The final cashout process does not trigger an email confirmation, so it's normal to not get one. We won't start sending payments until the site is closed and sales are finished, to ensure everyone gets paid their final account balance - so no worries if a sale comes in after you submitted your payment request.

Also, thanks to everyone for their support over the years. It's been a fun ride for the last ~20 years!

Hi folks,

I wanted to pop in and hopefully clear up some confusion, as it sounds like there is a lot of unintentional misinformation in this thread. Big thanks to the contributors who emailed the link to ask for clarification.

Below is an update I posted on our forums, to address some of the misunderstandings:

Quote
(Re: confusion on 4K commission & price)
Certainly happy to clarify that is not the case. If you check out the Payout Schedule linked in the email, you'll see the commission for 4k clips is $50 – regardless of if they were purchased with credits or not. That is how much you receive. The retail pricing is not finalized yet, but will likely be $100-$150. For clips larger than 4k you receive a $75 commission, again regardless of if they were purchased by credits or not, and they will likely retail for $150-250. I'm giving a retail price range since they are new products and we'll be testing to find the optimum price point.


Regarding the FreeArt offer, I should clarify a few things:

Firstly, everyone should keep in mind that these are referring exclusively to physical prints in which there is labor and very real production costs. Of course coming from the microstock world we're not used to thinking in that way, since digital downloads are delivered automatically with very little per-transaction costs. But of course when we're talking about a physical metal print (for example), there are very significant production costs for that order.

So I definitely understand how someone might be surprised by a 10% commission for the non-paper prints, but do keep in mind that this is reflective of the fact that they are extremely expensive items to produce, and unlike digital downloads a significant chunk of the sale price is taken up by the physical costs.

Regarding FreeArt specifically, I should clarify that despite its marking-oriented name, the end goal is to drive sales of higher priced products and sizes, for which everyone makes far more money. It should probably go without saying that a business won't last if it only produces free physical prints. Anyone who is familiar with VistaPrint will appreciate how wildly successful a business can be by offering a "free" price tier to attract customers, who then upgrade to paid tiers.

Regarding the $0.25 minimum commission, while this of course is not a big amount of money, it's also very much in line with what people sell their high resolution digital images for every day in the microstock industry. Both through us and up to the largest agency. And while in those cases your images can be used for marketing campaigns and printed up to 500k times, for the print offering we're talking about a single 8x10" printed photo. And of course for which there are of course physical costs to make, yet the image itself is sold for nothing.

The business model is doing something innovative, by focusing on physical prints and products, which is largely a new area for microstock contributors and represents a new revenue stream. The business is also trying a unique approach for marketing itself, which is needed in this day of age – and if it works out and takes off, would be very lucrative for CanStockPhoto contributors. So we are genuinely excited and hope it does well. I think the vast majority of contributors feel the same way too.

With that said, if you don't want your images to be part of FreeArt, then no problem, you can opt-out from FreeArt by submitting a ticket. But do just keep in mind that you'll be opting out of the entire site, and will forgo any of the high commission print offerings. I hope people will give it some time before opting to do that, but it's of course totally your decision.

Regards,
Duncan

Lee Torrens posted his own independent summary here, which echoes much of the above.

Also, on a serious note, someone here incorrectly stated that FreeArt is associated with someone who the author states is known for ripping off artist's work. This is absolutely not true. FreeArt has no affiliation whatsoever with this individual, and is no-way connected. The commenter here references a WHOIS showing this, but must have accidentally looked up the wrong domain name, as WHOIS search for freeart.com clearly shows that is not the case. In fact, a keen observer will notice that FreeArt is run by the same people that run Fotosearch - which many contributors know is a highly creditable and agency that has been operating for almost 20 years.

I would hope and expect that people would be outraged if we partnered with someone that has a history of stealing artist's images - but thankfully that is not the case here. We take that very seriously, as I know you all rightfully expect us to.

Regards,
Duncan

Things should feel much faster now than they did earlier - we had a hardware issue that was especially prominent this morning. We hope to have new hardware in place in the near future, although certainly the site should feel much faster than it was earlier.

I should note that this is primarily on internal photographer pages, and that the rest of the website is largely unaffected - which I appreciate is of course of little consolation when trying to submit images!

Thanks for all of your patience 

Hi All,

Sorry, we had a technical problem on the upload end - as you all noticed! FTP was fine, but the web-app wasn't behaving.

I'd recommend you try re-uploading if you had trouble uploading earlier. They should work properly now.

Thanks, and sorry for the trouble!

Duncan

As long as it's TXT format, it should be fine. For more details, check out
http://www.canstockphoto.com/forum_read.php?id=4513

Quote from: Dan on December 13, 2012, 14:39
     Waiting  for   review  --  one  month  and  counting.

