upload to canstockphoto, how is that page?
Fotolia?  I trust this isn't meant to be a list of places that don't fleece you.
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