Quote from: Zero Talent on September 29, 2021, 17:27

Quote from: JoeClemson on September 29, 2021, 16:01

Quote from: Zero Talent on September 29, 2021, 14:49

Quote from: dragonblade on September 28, 2021, 04:15
I did some random video searches on Alamy today and I was surprised to find some of my videos on there. By the way, I was not contributing to Alamy in the days when they accepted video.

I clicked on a few videos of mine and under 'contributor', it says: "Pond 5 / Alamy Stock Video." And yes, I also have these same videos on Pond 5.

Actually, I vaguely recall some deal between Pond 5 and Adobe Stock where your editorial videos on Pond 5 could be sold through AS. But I wasn't aware of any deal between Pond 5 and Alamy.

Interestingly, only some of my Pond 5 videos are available on Alamy - not all of them. I wonder if there's some kind of selection process or I guess it could be random.

Though it does seem odd that some of my videos on Alamy are also on my Pond 5 exclusive account. Since they're exclusive, I would have assumed they could only be sold through P5. And there are also non exclusive P5 videos of mine on Alamy.

I did check the details of a few of my videos and I notice my Pond 5 account name on them (on the Alamy website.)

Instead of a random search, you can go to Advanced search and type in your username, to see all your videos.

That doesn't work for our Pond5 videos on Alamy because the assigned contributor is Pond5. They have included the name of clip creator in a Photographer field, but that is non-searchable.

Select videos, use your P5 username and it will work. It works for me.

My apologies. You are absolutely right. That has taken me quite by surprise, but it will be most useful. 

Quote from: Zero Talent on September 29, 2021, 14:49

Quote from: dragonblade on September 28, 2021, 04:15
I did some random video searches on Alamy today and I was surprised to find some of my videos on there. By the way, I was not contributing to Alamy in the days when they accepted video.

I clicked on a few videos of mine and under 'contributor', it says: "Pond 5 / Alamy Stock Video." And yes, I also have these same videos on Pond 5.

Actually, I vaguely recall some deal between Pond 5 and Adobe Stock where your editorial videos on Pond 5 could be sold through AS. But I wasn't aware of any deal between Pond 5 and Alamy.

Interestingly, only some of my Pond 5 videos are available on Alamy - not all of them. I wonder if there's some kind of selection process or I guess it could be random.

Though it does seem odd that some of my videos on Alamy are also on my Pond 5 exclusive account. Since they're exclusive, I would have assumed they could only be sold through P5. And there are also non exclusive P5 videos of mine on Alamy.

I did check the details of a few of my videos and I notice my Pond 5 account name on them (on the Alamy website.)

Instead of a random search, you can go to Advanced search and type in your username, to see all your videos.

That doesn't work for our Pond5 videos on Alamy because the assigned contributor is Pond5. They have included the name of clip creator in a Photographer field, but that is non-searchable.

Alamy started acting as a Pond5 distributor a few months ago under the Pond5 Global Partnership Programme (GPP). If you haven't opted out of that programme at Pond5, some of your clips will be available via Alamy (you can't specify which). Sales made via Alamy will be paid via the usual Pond5 channel as a GPP sale - Alamy will take their cut, then Pond5 will give the appropriate percentage of the balance depending on whether the clip is exclusive or non-exclusive.

Quote from: Dumc on August 06, 2021, 16:09
I don't know, until now, with distributor sales you alway got 30% of total gross, not 40% of what is left. For example, 100$ gross, distributor gets 40$, me and alamy get 30$.

What bothers me is, I finally get some nice sales, and then I get this lowlife comissions.

EDIT: Maybe it was some kind of discount, because all 3 sales showed up at once, so I'm pretty sure, they're from the sam customer.

As I say in my earlier post, the only way to get an authorititive explanation is to email  Alamy contributor relations. However, the calculations I have set out seem to me to accord with the relevant clause in the contributor contract:

11.4 You agree that in respect of all sales made via Distributors, the Alamy Commission after deducting the Distributor's commission or fee will reflect that of the applicable commission model as specified in the Alamy Commission Table.

I don't have many distributor sales on my account, but the few I have have all been calculated in this way: 40% to the distributor, the balance split between Alamy and contributor according to the commission model in force at the time.

I don't say it's a good thing. Indeed, part of my response to the recent contract changes at Alamy has been to opt out of personal use licence and distributor sales.

Quote from: Dumc on August 06, 2021, 13:30
Can someone explain to me this percentages?

Those are all 24% my share. Is this supposed to be under new contract. I've made more than 250$ gross this year. Shouldn't I get 40% or 30% if it's distirbutor sale? Or were perecentegaes all cut on July 24th and you have to start all over again? I'm clueless.