The current wait time is about 3 days - 1 month is way too long to be normal, and indicates there is a different problem. If there are releases attached, check your "Release Manager" section for errors. Otherwise open a support ticket with an image number so we can tell you what the issue is.

Quote from: Dan on November 26, 2012, 14:13
     Got  an  image   that's  been  sitting  2  weeks.  A  little  long  even  if  they're  hiring  new  inspectors

That's unusually long - our wait time is presently under a week. I would guess that it either:

1) Has a new model release tagged to it

2) Has a model release with a problem tagged to it (check your "Release Manager" section)

3) Has a copyrighted keyword, or something that would flag it for extra attention by our legal staff

If the above 3 don't seem to fit, just open a support ticket with the image number and reference this thread. We'll be able to give you more information on what the issue is.

Quote from: anonymous on October 23, 2012, 22:03
Still not working...using the site uploader in IE9

It's working for some users but not for others (there are still uploads coming in) - should have it sorted out for everyone very shortly, thanks for your patience.

Quote from: oscarcwilliams on October 23, 2012, 22:35
What's wrong with these sites?  They are going to pits.

We have an excellent track record for stability, but sometimes things are beyond our control.

We had some technical issues earlier, but I believe they are resolved now. What are you using to upload?

I'm very flattered by the warm personal regards by many of you. Thanks!

In 2003 I was a photographer on a certain microstock agency, who I felt treated us photographers poorly and with shockingly little respect. It ate away at me until the following year when I quit and started my own agency, with the sole focus of treating photographers fairly and with respect. I set commissions at 2x that of the other agency, and aimed to run CanStock as the first "fair trade" stock agency. The goal was never to make millions, or even personal gain, but much rather doing what I thought was right.

Now over 8 years later, I think it's clear these principals still drive us today. I'm still regularly shocked to read experiences people here have in dealing with other agencies - and personally make sure we don't fall into the same grouping.

There has been lots written about the backgrounds of some of our competitors, and it would be easy to see that their focus always has been and always will be bottom line profits. While we're not a non-profit, I think it's important to remember that we're started by photographers, run by photographers, and treat our contributors how we would want to be treated.

I hope people see that this is not just marketing spin, but is how and why we were started. Which is something we are very proud of.

Cheers,
Duncan

Quote from: csproductions on August 30, 2012, 11:48
However, I stopped uploading because recently a batch was rejected for lack of a model release.  I'm sure I attached it, in which case it would be a system glitch.  It's possible that I simply forgot to do it.  But since there's no mechanism that would allow me to simply attached the releases and go forward from there, I'd have to start again at square one and reupload the images.

Yikes, sorry to hear that - the system isn't supposed to delete your files for MR rejections. You should be able to simply make the corrections and re-submit without having to re-upload. I agree that would definitely be an unnecessary pain if you had to upload from scratch again.

I assume it must have been a temporary bug at the time, because I have not heard of that from anyone else. But if you (or anyone else) has that happen, definitely let us know and we'll dig deeper.

Quote from: enstoker on August 29, 2012, 16:27
Duncan, my friend, are You on holliday?

Nope, no holiday for me I'm afraid! I still check MSG whenever I can.

While everyone's mileage will vary, we are continuing to set monthly sales records nearly every month in a row - which is especially nice to be doing through the traditionally slow summer months. I'm surprised to see our ranking on the right, which never seems to reflect our actual performance, but it's good to hear some people here have been noting our steady progress.

Cheers,
Duncan

Very cool photos. You're a brave man to have all that gear hanging on a very thin kite line Although you're right that in a worst-case scenario the kite would act as a semi-parachute, but I'd I'd still anticipate a possible trip to the Canon repair center.

I've been very interested in watching filming with a remote controlled drone (quadcopter/etc), but the costs are fairly significant for a rig that can lift a pro body, and there is little margin for error.  If you live somewhere with steady wind, this seems like a great compromise.

Anyone else have kite or drone AP/AV experience?

As a microstock agency based out of Halifax, I thought I should pop in and extend a very warm welcome as well!

csproductions,

Absolutely, I fully agree. More batch related functions are very much on our wish-list. We are working on some customer-side improvements over the coming months, but an update to the submission process is probably not too far away. As always, appreciate the feedback!

Duncan

haha sorry Lisa, I have no idea why it was set so small. There really wasn't an obvious reason for that.

If something is bugging you or can use improvement, we're always happy to hear!

Quote from: luissantos84 on June 20, 2012, 19:56
nice tip Duncan! it seems a little slow (the series editor), I am doing a few

1 - serie name is quite small, consider increasing it

Ask and you shall received - the maximum series name is now doubled in size. Thanks for the suggestion!

