Quote from: sjlocke on June 06, 2012, 00:17
Sorry, I don't think you read what anyone else writes.  I spend zero time 'scouring the net' for use abuse.  I do spend some time trying to raise awareness of the masses, so as a crowd we can be aware and act against egregious practices if it becomes needed, or at least so others are aware of the dangers.

I can see you believe in what you are saying Sean, and I admire that you do stand up for what you believe in.  So we are on different sides of the fence here, so what?

As for my scouring the net comment, that was extrapolated from something someone else wrote - so forgive me if I'm mistaken about that, I don't spend much time here as my post count would suggest.

But even as I can commend you for you attitude of "spending some time trying to raise awareness of the masses, so as a crowd we can be aware and act against egregious practices if it becomes needed, or at least so others are aware of the dangers." I would question how you can prioritise Pinterest as such a danger while you submit exclusively to the most evil and greedy entity any of us stock photographers have ever had to deal with?

Also isn't it important that we have a balanced view of these "dangers" and that misinformation such as the seo garbage spouted by that article (and others) is corrected so that we can balance the pros and cons fairly?  It feels like a witch hunt in here with a bunch of people getting angry and feeding off each others (at least slightly?) misplaced anger...

It really reminds me actually of several years ago when an istock photographer came into our little modelling photography local forums, when she mentioned she shot for istock she got treated with disdain, contempt and patronising lectures from all the old pros as to how she was giving her work away for far too little, devaluing it and it would end in her ruin, she'd never make any money from microstock.  She goes by the handle Hidesy and probably earns more today from her photography than all her naysayers on that forum combined.  It's easy to get fearful of new technologies that at first seem to be "taking something from us" but just as microstock gave images to people at prices that had never been seen before and full ongoing royalties (most of the old pros used to talk about microstock as "giving your images away for nothing") it also gave a lot back to us that make a living by it.  Microstock was the future of stock - those that saw it early and chose not to fight it but to embrace it got rewarded well for it.  And it's hard to see social media as being anything other than the future of the internet...

Quote from: sjlocke on June 06, 2012, 00:08
"Whether I earn money from it or not, my vision of beauty was shared by the maxium amount of people it could be....what more could a legitimately artistically motivated person want?"

I'm here to make money, not massage my 'artistic' ego by having my work 'shared' (which can damage my income several ways).  My intent is to create highly saleable content that sends a message, while incorporating my creativity into the process.  If I wanted to soley be an 'artist' and share my work to benefit humanity, I'd buy a van so I could live by the river.  I'll stick to that as a hobby if I so want.

And so you should if that is your focus.  I'm not suggesting by that monologue that everyone should be like me, I was merely responding to the previous poster who made some points that really made me think, which I always appreciate.

And I guess we just disagree on what will make you more money.  You seem to think waging a fight in which you'll have as much effect as a gnat chomping on an elephant and scouring the net for improper uses of your images to be more worthwhile than using that time making new ones and engaging in other, positive forms of marking your images, *shrugs* maybe you are right.  I don't see it but whatever blows your whistle...

Quote from: digitalexpression on June 05, 2012, 22:45

Your signature says "artistic photography" and I like your work, this is not a personal attack but forgive me for saying it; you don't sound like an artist. You don't sound like someone who works hard to realize a vision, creating something personal and artistic and then seeing it spread out of control on the web until even ownership is lost. You sound like a businessman calculating losses of product and dismissing it as just part of process of marketing your widgets. Sort of like Walmart factors in losses from shoplifting as part of the retail experience.

If I were so rich I wiped my A** with 50 dollar bills I would still have a problem with someone stealing my work. Or sharing it directly from my portfolio on Dreamstime. That's why copyright exists, to protect the rights of artists and creative people.

It's not about the money, it's about MY WORK. That's where the hurt is.

Interesting points you make.  As for the artist thing, well I'd like to think of myself as an artist, I do try very hard to produce artistic photography.  However I also don't really put too much stock in labels.  A label by its very nature is more exclusive than inclusive.  To define something is more often than not to define what it is not, or to put barriers up to what it may be.