I'm pretty sure these are Alamy Distributor sales. For confirmation of that, and the way it's calculated, you need to contact [email protected].

However, I think it is calculated thus (using the second item in your sales account as an example)

Full licence amount = $127.36.  Of that, 40% goes to the distributor $127.36 * 40% = $50.94
This leaves a residue of $76.42 ($127.36-$50.94) going to Alamy.
Alamy then calculate what is owing to themselves and the contributor.
Alamy retention = $76.42 * 60% = $45.85
Contributor commission = $76.42 * 40% = $30.57.

In short, you get 40% of what is left after the distributor takes their cut.

Note: I am neither an accountant nor a representative of Alamy, so my figures carry no authority, but the figures seem to make sense of what appears in your sales account. When you ask Contributor Relations for clarification, please let me know here whether I am right or wrong.

I've checked this with Pond5 support. Alamy take their cut of the price they set for each video, but Pond5 won't say how large that slice is. The Pond5 contributor then gets 60% (exclusive), 40% (non-exclusive) of whatever is left after Alamy have their slice. The deal with Alamy works in the same way as all other Global Partnership Programme deals

Plus One on ODesigns post and Dennis's feedback. I can't see much good news around at the moment in microstock video and AdobeStock is the only one showing any signs of growth for me. As only a small part of my portfolio is usable as commercial, that growth is limited at the moment. I would love to contribute soft editorial video to Adobe sometime soon.

Quote from: Tk113 on July 18, 2019, 17:26

Quote from: cathyslife on July 18, 2019, 16:58
It never matters what has been approved before. That said, unless Disney now has the legal right to forbid all licensing, you likely just got a bad reviewer. Have you tried resubmitting? It's possible Disney has changed the legalities.

No haven't tried resubmitting. Testing the waters on Disney shots. SS is the only one that rejected. Passed on Alamy, DT, ESP


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I can't comment on DT or ESP, but I can say that Alamy do not inspect images on upload for possible intellectual property issues. They only inspect for technical quality and regard other aspects of the upload (captions, keywords, releases) as the responsibility of the contributor. Microstockers who are used to having their hands held by inspectors at other agencies should beware when uploading to Alamy and take care to ensure that they are not infringing model or property rights.

Quote from: PZF on July 12, 2019, 19:00
One week now and ftp out of order.
Sigh.....
They just advised me to change my password and try again.....guess what? No difference. Getting irritating now.....

If you are being advised by one of their 'Expert Users' kick up a fuss and tell them you need the issue escalating to technical support. If it is the same problem I had the first line support can't fix it because it is an issue with the FTP server. Once I got though to the proper tech support people they were able to have me logging in in a matter of hours, without having to change my password.  However, It took nearly a week for the support chap to send an email to say it had been fixed. 

Issue is now resolved and I can connect to Shutterstock FTP. Initial contact from support was with their 'Shutterstock Expert User' scheme, which was of no use whatsoever as the error was clearly a technical issue with the FTP server. Their proper technical support contacted me about eight hours after I first raised the issue. I explained the issue in detail. About two hours after than I was able to login again using the same credentials which had been rejected throughout the day, and I have successfully uploaded several video clips. I've not actually had a response from tech support to say what the problem was, but they've clearly been able to fix it.

I don't know how much the Shutterstock Expert user scheme is a help to contributors - it may be that they are able to field a lot of simple queries and stop the support system from being clogged up. It just seems to me that when I do need support, I need people who have access to Shutterstock's backend systems, who can see what is going wrong and take steps to fix it. In this respect the 'expert user' us just an obstacle I have to get past to get access to the actual support I need.

Quote from: PZF on July 05, 2019, 12:34
I've abandoned SS uploading for a day or so till stuff seems to happen correctly.
Fubar......not quite working as it should.....or
..... Beyond All Recognition

Ha. Fubar, eh. Always something  new to learn.

I was logged in for about 10 minutes then the FTP system kicked me out and now I can't log in again. They may be doing some maintenance, but I wish they would mention it somewhere.

Hmm. Normal service has been restored for me at Shutterstock FTP and I can now login, without any apparent change to what I was doing previously.Puzzled.

Quote from: PZF on July 05, 2019, 11:39
Yes, all fubar today. No uploading. Delayed (I hope!) sales reporting.

Fubar??

As far as sales goes, I've had a video and a still image sale in the last 24 hours, so I assumed that part of the system was OK.

Suddenly I am unable to login at Shutterstock FTP to upload videos.  I am using Filezilla 3.43.0. My Shutterstock login username and password are unchanged since I last used FTP there ( a month ago) and I can still log in to the main contributor site using the same credentials.  FTP logins to other stock sites are working perfectly.