Our search engine does not use tagged categories for ranking, so leaving them blank won't impact your search ranking in any way.

With that said, there is still a benefit if you have the time, as it can help in Google ranking, etc. It won't make or break these rankings either, but every bit helps.

But as Lisa mentioned, tagging images to series definitely does help, as it directly controls how your images are cross-promoted. People who tag their images into series statistically sell more images on average.

Sounds like a great problem to have, congrats!

Quote from: Microstock Posts on March 13, 2012, 20:19
I admire your dedication to Canstock. Oneday Canstock will be massive, they'll buy out Getty just so that they can play golf through their office windows. By this time Duncan would have appointed you second in command due to your relentless dedication and hard work for the company, and you'll be laughing at little peons like me still uploading everywhere

When that happens, I'll make sure you're invited to tee off a few balls!

All keywords are automatically broken down into individual words. It makes no difference for ranking if a comma is between them or not.

"storage" and "shed" are presently included with the image - for the reason above, "storage shed" won't be displayed as a separate phrase in the keywords.

[edit for spelling]

If anyone has a specific question (since this is addressed to me) instead of posting as a thread on here and the CanStockPhoto forum, we're happy to answer directly through a support ticket - to avoid causing any undue confusion and misinformation.

I answered this directly on the CanStockPhoto discussion forum here, for anyone who is interested.

Regarding adding keywords, we have certain suggested keywords that are displayed with all our images so that they can be found better in web searches. This does not affect your CanStockPhoto search results, and helps drive more sales to your images. We know what we're doing here, and I can't imagine anyone will find a problem in helping drive you more sales.

Regarding removing of keywords - we do not make a habit of ever removing keywords. Generally if a keyword is removed, it's the inspectors doing it as a favor instead of rejecting the images.  In the CanStockPhoto forum you included one of your images as an example. I'll re-post what I said there, for everyone's benefit given this is publicly posted here as well:

-----
shed; storage shed; building; door; one door; handle; roof; door handle; siding; shingles; light; pole; lightpole; electrical; constructed; industrial; room for your text; copy space; wood; gray; green; brown; tan; rocks; grass; gold; wood pole; conduit; wooden; stained

This is actually a perfect example of containing keywords which are not relevant.


There should be little doubt that no buyer searching "electrical" will be expecting to find this image. This hurts legitimately related electrical images, and looks poor to anyone doing an "electrical" search. The same goes for someone searching "door handle", "gold", "light", or several of the other keywords included in the image.

Again, keywords should describe what is only physically and prominently visible in the image. None of the above keywords describe anything that is prominent in the image.

Furthermore, you included "copy space" and "room for your text" - but in fact there is no copy space available in the image, as it's tightly cropped around the shed. Copy space means there is room to add text that does not interfere with the main subject of the image. If you had an area of blue sky visible above the roof, then "copy space" would be appropriate, as a buyer could add text to the image without covering the main (and only) focus of the image, the shed.

Including vaguely related keywords will only hurt your images overall ranking, it's sales, and the results of many other legitimate searches. We generally recommend 5 to 15 focused keywords per image.

Duncan

Quote from: stockastic on January 28, 2012, 00:38
I have to say, this whole "partner" thing sort of eludes me.  Who is going to buy images from this junky site, which looks like an auto-generated "content farm" full of malware, instead of at one of the known, reputable sites - where prices are already so low that experienced photographers no longer even bother to upload the shots they took 5 years ago?  If the "partners" are selling images at prices even lower than the established sites that feed them, why are the established sites undercutting themselves?  None of this makes sense - to me, anyway.   

When checking out gograph.com just completely ignore the front page for now - there's a method to the madness, but rest assured the actual front page will not look like that. There's been no marketing to date that I'm aware of, so at the moment it's just us on the site. But regarding prices, you'll notice gograph.com is priced significantly above CanStockPhoto's - not lower than. CanStockPhoto has our own market niche, so distribution agreements (i.e. w/Fotosearch) are very useful for getting into different markets & demographics.

Okay I'm logging off for the night. I'd just noticed the thread and thought I'd help clarify any confusion. Have a great weekend everyone -

We don't publish/share member's names even on our own site, as per our privacy policy.

Cheers,
Duncan

Hi Everyone,

gogograph.com is as owned by Publitek (aka Fotosearch). Fotosearch is working on expanding their business, with the intention of course of selling more images for everyone.

The site has been quietly rolled out and is still very much under construction. So the appearance will certainly evolve by the time the site is officially launched.

If your image are sold on gograph.com, commissions/etc are handled exactly the same was as if they were sold directly on fotosearch.com

Hope that helps clarify any confusion!

Duncan