It took a great upheaval in mindset for me to start selling my pictures for 25cents each, as I'm sure it did to anyone else here who was already producing professional grade images before getting into microstock.  I had to let go of a lot of restrictive notions about what I believed one of my photos to be worth and you know what?  It was the most liberating thing I've done and the best decision of my careers (I've had several) I've made.

I now live a life of 6 months a year at least (this trip is over 7 months now) travel around Asia, I work when I want to work and take weeks or months off when I feel like it.  I shoot and write what I feel like when I feel like it and earn money after the fact.  I owe all of that to microstock and finally getting over that "these agencies are stealing off the photographers and driving prices down low" mindset and getting into a different one instead, seeing the other side of the coin.

What I love is to make the pictures I want to make, to let inspiration hit where and when it will.  It is the creation the image I love, that and the sharing of it among as many people as possible (something I was doing with my images long before stock - I was posting them to forums, displaying them on photo.net, deviant art, other photography and model/shooter network sites etc) because I think art is to be enjoyed, spread and shared.  Isn't that why it's created, to be enjoyed?  As such I can't see any logic in your "creating something personal and artistic and then seeing it spread out of control on the web until even ownership is lost" viewpoint as if I got some of my work spread that far around that it was admired by that many people and it touched them enough to spread it virally....then I'd call that a major artistic success.  Whether I earn money from it or not, my vision of beauty was shared by the maxium amount of people it could be....what more could a legitimately artistically motivated person want?

In the end if I can shoot what I want to shoot and make enough to get by then I'm happy...and I'm doing that but stock roi on stock IS going down so the reality is that that being the case I kinda HAVE to be a "businessman calculating losses of product and dismissing it as just part of process of marketing your widgets" don't all of us in this industry?  I have to be the businessman so that I CAN keep being the artist.  The businessman always comes second and the artist just wants to see his work touch and be appreciated by others...I see no contradictions there.

edit: duplicate post

Quote from: ShadySue on June 05, 2012, 21:31

Quote from: neotakezo on June 05, 2012, 21:25

Quote from: grafix04 on June 05, 2012, 18:43
Odd that you care that we care.  It's our property and our copyright.  

Mine too, I still make a large chunk of my income through stock photography.

So run past me again ...
How does it benefit you or me, as stock sellers, if pinterest pins our photo from a site other than our agency's whereby the only way of a potential buyer finding us would be for them to use GIS?

It doesn't.

But it does (potentially) help you every time someone pins your image (or repins it subsequently) from your stock folio, or your website etc. And I still reckon that if someone is going to steal an image for their blog sure they might go to pinterest, or they might go to google images, or devient art, or 500px...they are all collections of pretty photos, or a million other places online...someone that's going to share/steal a photo is going to share/steal it they aren't going to go and buy one for 50cents or even 5cents. So what have you lost if/when they do?

Worth the trade off in my mind as I really don't see how anyone pinning your image can hurt you, even if it comes from a blog somewhere with no link back to you. Doesn't help doesn't hurt...but pins from your stock sites or own site have the potential to help.  Pretty easy maths equation in my mind.

Quote from: grafix04 on June 05, 2012, 18:43
The link was given to you by hummingbird, which you conveniently skipped,

The link provided by hummingbird has nothing whatsoever to do with inbound links...did you read it yourself?  Seriously man, you gotta stop smoking whatever it is your are smoking....

It's about the fact that their OUTBOUND links are no-follow and their INTERNAL links are do-follow...and the argument (or at least so it seems to me) is totally irrelevant as there's nothing "illegal" about making outbound links nofollow.  Wordpress blog comments are nofollow by default, TWITTER links are nofollow...gee, wordpress and twitter must be breaking the law too...*rolls eyes*

Although I must admit that the nofollow bit was something I didn't know.  I actually read somewhere not long ago that pinterest links were DOfollow...guess they changed things up at some point. And this admittedly does give the site less power seo wise, but still not zero as that article is claiming - it's been proven that no follow links do still help out a page, just not anywhere near so much as do follow links.  Google still records them and it knows how many do follow links a page has and how many no follow (this too is where you need diversity - if all your links are do-follow that isn't natural, so nofollow links are important to keep your back link profile out of the nasty crosshairs of google's algorithm).  Twitter links are no-follow and they can help sites enormously in the serps (which is why there are so many spammers on twitter) Still I must admit to disappointment at reading the no follow thing.  However I'm no lawyer, but no follow out bound links are laughably far from illegal and also the "poor anchor" text link that that article talks about hurting a site is also total rubbish.  Even more so these days in the era of Penguin we need more and more naked url non-anchored links, because that is what the search engines see as natural.  