Anyone else got this problem? I've opened a support ticket but don't expect a super quick response.

I can't really help much other than to say you are not alone, I have the same issues uploading video clips to Pond5 using FTP using Filezilla. This has been happening for a year or more.

I upload video to Shutterstock and Adobe using the same files and settings with no difficulty.

I don't upload large batches of clips, so I get round it by either:

1.  Supervising the FTP upload and manually stopping the re-upload of a file immediately after it has been correctly uploaded for the first time.
2.  Using the Web page upload, which is usually successful first time.

Occasionally a 'duplicate file' error is generated by the Pond5 system. In this case I rename the file to make it unique (usually be adding '_A' to the file name. This is sufficient to fool the Pond5 server into thinking it is an entirely different file.

I've never bothered chasing up Pond5 support as I only deal in small quantities and I can easily work round the issues. I can imagine it is a real pain for people uploading large numbers of clips.

Quote from: Sammy the Cat on June 25, 2019, 08:18

Quote from: whosvegas on June 25, 2019, 06:54
What fields make sense to fill in?
What are the important field to fill?

I upload my images ad for editorial images, I mark the editorial checkbox

Fill in all of the fields even the location (it is searchable too)

Though you can skip the field containing extra information about the image "Additional info" as it is not searchable though it might be useful if you want to include more detail about the image.

The location field isn't searchable anymore. It brought up too many irrelevant results in searches, so they disabled it for search purposes. If the location is important it needs to go in the caption and the keywords. If the location would be useful but not essential for the buyer to know, put it in the additional info field. Don't include the location in either caption or keywords unless it IS important. I've lost count of the number of close-up shots of wildfowl I've seen captioned as 'a duck in xxxxx town', which then shows up in a search for xxxxx town, even though the image is totally useless in that context.

Quote from: whosvegas on June 25, 2019, 06:54
What fields make sense to fill in?
What are the important field to fill?

I upload my images ad for editorial images, I mark the editorial checkbox

I fill in all fields in both the Mandatory and Optional tabs in the image manager, except for Category 1 & 2, which I don't think are significant, at least for the time being.

Even though they are in the Optional tab, it is important to complete the people and property fields. If you indicate that the image contains people or property, you will be given an additional field to say whether or not you have a release. This important information for the potential purchaser.

If you are selling an editorial image as RM, it is not essential to tick the editorial only box, though it may be advisable in some cases - you need to research this on the Alamy forum to get the full picture. If you are selling an editorial image as RF you MUST tick the editorial only box. Note that 'people' at Alamy doesn't just mean recognisable people, it means any person, near or distant or even part of a person, whether or not they can be recognised.

In the Mandatory tab make sure you put accurate detail in the caption - the caption is heavily weighted in the search. Also make sure you mark the most relevant tags/keywords as Supertags - these too carry a lot of weight in the search.

Avoid adding keywords which are not relevant and don't add supertags which are peripheral to the subject of the image, just to get up to the maximum 10 allowed. As was the original subject of this thread, don't add irrelevant or peripheral keywords just to get the Discoverability bar green - it won't help you to get sales. In fact, in the long term, irrelevant keywording and supertagging is counter-productive because it creates false positives in searches and this will slowly but surely knock down your search ranking so you no longer appear in the first pages of any search.

Quote from: Asthebelltolls on June 20, 2019, 14:27
Well, you see PZF.....not only are you supposed to buy the equipment, find the location, take the perfect shot, download it onto your computer, spend the time with that expensive equipment to re-touch and perfect your image, upload to Alamy, fill in all the important keywords and data....but they also want you to do the majority of promotional work as well while they fill their pockets providing "window dressing"... and you get your $0.31 for your measly efforts. "Poor visibility"? How 'bout "Poor agency"?

As others have pointed out, the discoverability bar is something of an aberration by Alamy. A well-captioned and keyworded image will only rarely reach 'green' discoverability, and the impact on the findability of the image is not affected by it.  Seasoned contributors are well aware that 'discoverability' can be safely ignored if all the metadata is completed thoughtfully.

Most of the rest of the process you describe, from buying the equipment through to uploading and filling in the important keywords and data, is basic to being a stock photographer and little different from other stock agencies. Alamy requires a little more on metadata, but time invested in filling in that information is usually well spent.

The comments about them wanting the contributor to do the majority of the promotional work has no basis in fact that I know of. I have never needed to do any promotional work for my own images on Alamy, they do everything to achieve sales for me and themselves, which is what I would expect. There is nothing stopping a contributor promoting their own work on social media etc, but it's not essential.