And more links from social media is what the google counts as being interesting and engaging to viewers....for a reason, the internet is turning more and more toward social networks, and so each google algorithm upgrade tends to mirror and use that data by becoming more and more influenced by social signals.  Which is part of why twitter (and I hope now pinterest too) can considerably help SEO wise even with no follow links.  

Quote from: grafix04 on June 05, 2012, 18:43
Odd that you care that we care.  It's our property and our copyright.  

Mine too, I still make a large chunk of my income through stock photography.


RE What makes you think we care that you don't care?

What makes you think that anyone cares about anything you write?  This is a forum mate, people express their opinons and sometimes *shock horror* those opinions are at odds.

Quote from: cclapper on June 05, 2012, 18:40
And I don't think I have said anything disrespectful to you, so I will assume that your post above is talking to other people.

You assumed correctly, I certainly wasn't talking about you.

Quote from: grafix04 on June 05, 2012, 18:07
It all boils down to who's lazier.  You, who can't be bothered reading the entire thread or other recent threads about Pinterest?  Or me and others who can't be bothered repeating ourselves and wasting time and space.  We win in this case.  Read the thread and catch up and then get involved.

He get's shown how much rubbish he's speaking (rudely too I might add) and he get's snarky....fair enough...

Seeing as it's SEO school here for people that think they already know all about it: Sites are "banned" (actually this almost never happens) generally only for linking out to really nasty pages or hosting malware etc.  What is more common is a penalty, which is normally applied to just the keyword term in question.  So if a page is very highly optimised for "stock phtography" and has an inbound link profile where 50% of the links coming in are text and anchored as "stock photography" then that page might get a -50 pr -100 (whatever) penalty in google for the keyterm "stock photography" or closely related terms.  However search for "*site name* royalty free images" or a unique block of copy from that page and it would still show up.

However this penalty is still about inbound links.  I've skimmed over much of this thread now and a couple others...I haven't seen anything mentioned about pinterst manipulating search results with "dodgey" inbound links and they as are the only ones that would cause a penalty and as I also haven't seen anything about pinterest hosting malware I was genuinely asking what link practices you are talking about...I apologise if I missed the post(s) you were talking about but I guess a bit of courtesy is too much to ask for (though that's been obvious from your first reply to me).

I'm a '"new" user that's been here a couple years.  Yes....I'm a sneaky pinterst emplyee that forsaw this debate and registered an account here in advance back in 2008...try looking up the date I joined rather than just my post count.

As for why I'm commenting here?  Well pretty much because I see what seems to be a lot of misplaced anger and there's certainly some serious misinformation (especially about the SEO elements and benifits to pinning and repinning) that would be better off corrected, or atleast I saw a discussion that was overwhelmingly one sided and to which I might be able to bring a fresh perspective and something new to think about.  But I see my perspective isn't particularly welcome...

And so an equally valid answer to that question (seeing as only the people who share the majority opinion seem to get treated with respect) is:  Bloody good question...

And well it MIGHT BE...as your article post says.

I'm not arguing whether they are breeching copyright, they well MIGHT be...I'm saying I don't care.  Firstly because, well I DON'T care, and secondly because it isn't worth caring.  Web 2.0 and social media, online sharing etc...that's way bigger than any one company, any small band of photographers that don't even get taken seriously by some of their own agencies. It's the way the internet is surging...like it or not it ain't about to stop.  If we all banded together then MAYBE we could get better conditions at some of our agencies, but wasting time and energy fighting the next facebook....isn't there more productive things to do with your time?  Something that might actualy yield a result? (other than frustration)

Quote from: grafix04 on June 03, 2012, 09:18
Panda and Penguin came about to penalize spammers who use shifty SEO techniques like keyword stuffing.  I wonder if they're likely to penalize Pinterest for their dodgy link practices?  I hope so but in the eyes of Google, I'm not sure that it's dodgy enough.

Also Penguin and Panda were more about duplicate content and inbound anchor link over-optimisation, nothing to do with keyword stuffing....that was taken care of years ago...

Quote from: grafix04 on June 03, 2012, 09:18
Panda and Penguin came about to penalize spammers who use shifty SEO techniques like keyword stuffing.  I wonder if they're likely to penalize Pinterest for their dodgy link practices?  I hope so but in the eyes of Google, I'm not sure that it's dodgy enough.

Exactly what "dodgey link practices" are you reffering to?

Quote from: grafix04 on June 02, 2012, 11:52



RE:  You clearly don't understand Google, SEO or Pinterest.  

Really?  funny, I'm about to say the same thing...

RE 'Re-pinning' has no effect on SEO (not yours anyway) and if it does it will go against you because if you get enough backlinks on the same domain linking to the same page, Google treats it as spam and drops you off the search.  

Absolute rubbish - ever hear of a blogroll link?  millions of blogs around the world link to millions of other sites with blogroll links - these are sitewide links that link out from every page on a site...sites don't get banned from them.  Sites get banned mainly due to unnatural backlink anchor profiles, ie all the inbound links to a page are anchored with whatever keyword the spammer is trying to rank for.  Repins are perfectly safe to get in bulk though because they are anchored as images - there is no anchor text and so n chance of an anchor text penalty there and the anchor text that is used on them is the domain name from the site they were pinned on.  Once again google doesn't "ban" sites for lots of links using their domain name, in fact they expect it.  Whenever I've had a shot go viral on dA or 500px a whole bunch of bloggers will make posts sharing my shots and linking back to my site for my root domain name - it's never hurt me in the serps at all.


RE: Only one backlink will be counted by Google and that's the first one.  

Once again you are wrong.  Repeated backlinks from the same domain give diminished backlink power it's true, but they still give it.  I have a page on 500px that is a PR 3, it has NO links to it from outside sources, only links from inside it's own domain.  If only the first link to my page from the 500px domain was counted I'd have a n/a page...not a pr 3 page. It's a PR3 page though because I've had shots go viral and get on the front page of 500px and get hundreds of votes and faves, each one is a link back to that shot from the posters account and each shot links to my profile page, also every follwer of mine (about 1600 now) link back to my page from their friends page and to every new shot that I post from their friends photos pages....in the ends it's these thousands upon thousands of links from the ONE domain that make my page there a PR3...

As well as make article and blog comment spam,  spammers also create online databases (rental property listings agregated off another site for instance) for the very purpose of creating sites with thousands or hundreds of thousands of pages they control, why?  To create backlinks for their portfolio of money making sites...this wouldn't be a viable tactic if only one link from these data base sites counted...it doesn't, they all count and that's why they use them.  The first one just counts more beacause as well as being a link it's also increasing the overall TLD (top level domain) profile linking into the page, which is one of the other high ranking factors.

RE: What planet are you on?

One where I do my research before I talk about a topic, you should join me....

Quote from: ShadySue on June 02, 2012, 09:12

As people who licence images for a living, we are concerned when a photo of ours, legitimately bought or even stolen and put on a website, can then be pinned and repinned with NO backlink to our agent,

And that is different to being able to right click save and then reuse "willy nilly" how?  People already surf blogs, save pictures and then post to facebook, image sharing sites, forums, their own blogs, myspaces etc etc..there is no new door that's being opened here...

But my point is that there is theft and there is theft.  There are legitimate concerns out there like the companies that remove watermarks, or purchase under a regular license when they should have bought an EL, or more criminal are (some (mainly one) of) the stock sites themselves.  Don't we have real concerns?  Don't we have real enemies?  Are a bunch of casual web browsers that were never going to be image buyers anyway collecting some of our shots that they like to show off their good taste to others really that big of a concern?

I think anyone who is getting upset about pinterest while tolerating Istock has their crap really, REALLY out of whack...

Quote from: traveler1116 on June 02, 2012, 03:58
This made me laugh a little.  Your images will get stolen and everything will be fine or it won't. 