The $0.31 you mention is a figure which is rare (even under the price-depressing onslaught of microstock), and certainly not typical, as you seem to be suggesting. In my eight years there I have never netted less than ten times that amount for a sale and typically each sale is much more likely to bring me 50 to 100 times that $0.31. Many contributors do considerably better than I do.  Having said that, I don't put my Alamy images on microstock, so I'm never undercutting myself.

Your comment in another post about Alamy selling 'social' information to other businesses would imply that they are breaching European data protection regulations as they don't to the best of my knowledge, have permission to sell our data to third party companies, other than making our images available through their distributor network.

Far from being a poor agency, they are probably, even with their known shortcomings which are regularly acknowledged on the Alamy forum, one of the best agencies for a stock contributor to deal with.

Quote from: unnonimus on May 03, 2019, 09:33
it is a dumb idea because no one reads the description when making a decision to purchase an image.
...SNIP..

I don't think that is true, even among commercial buyers, and certainly not among editorial buyers.

I can't see enough detail on that screenshot to comment properly, but I wonder if all three entries in the sales ledger refer to the same image, in which case you may be looking at a refund and re-sale (possibly at a different price).  Have a lok to see if all the sales amounts are positive figures, or if one of them has a minus sign in front of it.

When you go to Download Sales Report on the dashboard, it brings up the Net Revenue Sales Report. You can select 'Date of Invoice' as you say, and the date range defaults to the last complete calendar month (currently 1st March to 31st March 2019). Any sales invoiced between those dates will show in the list of sales. Most users tweak the 'To date' to the current day as that shows you the most recent sales. In fact, if you refresh that report at intervals during the day it shows sales pretty much in real time, a real boon for sales hit junkies like myself.

When Alamy invoices the customer it shows up in this report. However, as Alamy works as a traditional photo stock agency, they offer credit terms to many customers which means the payment isn't actually due until some six weeks after the invoice date. When the customer actually pays the invoice the date of the payment appear in the left hand column as'cleared'. Once that occurs the amount will show in your 'current cleared balance' on the main dashboard.

The best way to see what has been happening on your account is to use the Net Revenue Sales Report and set the date range from as far back as you like (eg.the beginning of the year) and the 'to date' to be the present day. When you click go it will show you all your invoiced sales in that period and the ones where the customer has actually coughed up the cash will have a 'cleared' date next to the sale.

Once your current cleared balance exceeds $50, Alamy will automatically pay you by your chosen payment method.

My first thought is that it is a knee jerk reaction to Pond5 introducing exclusive accounts, which is leading a (significant?) number of contributors to request that all or part of their video portfolio on Adobe is suspended or deleted. Could be a coincidence, but it seems strange that this unannounced change should suddenly appear. I'm not going to accept the change until I see some feedback on here to clarify what is going on.

Adding my videos to Videoblocks takes minimal effort as part of my normal workflow of uploading to other agencies, so I have carried on uploading my most recent material. However, having had this searchbias against 'Marketplace' videos pointed out, I am now thinking that even minimal effort is too much. If I am going to upload |I like to think that I have at least some chance of selling, and this stacking of the cards largely rules out that possibility. Time to move on, it seems.

Quote from: Brightontl on October 28, 2018, 21:23
I do only video, and to be honest SS is the only agency where I get rejections.
The way it works is that generally they reject one third of each batch.
Reviewers are paid peanuts and certainly they don't have the time to actually look at each individual file (with video), but they are scared to death that if they accept a whole bunch they will be considered lazy, so they simply reject a few random one just to pretend that they have had a look at them.
Of course you resubmit them and the get all accepted, because they know that if they refuse them a second time, the artist might argue with whatever quality control service and reviewers will get in trouble.
Bottom line, every time you upload videos to SS, you know that one third will be rejected and you have to upload it again. A bit of an idiotic way to work, but after all you end up with everything accepted.
The only question is: Why SS keep paying useless reviewers? they could save the money and give it to contributors, or give discount to customers

This isn't my experience. I generally submit small batches of videos and have a rejection rate of less than 10%. Almost always I agree with the rejections when I look closely. Only once in seven years of submitting to SS have I felt that a reviewer has lazily or mistakenly pushed the reject button on a batch of videos and rejected the whole lot. SS support eventually agreed with me that the rejection was an error but I didn't bother resubmitting as P5 provided a perfectly acceptable home for the same batch anyway. i think to say that their reviewers reject a third of every batch is too sweeping a statement.

For video I don't embed the metadata but use both the title and description fields in Lightroom, which I cut and paste manually in submitting to each site. Title I use up to 80 characters to maximise the Title field at Pond5. The caption field I use up to 200 characters which is the upper limit for SS and Adobe. I find the 200 character limit very restrictive, particularly as I do a lot of editorial video where a comprehensive description + date and location info is essential.