I can see how you'd get a laugh out of it.  But seriously, it's also the truth.  Your images WILL get stolen (if they are any good) to pretend otherwise is to be naive.  Do you have enough time or will to scour the net looking for your images? and then the means to find out if they were purchased from an agency when you are on perhaps 7 or 8 different agencies selling your images under a (more or less) "use as much as you want" llicense?

I know I don't.  I'd rather be sitting back on my balcony admiring the sunset or perhaps if I'm in a more motivated mindset make new images - fretting about something I can never control is something I try to make a habit not to do...

enjoy your stress!

Quote from: Tabimura on June 02, 2012, 05:46

And how does your precious seo "benefits" translate into sales? Does it put food on your table?

Actually...yes.

But before I go on I have a question: So is it that you DON'T think people search for photos using search engines?  Or you don't understand in even it's simpliest form what SEO is and does?

I've only been an image buyer a few times, but more than once I've had a hard time finding the image I wanted at the first couple stock sties I looked at, so where did I turn?  Google....with google images I managed to find quicker and easier a good image on a stock site (I think one ended up being dreamstime, maybe both, not quite sure on this point).

If I've done it as a newbie image buyer I'm sure others have and I'm a microstock photographer, if I need an image of course the first place I think is a microstock agency.  But most potential image buyers out there and those who buy images now and then but don't have "microstock in the consciousness" the way I do would be even more likely to use google. 

Aside from that I have my personal website ranking for some reasonable "photo" related terms that bring in advertising clicks, one is a rather main term that I've gotten on the first page of google.  Which is all done by seo (mostly social sites - facebook, 500px, devient art, twitter, pinterest etc) and yes, strangely enough advertising clicks DO put food on the table.....as did whatever SEO that existed for the photos that I bought from searching google - the artist of that work can thank whatever SEO his agency did because it got him my sales....

To think SEO on a site/page with a PURCHASABLE PRODUCT that is well keyworded to be useless in this day and age is.....rather strange...

But for all of you that are exploding your heads with worry over this terrible unfair treatment of having others do some work promoting for you....how many of you have your folios at Istock?  How many of you are doing business with a company that is ACTIVELY shafting photographers up the poo tube?  You sit back and support an agency who thinks it's ok to pay 16% commissions and then get on your high horse about social sharing of photos by people who never would have been customers?

When someone pins your image there is no malicious intent, nor even a greedy/thoughtless one.  It's more a "oh, this is beautiful, I want to share this with my friends and/or keep it somewhere where I can come back and see it again", it's a personal recommendation, it's product exposure, it's non-commercial use, it's free, and....it's a bargain!

You all can get scared about people pinning your work....me, I want as many pins (and likes and shares and +1s and diggs etc) as I can get...

Well I didn't have time to read the whole thread, just the first page and it seems (at least at that stage) to be Helix vs everyone else.  Well you can throw another vote in Helix's corner.

I just completely remade my website and heavily incorporated pinterest buttons on it, why?

Well for starters social media drives more traffic than google these days, and Pinterest has surged to be the 3rd biggest social media site now, some websites report that pinterest drives them more traffic than facebook.  But aside from the direct promotional benefits you also get some pretty kick ass seo value out of it.  First off goggle is placing more and more emphasis on social media signals to influence search rankings and secondly every pinterest pin (and here's the important part - also REPIN) is a link back to the original image. 

The main critea goggle uses to sort search results is backlinks.  Every backlink your page, site, youtube video or STOCK IMAGE gets is counted by google as a vote for that page.  It's a lot more complicated than that and there are many other factors but there is a reason we have so much blog comment spam and articles in online article databases that make no sense is because its the way spammers build backlinks to trick google into thinking their page is more important and more interesting/engaging than it is.

So next time someone pins one of your shutterstock photos and you want to get all in a huff about it - you should take into consideration that it wasn't some evil mastermind lurking in a basement somewhere trying to steal something off you - it's a real person that likes one of your shots and want's to share/promote it, I'm sure 99% of the time in the pinner's mind they are doing something nice for you.  And then on top of that you are seeing real world seo and traffic driving benefits out of it.  If it becomes popular and gets tens (or hundreds) of repins then that is tens or hundreds of votes for your image/page in google's eyes.  It also makes any pages that page links to get a "stronger" vote from that page, and what pages do your images normally link to?  Well your folio page for one, sometimes other pics of yours.  So those backlinks that come in and make your image more important to google, also make it's votes more important which helps make your other shots more important.  So in reality every pin (and repin) you get helps out your whole folio in a tiny/tiny/tiny way.  But like like 25cent sales these tiny factors add up...

On an aside,

I used to know a girl who's job it was for her boss to download watermarked pictures his company might want to use and remove the watermarks from them.  This was a despicable act and an intention to do the wrong thing.  But it also shows that if you put your images online - watermarked or not they WILL be stolen.

If you can't handle this fact then get . out of this career and go do something else.  Or you can be smart, play the numbers, realise that some images WILL get stolen but you'll still make enough money to do well out of it..or you wont and you'll go do something else. 

But either way getting all pissed off about someone pinning one of your photos?....man...come on, get a life people...

I had a rush of refunds at Veer too, In total I think about 70-80$ worth over the last month in about three batches.

I tried to contact support via the online chat thing and as soon as the guy heard my problem he didn't want to know about it, told me I was registered in Australia and he wasn't in Australia and so couldn't help me...what a load of absolute crap.

You totally miss my point Anglee.

First off from that history tab I then have to navigate to the individual months that I uploaded the EVO images to see which ones I uploaded, even then the images aren't linked to any page that can show me download or sales stats.  And that was the whole point of my question.

I first asked you how I could see my EVO sales stats, to which you told me a module was being created that would allow that in the future but for now I had to click on them one by one.  So I asked you if there's a way to bring up a list of my EVO images so that I CAN CLICK ON THEM ONE BY ONE to see sales stats and you give me a method where not only do I NOT get one unified list of evo submissions (I have to try to guess which months I uploaded evo images during and select them one at a time) but a method that DOESN'T link to any sort of download or sales stats?  *scratches head*

Very odd answer you gave....I assume the real answer to my question is " no, there is no way to bring up a single list of all your evo images"

Such rudimentary sales tracking tools are foregone (FOR YEARS) in favor of site look upgrades, removal of forums, and playing around with stupid social networking things.  Why don't you try to get the basics down first before you waste your time with trivialities?

Quote from: Elenathewise on August 18, 2010, 20:37
Yeah I did see weird stuff happening - most popular pages sometimes have a God-awful images included <snip> Or some set of portfolios that clearly doesn't include mine:)

This is obviously the case...after all Mike Ledray's shots "Sell like hotcakes"  

How about my second question Anglee...is there any way to bring up a list of just your own evo images? (preferably listed from most sold to least)

By the end of yesterday I sold more that day alone than at 123rf than the rest of August, also more than half of July.  But then maybe it was just a good day there (or maybe I have a front page image or something, can never be bothered checking that stuff out)

Anyways assuming there's something going on other than dumb luck thanks Anglee & co!

Anglee,

Thanks for the reply...I'm really trying hard not to be overly negative here but there's no way I'm going to click on each EVO image separately and sit there with a calculator or whatever adding them up.  From the best I've been able to tell there isn't even a way to find your evo images in your folio without browsing every single folio page and looking for the evo mark, is there?

When I hit my portfolio link down the bottom of the page it brings up my folio, no tab for evo/standard just everything mushed in together.  When I try to search through my folio (as on the search results page you DO get the evo & standard tabs) I can't find any search terms that will bring up the whole folio.  I search for my name and get no hits, I search for evo and get no hits, I leave the search field blank and get no hits.

Even when I go into my upload history there are no links from the submitted image to the viewable image.  And your advanced search page has no option to input photographer name....so how am I even supposed to bring up a list of my EVO images assuming I was motivated enough to click on each one?

You've had the EVO section up for how long now?  Years I believe, and still no way whatsoever for artists to track their EVO submissions and sales numbers...  Doesn't that seem a little odd?

I wonder how long this has been broken for?  Because the last few months have been right crappy sales wise but in the 3 days 123 has sold significantly more for me than the rest of the month combined.  Would be nice if this was a sign of things to come, unfortunately I'm not that optimistic...